Son becoming a bully

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My son for the most part is quiet. He seeks out social interactions, but the NT kids just like to tease and bully him.
This has happened throughout his life. When he was in cub scouts, he was safe. When he went to boy scouts, another older scout told me that the boys tease him and bully him constantly.
He finally told some of the kids he had aspergers and the older ones stopped teasing him. Yet others continued.
This year he went back to public school, although its a small charter school (300 kids from 6th to 12th grade).
At the beginning he had a really hard time with bullies. The kids were teasing him, and calling him stupid, ret*d, weird, creeper, etc.
This continued... then a boy decided to make it his personal mission to tease my son constantly during lunch.
The boy decided to spill my sons lunch all over the table... my son in response had it and punched the kid in the nose.
The kid stopped interacting with my son at all (which is good, I think).
Other kids started to make fun of him. He was on their facebook page, and was responding in matter of fact type ways and tends to just say things like they are.
They blocked him. He continues to harrass them. When I talk to him about just forgetting them and limiting his interactions, he just replies with "mom they are bad people. They are so mean to me and other kids all the time. They deserve it."
So.. here I am not knowing what to do about the situation, if anything at all.

Suggestions?

The school really should be taking responsibility for the things that happen at school. Any school these days that does not take firm action against bullying is headed for a lawsuit. How Many Columbines do we need to have for schools to take seriously their responsibility for their students?

Does your son have an IEP? I was reading recently about ways to incorporate bullying issues into an IEP. Is there a social skills class he could participate in? Or any therapy at all? My DS is only 6 so we haven't gotten to the stage you are at yet but he did do a social skills class at school 2x a week and the OT we see focuses a lot on social interactions and communication. For DS it has taken a while for some of those lessons to "sink in" but I hear him now using some of the language he has learned over the past several months. I think its important to have other people involved in trying to teach kids some of these lessons probably more so for your tween? teen? Sometimes I feel like my voice might as well be a dog whistle for all the good it seems to do talking to my boys. A social skills class could help him learn how to develop a filter and maybe help him see himself the way others see him.

Your son is not being a bully. He is responding to being bullied by others. You can best help him in dealing with this by putting him into martial arts.

Also, you need to get on the school's case about the bullying. They are supposed to protect kids from being bullied, and are not doing their job. You also need to get him into some type of social training program. It will take a while to show results, but it should help.

You also need to explain to your son, that although it's important to tell the truth, sometimes it's best to remain silent. It's not nice to say things that will hurt someone's feelings, unless there is a need for it. Regarding the home made flame thrower incident, he was right to make one initial comment about it, as it is dangerous and stupid, but then he should have dropped the subject. Once he made the initial comment, he had made his point. Further comments only served to generate hostility, and were not helpful.

And remember, martial arts training!

no one ever solved the bullying problem. School was hell for almost 100% of us.

Just home school him. For learning to socialize, he can do it some where else.

OK, as a parent of a kid on the spectrum and formerly a middle schooler on the spectrum (in the dark ages) yes, you have a problem. It's described in most literature as being a "bully-victim" and is a common response to bullying. I did it (I can hold a grudge like nobody's business) and my son has struggled with it, too.

http://www.education.com/reference/arti ... ly-victim/

It sounds like your son may be struggling with some social communication issues - so if an appropriate social skills class isn't available, ask your school to test his pragmatic speech and see if he can get pragmatic speech therapy. http://www.asha.org/public/speech/devel ... matics.htm He won't need to wait for a group, it can be done one-on-one with the school's speech therapist and it's a good first step anyway.

My son also can hang onto a grudge like nobody's business and we struggled with him "punishing" kids who were bullying him (unfortunately - or fortunately - his response was physical: unfortunately because that's very bad, but fortunately because the school tends to ramp up the support when that happens.) There is a collection of threads on the Parenting Index about bullying and some of our problems are discussed in detail there.

It's really difficult for a black-and-white thinker to see the shades of grey in a bullying situation. Nobody is a "bully" in the way the media presents them - and precious few are mean 100% of the time. Your son has probably categorized these kids as "bad people" and can't see that, although there is no excuse for bullying, they have redeeming qualities. He probably also can't understand that people are able to learn and change their behavior (it's not once a bully always a bully - as is unfortunately presented in the media.)

Unfortunately, it's not just TV and cartoons that show bullying this way; it's the schools, too. Despite repeated research showing that most kids engage in bullying behavior at one time or another, schools persist in framing the issue as "bullies" and "victims" rather than a system of behavior that kids move in and out of.

Basically, I would present the issue to your son in a rules-based frame: It doesn't matter how bad somebody is, the rule is that you don't stoop to their level. If it were my son, I might also say that our rule is that if you can't follow the rules of social media (meaning, if you're blocked you are no longer a part of the conversation) you can't use the social media. I'd also explain that while he may be right, logic isn't a good way to respond to someone who is behaving irrationally.

I liked this episode of Autism Talk TV about social skills http://www.wrongplanet.net/article410.html I actually had my son watch it when he was being bullied, and (even though he was bored by the clinical stuff - we started about 4:00, teasing & bullying is at about 7:00) he did start using some of the techniques she describes with success.

Lots of good advice already on the bullying. I just wanted to ask, does he have to be on facebook? It sounds like he's not really ready to tackle the types of social interaction there successfully, and will likely just end up making everything worse for himself at school. Can he hone his text-based social skills on something more low risk like an anonymous interest based forum or a multiplayer video game, where he's not likely to incur real life repercussions for blunders? And then maybe return to FB when he has developed more skills?

Your son did the right thing punching that bully.

Congratulations to him for standing up and defending himself.

The right to self defense is an inalienable human right.

American society; especially public schools, have neutered our children (and some parents) with this idea that its just as wrong to defend yourself as it is to start a fight.

I find this idea particularly offensive. Bullies pick on the weak; 9/10 times the best way to stop a bully is to show your not weak.

When I have children I will have one rule for this:

"If you start a fight, you will be in trouble. If you defend yourself, you will not be in trouble with us and we will defend you to the school."