In episode 24 of Autism Talk TV, Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson of UCLA’s PEERS program gives alex tips on how to stop teasing. Unlike what you might have been told, just walking away is not the best way to diffuse teasing or a put-dow. In fact, sometimes walking away without saying anything can make things worse!

While it’s never OK to be bullied, there’s a difference between playful joking between friends and mean-spirited teasing. In either situation, the best thing to do is to discount what is being said by giving a sarcastic response such as “whatever.” Tone is important in these situations. Please watch the video so you can understand how to implement these helpful social tools!

Also, after the episode, we have a very special interview from New York City that includes a sneak peek of John Elder Robison’s new book, Raising Cubby! Check it out!

BONUS! Here’s a sneak peek of John Elder Robison’s new book, Raising Cubby:

The post How to Stop Teasing and Bullying – Autism Talk TV 24 appeared first on Wrong Planet.

The following column by Jeffrey Deutsch is part of his “It Gets Better” series on Wrong Planet.

One thing that Aspies so often suffer from is bullying. People picking on them, insulting them, vandalizing or stealing their stuff, even spitting on and hitting them when they can’t fight back.

I’ve been there, done that and gotten the T-shirt.

One of the worst things about being bullied is the fear. Fear that something could happen at any time. Being afraid that everyone will see how weak you are.

Having no control over anything. Being *helpless*. And that happens with a great deal of bullying.

Read Bullying – You Have More Power Than You Think

But once you take some time and study your controls, and then practice using different ones and seeing what happens each time, you can harness your flying power.

Back when I was a kid, I saw the movie “My Bodyguard,” about a kid, Clifford who goes to a new school and gets bullied by the school’s tough guy, “Big M” Moody. Then I read the book – basically the same story. Moody’s a bad guy who uses violence to get his way, including extorting kids’ lunch money. (In fact, he’s played by a tough guy straight from Central Casting – Matt Dillon – just to make sure we get the message. Dillon’s tone and manner brought to this villain what black hats did in earlier times.)

Ever hear the saying “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression?” First impressions are very important. And where art imitates life, as here it certainly does, you can predict a good deal by looking at what happens the first time two people interact.

When Clifford meets “Big M,” he asks whether the M stands for Mouth. (In the book, he says “M & M – good stuff for little kids!”) Way to go, Clifford.

Keep in mind that this isn’t just one situation – this is a work meant to speak to kids everywhere. Remember, Clifford’s (and everyone else’s) every line is specified by the screenwriter, author, etc. This book and movie were trying to tell us something.

Were they trying to show Clifford as being mainly to *blame*? No. Again, Big M isn’t just some guy who doesn’t like being made fun of. he’s literally a professional (albeit for the moment small-time) criminal. And Clifford doesn’t call him anything that can’t be repeated here on a family website – keep in mind that the movie is rated PG.

So yes, Big M was very wrong. *But he wasn’t unprovoked.*

They were trying to tell us that you can reduce the crap that flies your way by not generating any yourself. Not making fun of someone’s name is a good and cheap way to avoid trouble. You might have heard the saying “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Prime example.

In my case, negative example. In junior high school, I teased another kid, calling him “Ravioli” – a variant on his name. He responded by attacking me multiple times, and not verbally either. Was he wrong? Of course.

Was he acting *randomly*? Nope. As far as I know, I was the only kid he attacked. (In fact, one day after punching me he strode into a class he shared…to cheers and clapping from some of the other kids.)

If I had it to do over again, would I still call him “Ravioli”? Hell no.

Knowledge is power. And with both, it gets better.

Jeff’s practice, A SPLINT (ASPies Linking with NTs), is registered in the State of Maryland.

The post Bullying – You Have More Power Than You Think appeared first on Wrong Planet.

Kirsten has this to say:

Bullying is a problem that affects nearly everyone, autistic or neurotypical, children or adults. At one point or another we’ve all faced a bully, or been a bully ourselves. Bullying and the damage it can cause is a popular topic of debate right now—we’re finally leaving behind the archaic “it builds character” mentality—but for those on the autism spectrum bullying can be even more difficult to combat.

What is bullying? Pure and simple, bullying is harassment. A bully is someone who regularly makes others around them feel badly. Bullying can be physical (assault), mental (verbal abuse), or indirect (spreading rumors).

Some bullies know what they’re doing. These are the mean kids (or adults) who are angry, hurtful people who put down those who are weak because it makes them feel powerful. Often times these bullies have their own problems with self esteem and lack of control, and take their issues out on those around them. Some bullies aren’t inherently mean people, and have a tendency to be manipulative and controlling without realizing. For example, a jealous boyfriend who won’t let his girlfriend have male friends is an abusive bully, but he might not realize it. From his point of view, he’s protecting the one he loves from other males who might want to take advantage. But intention does not excuse behavior. Bullying is always bad, with no exceptions.

Bullying is such a broad topic that it’s hard to pin down exactly how to recognize bullying, or to know how to stop it. As with most things in life, it’s a case-by-case deal.

If someone you know (your boss, your friend, your classmate…) is making you feel badly about yourself on a regular basis, you’re probably being bullied. Even if it’s passed off as “friendly teasing,” or “it was just a joke!” Remember, real friends don’t hurt each other. A professional, courteous boss doesn’t patronizingly call you “sweetie” when you’ve done something wrong. An ordinary classmate doesn’t laugh at you for something you can’t control. For someone who’s faced a lifetime of bullying it can be hard to break the cycle, as the long-term toll on self esteem that abuse creates can convince the victim that they are at fault, that people treat them this way because they deserve it.

Individuals with autism are often bullied, but many people forget that autistics can be bullies too. Autism can make it hard to put oneself into someone else’s shoes, so to speak. And if a friend fails a test, it might seem tempting to ridicule them for being stupid, without taking into consideration how that might make them feel. When I was in third grade, there was a boy in my class who was easily startled, so I had a lot of fun digging up worms and showing them off to him and giggling at his frightened reactions. Looking back, I know what I did to him was wrong. He was constantly wary of me, and I’m sure I made him feel pretty badly about himself. He probably wondered, what is it about me that makes people want to do these mean things? I was a little slow on the whole theory of mind thing, and it simply didn’t occur to me that scaring another person was wrong.

On the whole, most spectrumites are victims, not abusers. I myself have been bullied as far back as my memory goes. Before it was my peers, it was my teachers. I remember my preschool teacher absolutely hated me. I had no idea why, though in hindsight I bet it had something to do with me being a flaming autistic. Once, during recess, I picked her a bouquet of dandelions, because I liked getting presents, so maybe if I gave her a present she would be nice to me. She took them from me, with a snear said that she was allergic to flowers, and threw them into the woods. Another time, she dislocated my shoulder when I wouldn’t put down my yogurt after she blew the whistle for the end of snack time. I didn’t want to let go of the cup (I was still eating) so she tried to wrench it from my hand, which my weak toddler joints couldn’t handle.

When I entered public school it seemed like wherever I went people didn’t like me. My classmates would leave, whispering, when I entered the building blocks corner. Rhyming songs about how no one would marry me were sung at recess. I was called a beaver (for my teeth), a twig (for my body), and a retard (for my hand flapping) and my only defense was to chase my attackers with the threat of a cootie-contaminated kiss.

As I got older I made my first “mother hen friend,” as Tony Attwood refers to them. Through her, I became part of a small group of classmates to whom I could belong. It was much easier to laugh off bullies’ mediocre insults with a wingman or wingwoman at my side.

But then middle school started. We were all split up into four class groups. My three best friends and I were evenly divided up between the “teams.” So I was stuck with 30 or so other 12-year-olds I’d never met. The only people on my team from my elementary school were, coincidentally, the kids who found me to be the best bullying target. My aspergian back talk about things like the real pronunciation of “retarded” said through my Hermione Granger teeth, made me stand out like a sore thumb. So, needless to say, my middle school years weren’t all that wonderful. Everything and anything I did, innocuous or not, seemed to get me negative attention. When I dyed my hair pink, my classmates teased me about “killing someone and soaking [my] hair in the blood.” When I tried to dress like everyone else, I was confronted with snide questions about who I thought I was. When I went back to my thrift store clothes I was made fun of for being too “punk.”

I took solace with the other outcasts of my team, who just so happened to be the Goths. They seemed so strong with their studs and pins and chains, and they hated everybody else just as much as I did. I started wearing chains around my neck (from my garage instead of hot topic) and ripping up my pants on purpose. This didn’t really help my bullying situation, but at least I finally had a niche I could fall back on. The Goths didn’t think I was so ugly that I would die old and alone, or that I was so stupid I would end up homeless.

By high school things got better. I was reunited with my old friends, and because they’d met new people over middle school, our group had expanded. On the rare occasions bullies picked on me, the other kids in the class would actually come to my rescue. We were mature teenagers now, beyond all that kid stuff. People still made fun of me (“Kirsten Lindsmith” apparently had connotations in and of itself), but it was behind my back so I didn’t have to deal with it. For once I could ignore it all. Unfortunately, by then my self-esteem had been damaged to the point that I couldn’t even conceive of the notion of self-love. In the back of my mind, I thought I was slow, stupid, ugly, a loser, and any other unwanted adjective I could think of. Throughout high school I was again and again walked all over by people I loved and trusted because I thought that’s just the way things were. It was burned into me that no one would ever love me, and the best I could hope for would be for people to begrudgingly tolerate me. I honestly believed that other people’s feelings mattered more than my own, and that my happiness was somehow worth less.

After receiving my diagnosis, I read that people on the spectrum are far more likely than neurotypicals to fall victim to abuse. I hadn’t even known what abuse was (other than spouses hitting each other on CSI) but for the first time in my life I cried in public when I looked up a checklist on abuse in the dining commons at my university. I fit every one of the bullet points for symptoms of a victim.

These days nobody bullies me. But my life so far has been mostly spent being a victim of bullying in some form or another, and it’s taken its toll. It’s taken me years to build up the (rather delicate) self-confidence I possess today, but the slightest insult will send me spiraling into a meltdown. Wherever I go I feel that strangers are staring at me, judging me, hating me. I’m anxious and frightened wherever I go. I assume the people around me (my friends, my family) only tolerate me, and probably find me annoying. I’m incredibly unstable and unsure of myself, and I personalize nearly everything negative I encounter. Thankfully, now that I’m in college I don’t even have to interact with my peers. I’m in a much safer bubble compared to public school, and I have all the time in the world for therapy and whatever other voodoo magic will help me recover. I often tell myself that I’m a wimp, that I shouldn’t be so affected by the things people have done to me years ago. But I’m slowly coming to accept that trauma is a very real thing, and I’m not just “over sensitive”, or “over emotional”, as people have called me in the past for feeling hurt.

If you are being bullied, whether it’s by a stranger, a peer, a teacher, a parent, a romantic partner, or your best friend, the best thing you can do is to tell someone. Get your feelings validated. Know that you are not “overreacting,” and that no one deserves to be treated hurtfully. If your best friend is a bully, that means they’re not your best friend.

I hate the classic mantra “just ignore them.” Oh, don’t listen to the bullies, they’re just lonely kids with bad homes. Or they’re just bad people. Or they’re just aliens. It’s not really all that easy to “just ignore” someone who is screaming at you in the hallway, or laughing at you on stage during your school play, or stealing your clothes after gym class. Public school is a breeding ground for harassment. Everyone’s at “that age,” and you’re all crammed in together with nowhere to run. You can’t avoid a bully who goes to the same 1000-person school that you do.

But know that it does get better, as overused as that phrase has become. There will always be bullies in the real world, but they become much easier to avoid. For one, adults are actually allowed to go to the police and file harassment charges.

I don’t really have any advice for dealing with bullies, as that’s pretty clearly not my strong suit. But seek strength in numbers, even if it means being “that kid” who tells the teacher. It’s better to report a bully and be moved to another class than to grow up in an environment where you feel unloved, even hated. Get away anyway you can, and know that it’s not you who’s drawing out these feelings in other people, it’s the bullies who are seeking an innocent target upon whom to unleash their manipulative evil.

No one deserves to be bullied. Not you, not anybody.

The post Bullying. . . The Real Problem. . . An Aspergian Woman’s Perspective appeared first on Wrong Planet.

–jman

Read on for GroovyDruid’s response!
Dear Aspie:
?What is it about humans that makes them want to tease/mock/exclude those who are different??

–jman

?Different? is a funny thing. Everybody?s different, but certain kinds of differences receive more tolerance?or sometimes praise?than others. Asperger?s Syndrome and its attendant deficits get the short end of the stick by and large at this time in human development. There?s no debating that fact. People who tell you that everybody gets teased or bullied occasionally and not to worry about it clearly never wrestled with the reality of someone on the autism spectrum.

Of the three ill treatments you mention, exclusion breaks down into two groups: passive exclusion and active exclusion. Passive exclusion simply means that the group cannot communicate with an aspie. The way people are put together, they cannot built affinity or share a reality with another human being until they can communicate with him. It just doesn?t happen. In the case of most aspies, though, when they find it hard to become part of a group, they are running up against a simple fact: the group can?t communicate with the aspie, so they stay away from him. Body language, small talk, conversation, style of dress, and all the myriad communication lines have gone down, and the cool people and NTs get feeling weird. It?s not persecution?as much as it feels like it?just nothing coming across. Active exclusion means that some person or persons work to keep another out of their group despite good communication.

Active exclusion, teasing, and mocking require additional problems on top of bad communication. These three fall under the pall of bullying. Armchair psychologists and teen movies will tell you that the reason bullies ply their skills on us stems from their own insecurities, coupled with a Darwinian urge to weed out ?the weird ones.? That?s in the ballpark, but let?s be more specific:

Bullies wreak wonton pain on victims because the victim occupies an identity the bully once had and now wants to be rid of. This rule you can take to the bank. If a bully attacks someone without provocation, the reason is in the past, and he?s trying to work it out in the present. What was the problem? Well, the bully was in the victim?s place at some point. He got whooped on by somebody, and he decided, ?I?m going to destroy that part of myself that got me whooped on.? So off go his nerdy glasses and polo shirt. He starts to work out, wear combat boots, and mouth off to the teacher. Why? Because he?s bent on destroying that identity he used to have, the one that caused him so much pain. Doesn?t matter to him whether the identity is in himself or someone else. So what happens when somebody in nerdy glasses and a polo shirt dares cross his path? Yep, that?s right: WHAM! He doesn?t really have anything against the fellow; however, he recognizes the identity as loathsome, something he must wipe from the face of the earth. The glasses and polo shirt demonstrate obviously the point I?m making, but the bully could recognize anything in a conflicting identity: manner of speaking, a way of treating people, lack of friends, habits, etc.

This swapping of identities explains why children who come from abusive homes often end up bullying others at school. The bully who crushed their old identity is invisible: an adult at home, or maybe an abusive sibling. The abused children pass on the bullying to their friends at school, and quite often later in life to their spouses.

Does the past crushing of a bully?s identity excuse his present-time behavior? Heck no. But knowing how he ticks helps tremendously to parry his onslaught. For one thing, you can know this: Any time a human being negates the good feeling between himself and another, there must have been some good feeling to begin with. Broadly, for someone to go to the trouble of negating something, there must be something to negate. Sound crazy? It is, but it?s also true, and you can infer it from the discussion of identity above. The bully liked his old nerd identity. He wouldn?t have put it on otherwise. So ? there?s something about the nerd he abuses that he really likes. He?s not merely an evil Darth Vader of a person out to destroy the nerd. He likes him a lot and can?t stand to remember it. That?s why he?s so malicious.

If you can pinpoint the part of an attacker that before mirrored you, you have a good shot at neutralizing him. For one thing, he can?t intimidate you anymore. You?ve got his number. An objective look will often do it: ?What about this guy used to be like me?? Quite often, you can figure it out, or find out from someone. If more than your own piece of mind is required, confront him by building communication and reality with him. Example:

BULLY: Can?t you learn not to leave your trash in the copy room? Jeeze. You?re such a slob. If I give the word to Rob, he?ll fire your butt. You better watch out.

YOU: Yes! You hate my trash in the copy room! You think it?s really, really annoying. You hate it! You think I?m such a slob. A slob is intolerable. You have Rob?s ear. You are in good with the boss, that?s for sure. He has the ability to hire and fire in this company.

If you deliver something akin to this without sarcasm or bad intent, I guarantee you the bully?s head will explode in front of you. Why? Because you have communicated your acknowledgement to him, and you have shown a willingness to enter his reality. You didn?t run yourself down at all. You just refused to fight and showed in big verbal gestures that you heard him. All the sudden, he doesn?t have anyone to fight with! He tried to intimidate and destroy whatever identity you occupy, and instead, that identity turned around and communicated with him! You won?t cure him, but by golly, you will establish yourself as a force to be reckoned with. No one is more powerful than the person who can take on different viewpoints and without fighting understand them all. Such people are feared and respected.

A note of caution: Don?t use your knowledge of the bully?s past weakness on him. In the example above, you would probably have learned through co-workers that the bully was fired years ago because he left some documents lying around and they got shredded?at which point the boss shredded him. If you tell him, ?Oh! So you think I?m a slob? I happen to know you screwed up over at MortgageMax?? Whoa, baby. He will make it his life?s mission to destroy you by any means. Think it was bad when he yelled at you? Now, he?ll use covert operations. You?ll suddenly find yourself arrested for embezzlement, and he?ll have the proof. And on top of that, if you bring up his weakness, you?ll be in a fight, and fights don?t go anywhere but down. Instead, communicate about the weakness. Communicate?as in the example above?in the area that gave him trouble, without criticizing him. He will suddenly find he has some affinity with something he couldn?t stand before, and he will be nonplused in the extreme, without your hurting him or fighting. It truly works like magic.

Send your questions to ?Dear Aspie?! Just PM your question to GroovyDruid or send an e-mail to dearaspie@wrongplanet.net. Questions of a personal nature may be submitted anonymously, though printing a user name is preferred. ?Dear Aspie? reserves the privilege of editing for spelling and clarity. Thanks for your submissions!

The post Dear Aspie: Why Are Unusual People Bullied? appeared first on Wrong Planet.

I am telling this story based almost entirely on Bill Henck’s account. I asked the Henrico County school system for a response, but at first got only two short and relatively general statements from the superintendent, which did not surprise me in the least. I have been investigating several cases of communication between parents and school officials in difficult circumstances, and the standard official response to the parents, and to any reporters who might inquire, is often as little a response as possible.

Read the full Washington Post Article.

The post Helping a Bullied Child with Asperger’s Syndrome appeared first on Wrong Planet.

Link to article

The post Two students suspended for hair styles pull out of school – Denton Record Chroni appeared first on Wrong Planet.

The NSW opposition, who made the claims public today, said two teachers constantly humiliated the boy – who has a mild form of autism called Asperger’s Syndrome – over a period of three years.
But the NSW Education Department denied the allegations of bullying, saying the child had a history of violence.

“The principal … refutes any allegation that such behaviour occurred, rather staff made every effort to assist the student in his studies,” a department spokesman said.

The parents withdrew the child from the school in October last year and he is now studying at a non-government school where they claim he has reported no problems.

Opposition education spokeswoman Jillian Skinner said other parents in NSW had reported instances of teacher bullying and she believed the problem was widespread.

“I believe it is unacceptable for bullying (to take place by) anyone – it is particularly serious when it involves people in positions of authority which includes teachers,” Ms Skinner said.

Earlier this month, the boy’s parents wrote to NSW Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt asking her to step in and resolve the problem in other schools.

“We are disgusted with the way our son was treated within this local government school and wish for other people to know what our eight-year-old son was put through,” the parents said in their e-mail.

“It is heartbreaking to hear your son tell you he just wants to jump in front of a bus so he doesn’t have to go through the torment anymore.”

Ms Tebbutt had not replied to the e-mail or a second letter written last week, Ms Skinner said.

The Education Department said teachers had held interviews with the child’s parents, employed a teachers’ aide and enlisted the help of counsellors to help deal with the child’s behavioural problems.

But no bullying allegations were received at the school or the department’s area office until last September, when the parents indicated they were withdrawing the student from the school, the department spokesman said.

The student had not responded to assistance offered at the school and was suspended three times in the months before he was withdrawn, the spokesman said.

Ms Tebbutt said students with learning disabilities were often treated as students with behavioural problems by staff that didn’t recognise the true problem.

Original article here. March 30, 2005

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interesting read.

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