Bullying and Asperger's

Post Reply New Topic

Hi, My name is Michael. I would like to participate in diminishing bullying that young people with Asperger's experience. Can anyone direct me to educational resources regarding this subject? I would also value learning all I can about this experience directly from young people with Asperger's. I would be especially grateful to hear how folks who have experienced bullying personally think their own experiences could have been prevented, or, if not prevented, meaningfully addressed.

Thank you,
Michael

Many of us here have been bullied, one way or another, and having Asperger's definitely made us a target. There are many stories to be told on the subject, but first, why? Why did you pick young people with Asperger's being bullied as your cause? I don't want to diminish your desire to help, but I feel like you're wading into a subject you really have no personal experience with. You don't have Asperger's, and it's very likely you haven't been bullied more than the average kid growing up. So, why this?

I'm under the opinion that bullying can never be stopped or diminished much. It would seem bullying is just part of social dynamics of humans and since aspies lack these social things, they are prime targets.

You can never eliminate all forms of bullying. There is exclusion, verbal abuse. No busy teacher is going to be able to stop bullying for someone. If someone is a target of bullying, there is no way of eliminating it without getting them away from the people.

Personally I was treated poorly more by teachers than I was my peers. They would label my behaviour as disturbing and seclude me in a room away from everyone and send me to counselors who made everything worse by saying false things to my parents. I had teachers that constantly teased me and wouldn't even let me try to ask for help for things because they wouldn't let me unless I was able to do a bunch of things, like making eye contact and not stimming and talking clearly all at once; like they were training a dog.

Start with getting support for teachers to recognize and teach people with ASDs. I think that's the most you can do.

Last edited by buryuntime on 25 Nov 2010, 8:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It differs from person to person. Generally, people with Asperger's are going to be bullied, because bullies pick people that they perceive to be weaker than they are. I was bullied in school, but I never fully realized it. I assumed the guy wanted to be my friend, but didn't know what he was doing. So I kept being nice, and he kept being mean, and by the end of every school year, anyone who had picked on me had stopped, because I either A) made him feel so bad about continuing to be mean while I was being nice that he forced himself to stop, or B) he thought that since I missed the whole point of bullying, somehow I was beating him at his own game by not getting mad, and thus he had to stop. Not only was I not getting mad, it was going over my head. Imagine how frustrating that must be! Now, girl bullies were worse, because using this tactic on them caused them to interpret my actions as sexual tension, and so they kept hammering away. I hated girl bullies. But I later learned that simply telling them to go make me a sandwich would shut them up real quick.

My Aspie friend was bullied over and over. The teachers stepped in and it continued, I remember seeing him get upset and teary eyed.

My school wasn't doing anything about it so I stepped in and the bullies backed off.

I am currently getting bullied by another special needs students, oddly enough. This should be noted that it's "social bullying" and maybe a bit of verbal, but not physical at all, I would actually prefer it to be physical because I have an EXTREMELY high tolerance to pain. (Weird, eh?) The people think this is OK because of something I did to her last year. I said "sorry" for it and I did it on impulse and I felt bad about it after. She thinks the opposite.

Eliminate standardised education. It is structurally impossible to have such a thing without encouraging the bullying of any group which does not fit in well. Yes, I was bullied by teachers as well as by students - and in both cases, the administrators failed me. It just isn't in their self interest to protect the outcasts.

And yeah, I understand bullying. The superintendent (Dr. Gus Sayer) with his head firmly up his butt while Phoebe Prince was bullied to death? He was a physics teacher in my high school years ago. He wasn't that bad, then - but I know what he learned and where he learned it.

Bullies generally pick people that they either feel inferior to (and see bullying as a way to exert their inferiority complex,) or superior to (and see bullying as a way to exert their superiority.) Aspies can be victims of both - their inferior social skills can make them seem weak, and a prime target for bullies as a result. On the contrary, if they are intelligent (which many aspies with science/math based special interests can be,) they are bullied for being a "nerd."

I was the victim of psychological bullying at my previous school, mostly through the form of social ostracism and isolation, leading to frequent taunts (taking the form of "harmless if told once, harmful if told a million times.") I didn't mind the isolation (as I had a couple of good friends to help me through it,) but the frequent taunts do get to you after a while, especially if they are pretty much the only thing you hear from people for three years. Thankfully, this has all changed now.

I'm going to have to agree with this. Physical bullying is both the least worst form of bullying (assuming it doesn't reach points where it can be permanently harmful,) but the easiest to stop. Psychological bullying is very difficult to stop, especially since there is still the prevailing meme in our culture that children bullying each other psychologically is just "kids being kids," hence many teachers don't stop it for this reason (not to mention that it's hard to stop to begin with.)

Probably the best way to stop social ostracism is simply to allow outsider children (not just aspies,) the opportunity to see like minds (with similar interests/personalities.) Seeing even just a few other people with the same interests as me during the period I wrote about above, would have helped me greatly.

I agree. This won't stop bullying, but it is probably the best that can be done to counter the effects.

If you didn't know you were being bullied, it probably wasn't that bad.

The bullies need to be ostracised or put in solitary confinement.

"Many of us here have been bullied, one way or another, and having Asperger's definitely made us a target. There are many stories to be told on the subject, but first, why? Why did you pick young people with Asperger's being bullied as your cause? I don't want to diminish your desire to help, but I feel like you're wading into a subject you really have no personal experience with. You don't have Asperger's, and it's very likely you haven't been bullied more than the average kid growing up. So, why this?"

Thank you, Sacrip, for asking me the questions you have. They have occasioned some real soul searching on my part. Let me offer to you some initial thoughts as to why I am interested in diminishing bullying as experienced by young people with Asperger's.

Primary to my interest is the affection I have felt for several children and adults with Asperger's. I have taught many gifted students in my life, and among them there have been quite a few who had Asperger's. I have also been in gifted programs as a student and had peers who had Asperger's. In both contexts, I was drawn intellectually and imaginatively to the chidren with Asperger's. I found their minds interesting--singular, intense, driven. I felt that their idiosyncratic passions--obsessions--were gifts, ultimately for our humanity, that had been entrusted into their living care. I imagined that growing up when you have Asperger's means growing up in two different worlds: the world you were born into, and the world that was born into you. I sensed that as children they had an existential challenge that we other children--the one-worlders--did not.

So I have long identified with young people with Aspergers.

But why my concern with their being bullied?

I have always had a visceral repugnance for anyone humiliating anyone who is, in some sense, less powerful than he, one who is weaker and thus vulnerable.

These two dispositions--the first, an interest in young people with Asperger's; the second, an aversion to human pedation--suggested to me an area of need to which I might make meaningful contributions.

Your sense that I am wading into a subject in which I have no personal experience suggests an interesting question? Can someone who does not have Asperger's help reduce the bullying of those who do? Great question, Sacrip. Thank you for raising it. I would love to know what you and others think about this issue? Should non-Aspergerians leave the bullying resistance efforts to those with Asperger's?

Best,
MVerde

Please don't. Anyone and everyone can and should do what they can to stop bullying of anyone else. To my mind, that is a basic human imperative. Saying only Aspergians should tackle the problem of being bullied would be like saying only Jews should have opposed the Holocaust. For the record: I am not Jewish. I do oppose the Holocaust. It was evil. Period. (Yes, I learned later that I have a genetic condition {ocular albinism} which would have made the Nazis single me out for extermination, too, but that isn't the point. Before I understood anyone but Jews were victims of the Nazis, I opposed what they did. And I considered it my duty to speak out whenever the neo-Nazis raised their ugly heads.)

So you don't have experience being bullied; that may make it harder for you to understand how bullying works, but it doesn't mean you should stop caring. You may need to learn more, and think more carefully, before you are ready to tackle the problem, but you already have the seeds of one approach. Your perspective on those of us with AS is unusual - I'm not saying it's wrong, mind you , but it is unusual. If you can communicate that perspective to others, if you can help them see us through your eyes, the ones you reach will be much less inclined to bully us.

But you do need to understand what so many people really don't want to face, because our educational system is such a deeply embedded part of our society. Any system which aims to teach everyone the same things, bring them to the same point - in effect, to 'stamp out' standardised thinking units - is inherently going to encourage bullying. How can it be otherwise, when the entire goal of the system is to make everyone think and act alike? Until that system is scrapped, in favour of something completely different - a system whose goal is to identify the unique strenghts and weaknesses of every individual and to help them develop those in the way which will be best for them - until then, bullying will be an ongoing problem.

I'm not saying every teacher is a bully, although a lot of them are. I'm not saying every student is a bully, although with the pressures of youth compounded by being thrust into a system which emphasises standardisation, the ones who aren't are truly miracles. I am saying that the system encourages fitting in, and those who are under pressure themselves find a ready release in turning on those who fit in even less. Even teachers who do not bully themselves have a hard time objecting too strongly to the bullies whose targets are often the troublemakers. (Every teacher who bored me hated me, and since I was reading Reader's Digest by the time I entered first grade, most of my teachers bored me.)

Hi, Alex--Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Your analogy about the jewish people and the Holocaust raises the subject of identity in a poignant way--namely, what is the basis of our identity, and do we have a common identity deeper than, or at least in addition to, our religious, ethnic, national, gender, etc. identifications? Aspergers seems to open up some intriguing questions in this universe of inquiry, since being identified as one with Aspergers relates to a neurological uniqueness as opposed to one of the more typical categories of difference. One question might be: in what ways are people with Aspergers and people without Aspergers identical--or rather, what is common to them, what ground of humanity do they share, beyond all the ways, including neurological ones, that they are different? Bringing this back to our original topic, one might ask: what common ground of humanity do bullies without Aspergers and those bullied with Aspergers share?

In regards to the impetus to bullying, you have called my attention to the idea that social and institutional influences might be instigating factors. I have never considered how the expectations of the school and the larger social environment might be generating dis-ease that expresses itself ultimately in one person bullying another. More particularly, I never considered that a too narrowly defined ideal of success might create an environment in which people who are anxious about not meeting that ideal themselves would deal with their anxieties by tormenting those who were least in accord with the prevailing notion of success, the outliers, so to speak. The question of identity raised above seems to be at play here too, though in a different guise: with what ideal does a particular school encourage us to identify? What identities are acceptable within a particular school's social environment? Your analysis suggests that many schools promote an identity ideal that in its "standardization" fails to recognize, and may even reject, a vast domain of fertile ways of being human.

This makes me wonder where our ideals of acceptable identities come from? On what imaginative resources do school's draw when conceiving of their ideal student? How much diversity of personality, interests, talents, etc. exists within that ideal? Do schools differ from each other in this respect? And if so, what explains why one school's ideal of success allows for more diverse ways of being a thriving student than another?

Finally, your analysis raises this question in my mind: why do some students and not others deal with their stress about not meeting a standardized ideal of success by bullying others?

Thank you again for your stimulating insights.

Sorry, can't answer your question about resources, but I've got some thoughts...

It's all about education. I'm not young but I'm an aspie who has experienced plenty of bullying. I think when talking about this issue you always need to break it down into 2 categories, physical and verbal. Education is needed to prevent physical bullying, and a different kind of education is required to help the victims of verbal bullying deal with it.

Physical bullying is the area where bullying can certainly be diminished, and I think that's happening in society today. I think historically bullying was thought to just be part of growing up and if you were a victim it was felt you just had to grow up and deal with it, like if you were a victim it was mostly your own fault.

It's now an issue that is frequently talked about and I think an atmosphere is slowly being created where it's not so cool to be a bully. Ultimately, just creating an environment where people feel physically safe and those who tend towards bullying feel that the cost is too high to try it will solve the problem. Bullying tendencies are part of human nature and I don't think that will ever change, but if bullies feel this behavior is too risky, they will suppress those urges.

Verbal bullying is a different story, and I think it's something aspies are much more vulnerable to than NTs. This may just be my own experience because I'm rather large physically and that in itself may deter physical bullies. But I'm not good at "thinking on my feet" and in a group of more than 2 people I wouldn't say sh*t if I had a mouthful. Perfect target! In a battle of wits I'm an unarmed man.

The worst thing to do is to try to protect the victim of verbal bullying by preventing it. It's like putting a sheep in the middle of a pride of lions and telling the lions not to eat the sheep. Singling out some poor aspie kid and tagging him/her as needing protection from bullying is just going to make them feel even more isolated and hopeless.

Kids need to learn that verbal bullying is something that can literally be laughed off. I think the problem for aspies is that we are already dealing with our differentness, which is usually seen as some sort of character flaw, and then when bullying happens it just reinforces all the self-doubt that's already there. We take it all too seriously because we are already struggling to fit in to a confusing NT world.

I see a couple of responders telling how they've successfully dealt with bullies, and I think the key factor is that they felt comfortable with their differentness and refused to "buy in" to the bullies taunts. That's what I propose as a solution - teach aspie kids to feel good about themselves and be confident in spite of their differentness, and the threat of verbal bullying just disappears.

Although I'm not Alex, I think you're responding to me. You ask an interesting question, and a very worthwhile one. I don't claim to have a fully satisfying answer, but, since - on the basis of my own internal experience - I believe in the "Intense World Theory" of autism, I think that provides a partial one. In many ways, we experience the same things others do - only more intensely. Yet that very intensity causes us to develop different ways of thought. So I think we have a great deal in common, and a great deal which separates us, and they are intermingled. The fact that a certain percentage of NTs have some AS traits only complicates this further. I don't like the term "autism spectrum"; I prefer "human spectrum", with the inherent assumption that AS represents one of the hues within that spectrum, and that we blend into the others on one or both edges.



The very areas that are never considered often conceal the greatest surprises. But you are the first person willing to consider the idea at all, even when it was pointed out to them. Which means you are one of the most intellectually honest people I've ever personally encountered. Thank you. Insofar as there is a solution, you may just be the person to find it. As for your questions, again they are good ones, and not ones that are easy to answer. Yet there are some obvious partial answers.

First, every school system presumes that everyone will develop the same skills at more or less the same rate. This in itself leads some people to be singled out; every kid knows the name of every person who can be tagged "SpEd" - or worse, when I was in school. Only a system which treated every child as needing special, individual attention, as an individual, could avoid creating this type of stigma. If every child's education varied, and was suited to their needs, then it would be much harder to compare one to another, as long as care was taken in the terminology used and the attitudes expressed.

Second, the simple action of thrusting every child in a certain area and age bracket together creates a situation where the majority will set the social expectations, except where those expectations are actively opposed by the teachers and administrators. This, in turn, allows other cultural factors and pressures to come into play. Take marketing. Kids of every age are bombarded with marketing, the ultimate message of which is: "If you don't own Product X, you are uncool and an outcast." Thrust everyone together, and those who don't own Product X, whether out of poverty, cultural issues, or any other reason, will become natural outcasts. Depending on their social skills, they may be bullied themselves - or they may turn to bullying to stress how much more they fit in than their victims do. And ideas such as school uniforms, while they superficially appear to eliminate this, just shift it to another level. Even if they aren't allowed to bring them to school, kids will still know, for example, who has an iPod and who doesn't. All these factors will put pressure on some kids; pressure which transforms some of them into bullies and the less socially able ones into victims.

Singling out some kids as explicit or even implicit role models also sets standards. The athletes, the National Honor Society members, whatever pattern they represent becomes the 'elite' model for that system. Even on a smaller scale, standing out in any way can either mark you as a victim or drive you to bully others to fit in. Take a poor aspie who does well in one or more classes; the other kids will hate them, especially if it is not a popular subject and teacher, and will vent their anxiety at not being as successful in this class.

Some factors and standards are broad and affect many if not all school systems. The general idea of the "good student" is one such standard. Certain national marketing campaigns define what is "cool" for most kids. In other ways, every school system will be different. One may look up to the football players, another to the baseball players. Local culture may influence what is acceptable. Also, obviously, the overall diversity within the school system makes a huge difference. A community in which nearly everyone is of the same race, the same cultural and economic background, and so on will have a much narrower standard for what is acceptable than one where every other family is from a different country. (There are analogies to this in the often-observed fact that aspies from a different culture are not as sharply singled out as undesirables; they get something of a 'free pass' because everyone knows they don't understand 'the rules'.) When you are used to a widely varying set of 'rules', you will be less likely to single out any one person as failing to fit a desired standard.



That is somewhat like asking why, of all the men who are under stress at work, some of them drink, some choose to play aggressive sports, others beat their wives... etc. People are different. Yes, we all have some impulse within us to impose our will on others, however we express or restrain it, but some of us are restrained, by understanding, by shame, whatever. Others have learned to bully. It isn't an unusual lesson in our society, sadly.