how do you advise your child to cope with bullying?

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I am sure this has been answered and asked several times over, but here we go again

Maybe it will just be easier to tell you what I do, the first time I tell him to ignore it, the second time to report to a teacher (which I can't get him to do, but that is another story), but the main thing I am curious about, do you let your child hit back??

I tell my son that if someone hits him FIRST then he can hit back--but only as long as it is not a girl (just in case) and not in someone's face----he is only 6 after all.

I feel a little guilty for telling him to hit since he can't always "judge" the situation correctly but I don't want him to be a target that just stands there and takes it.

Give me your thoughts and opinions!

Unfortunately, the worst bullying isn't physical.

i tell him not to ever hit back, because from past experience...*he* always got caught~not the perosn who started it.

Exactly!

My son (12) has always been the one to get caught, sometimes that is t he intention of the bullies, to insite them into doing something reportable, and all the "witnessess" will back up the bully.

My son has been known to "disarm people", if they attack, he will throw them to the ground, or scuffle with them, it works, people don't mess with him anymore, but he is a larger child (not overweight, but he will be over 6' 2" when he is grown) and did not start doing this until he was 9.

Often, Aspies are uncoordinated, so engaging in a physical fight could be permission for your son to be beaten and he won't be able to compete.

Also, Aspies have a hard time knowing when to engage or not. It was not physical, but my son was being verbally assulted in school and publicly humilated. One boy screamed out that my son was "working at a grade ___3 years behind___ level in a specific course, infront of the whole class, and another class". My son "had enough" and called out 'well, at least my mother does not sleep with monkeys, like your mother... maybe that is what is wrong with you!" Unfortunately, this was a "clever" retort my husband taught him to deal with another "situation". That was not fun, the letter sent home saying " please tell your son not to fouly accuse parents of people he has a disagreement with not to sleep with monkeys... he could not seem to understand why this was a hurtful thing to say..."

Ugh. Talk about blowing up in your face!

You need to nip this in the bud. You need to get it to stop. If the teacher won't take appropreate action, then you need to go to the principle, and then school board if the principle won't do anything. It is different then when you where in school. Your son as a right to attend school and not be physically or verbally assulted. My son is out on a 20 stress leave right now due to bullying. I took him out to send a clear message that he is not going to put up with all this, and that it is affecting him. (and of course, because he was emotionally falling apart). It worked. The VP said he was 'unaware" of any problems (yeah right) but now he can't ignore them. He said that we was going to closely monitor the situation and "lay down the law" for both teachers and the bullies.


It is the school administration you need, not the teachers.

If it does not stop, then look into another school, or homeschooling, is that possible? I HS'ed for 4 years to keep him in a positive environment.

Have you thought about putting your son in a martial art? He could learn self defence, and also depending on the program they have bullying education too.

Are social skills classes available in your area?

Anyway, best of luck, but no, I don't think just telling him to hit back is going to fix this. You need help.

I'm going into professional mode myself. Click. No feelings at all.

Both my two AS tends to go away to process, since that has been my guidance to them. They don't care that much about it, but if they see or hear about somebody not treated right, they simply gets Veeeeery angry and it can be a problem, since their moral and acceptably behaviour has been so set both from our relief families, school, kindergarten and us as parents (and our friends and their kids who has gotten a brief of what's authism can mean).

Recently my youngest got a kick in the back in school that my daughter happened to see, and that kid that did it got his french fried yelling from my daughter. Her classmates also saw the hit. My son got a bruise about the size of a half CD/DVD.

Just today when me and my midst son "did the town" a bit he got so angry on a parent not listening to her daughter that she needed to take a leak, that he frankly told the guy with the kid that she had to TAKE A LEAK NOW. I blushed. But he was right. He's 8. It's just like this every day. Can't remember themselves but cares for everybody else.

It's quite interesting to see the interaction, because cartoon smashing like Tom and Jerry toons doesn't trigger that emotical thing, but with real actors like in Narnia, it's utterly scaring. But Tom banging a frying pan in the head of jerry is just animated fiction.

I could probably evolve this discussion for a couple of pages...

My son has always been a little physically passive at school so we told him if he's hit first, he can hit back. The verbal stuff we tell him to try and ignore unless it continues and then to tell the teacher. I don't know if this is sound advice though.

Have you seen the video of these teenage aspies talking about school. The one kid got pretty choked up about the verbal abuse he's received. Sad but true.

Links to ABC story (in 3 parts): http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=3006889&page=1

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=3007734&page=1

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=3007970

Sad but too true, ster. NT kids know the fine art of misdirection ,Z still hasn't learned it.
I forced myself to teach him that "Violence is the last resourse of the incompetent." I also taught him to use his mind to get out of a bad situation. Shortly after I became Dad the kids on the bus were trying to provoke him into outbursts by saying "He's not really your Dad." After finally pulling this out of him [I would rather be a dentist to a hippo] Z and I talked about other ways he could respond to their taunts. His final solution was I have three Dads, my Daddy, who is in heaven, God, my heavenly Father, and I got to choose my Dad, did you?" Believe it or not it shut these kids up.

He has also only in the most cases may he strike back with the admonition that if he instigates a problem I will support the school and he will recieve additional discipline at home. If I feel he is in the right I will fight for him tooth and nail. Not to mention the damage Cor would inflict.

We have run into both situations.

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Last edited by aspiebegood on 11 Apr 2007, 2:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

At that age, I think an inclusion aide is the best solution.

Don't teach hitting back physically. Aspies are very rule based, it you teach a child to hit when he is feeling bullied, it will come back to bite you as he will try to hit parents and siblings when he feels he is intimidated. At age 6, an aspie will associate feeling=hit, rather than conceptualizing the idea of a bully, and then having to look at the circumstances (was it intentional or an accidental shove?) and then calculate the risk or consequences of being caught. Don't go there!

If your child doesn't have an aide and is in a school where hitting is commonplace, move him/her to a private school where bullying behavior is less tolerated.

my point is to only hit back if and only if he is hit first. He knows not to hit in the face or to hit a girl. It's not really a problem yet except for a few incidents on the bus and I made sure he did not get into trouble for hitting back and I am lucky that the principle supports me on this. I just don't want him to stand there and take it and do nothing

i understand that you don't want him to just sit there and take it....but aspies often have trouble with rules that are only used "in certain cases" (ie; only if he gets hit first)
i'll make up a ludicrous story to illustrate my point...........suppose you go the circus, and a clown hits him with one of those giant inflatable bats~does that mean he gets to hit the clown back ?.............what if a teacher bumps into him, which he interprets as "hitting him"...and then hits the teacher back ?
it's just too slippery a slope for my aspies.

When I was younger, I was probably the smallest guy in class, and one of the least aggressive. During my middle school years, I avoided bullying by hiding behind a well-defined alias of myself. Though I was still the same person, I tried to fit in with everyone who would have otherwise bullied me around. Although they treated me as a joke and an outcast, I never actually got physically beaten. I did have a few close encounters, but I think I was such a small guy, anyone who got into a fight with me would have won and they knew it, so they just left me alone. Overall, whether I had AS or not, people would have verbally bullied me since my physical frailty made me physically defenseless. I think it was better that I had AS, because I could have taken insults a lot more personally had I understood some of them at an intuitive level.

Once I reached High School, everything changed. I grew quite a bit in High School; though I'm still extremely skinny, at least I'm average height for a male my age. Also, I began to discover a new set of friends, and eventually, the "bad" kids forgot I existed in the first place. Being in honors classes helped to separate me from the bad crowd, which was worth the extra classwork by far.

Also, I had two older brothers growing up who forced a sort of tolerance of bad people into me. My oldest brother would constantly pick on me, and although I'd have a hissy fit every time, I am quite thankful for it now. My other brother is also extremely smart, though he doesn't have AS. I always looked up to him, he's one of the smartest people I know. My parents are loving and are still together after 23 years of marriage, all of this contributed to the good-natured person I turned out to be.

I teach my kid that unless he stands up to the bullies, they'd never stop. But the problem is, he doesn't know *how* to stand up to bullies, so we made this list of three steps to stop bullying:

1. Calmly tell the bully to stop by saying: " Stop, you're being a jerk and you are hurting my feelings". And walk up knowing more nasty name calling will continue.

2. Next time, facing the same bully, say: " I warned you yesterday to stop. Because you didn't, I would have to report you to the school". Walk away again, knowing it probably will continue still. Report the bully to the guidance counselor. Have your parents write a letter to the school principal about the incident.

3. Third time facing the same bully. Make sure this is in a public place where other people are around. Make a disappropriately angry response and attract attentions. For example, pick up a pile of books and toss them all over the place pr turn over a table while yelling "shut up!". The point is to make sure others are watching this and will escalate whatever happens next to the teachers. While the bully is startled, throw the first punch by driving his body toward the ground. Engage the bully physically so that he can not throw punches at you at ease. If people came to separate the fight, throw a huge tantrum until a teacher stops the scene.

By having reported the same bully earlier, hopefully the memory is still fresh with the guidance councelor and the punishment handed down will be less severe than that for the bully.

Also by attracting attentions prior to the fight, we hope to limit the actual physical damage.

Bullies are a pain in the butt to everyone not just aspie kids. To aspie kids, they will need more practices at home in order to cope in these stressful situations.

Hmmm. My son got through school without ever having to learn to hit someone and he was never hit nor often bullied.

Then I think your son was very lucky. Unfortunately this is a huge problem for many children, not just Aspies, although they do seem overly vulnerable to physical and verbal attacks... how to deal with it, well, that is another matter.

Not luck, he had an inclusion aide. I battled the school system and made sure he had a proper IEP that included an aide. And I dropped him off and picked him up at school. His elemetary school didn't look favorably on children hitting each other either. Children are entitled to services in the US to ensure a free and appropriate public education and one that doesn't include bullying, which is SO damaging to the child's self-esteem.