autism bullying

How Safe Is Your Autistic Child from Being Bullied?

Going through the school system today is harder than ever for our children, especially with the increased pressures of test scores, the lack of recess or gym in many schools, and the barrage of ridiculous standards that seem to be set by social media.

As parent of a child on the Autism Spectrum, I want my son to have the best possible experiences – academically, developmentally, and socially.  But when it comes to making friends and fitting in, bullying can be a real threat for him. Especially since he is so sweet and kind by nature and is quick to believe everything at face value.

SIDE NOTE: It is this innocence that also makes your child with Autism a vulnerable target for online predators! Read about our experience with an internet hacker here.

Bullying doesn’t always mean getting beat up for  lunch money. It could show up in the form of manipulating my son to perform an action or say something that will get them in trouble in class. It could look like another child coercing him to hand over his dessert every day in exchange for letting him sit next to him. And it most certainly can rear its ugly head with any words that make my child feel like he is somehow less than the other kids around him.

In the first few grades of elementary school, it was easy to explain my son’s differences to his peers. When he covered his ears to block out the painful school bell sound I simply told his classmates that he had super-sonic hearing! When he jumped up and down and couldn’t sit still in circle time I exclaimed that he was exercising his special springy legs for some Mario power jumps later on. Little tricks like that were accepted.

Now my child is 11, wears men’s medium clothes and sports a mustache.  It’s not as easy to step in and offer plausible explanations for some of his quirks. He needs real tools and strategies that can help, not a helicopter mom following him around :)

What does work?

In Growing Up on the Spectrum: A Guide to Life, Love, and Learning for Teens and Young Adults with Autism and Asperger’s, Dr. Lynn Kern Koegel and Claire LaZebnik offer some practical suggestions for helping your child on the spectrum feel safe in every environment. Here are a few of our favorites:

Checking in. If your child is at the age when he doesn’t want a parent around at school, making a point of dropping off that missed homework or forgotten lunch at a social time of day (such as lunch) will help you understand how your child is faring in his social interactions and may give you some hints about what social skills you need to work on at home.

After school clubbing. Help your child get involved in a club, even if you have to start it yourself. It will give your child the opportunity to interact with peers who have similar interests. What is your child really good at? Can he teach or demonstrate those gifts to his peers? Make it happen!

Party time. Have short get-togethers or parties that are structured around an activity. We have had tons of fun with a short “Make Your Own Pizza Bagel” party (I cut out sliced cheeses in the shape of Super Mario characters to go on top of the mozzarella) or “Design Your Own Pokemon” party with simple index cards and markers. Now that he is older we have Minecraft and Wii-U gatherings.

Buddy system. Find a peer buddy who will help your child safely get to classes. Recruit some kind-hearted kids to be a buddy to your child and accompany him through the hallways.

Educate them. Teach the students at your child’s school about disabilities. Even with a special needs department and inclusion programs in many schools, there is still a staggering lack of training and understanding. It shouldn’t stop with the teachers and staff. If peers are made aware of your child’s challenges and how he’s struggling to overcome them, they’ll be far more likely to lend him a hand.

Lessons about how to be a friend. There are a lot of ways that you can teach your child to make and maintain friendships. Sharing is one. Asking questions is another. Good phone and electronic etiquette are essential. If your child is on the spectrum, she may need help with these areas. I know mine does!

Multiple choice responses. There are times when the best response to a bully is ignoring them and there are other times when standing up to a bully may be the only option. Many schools have mediators who can tackle the situation from both sides. Use social stories to teach your child how to differentiate appropriate responses based on the situation at hand. My son responds to code systems when it comes to choosing appropriate responses. We have code words and numbers for almost every emotion and typical responses to certain situations.

How about you? What strategies do you use to avoid or address bullying with your child?

Share by commenting below or posting your thoughts on our Facebook page!

Why Emergency Responder Education – Part I

My son was 18 months old. He was standing next to my bed, humming, as I was folding laundry and separating the piles. Then he walked out. In the time it took me to fold a pair of jeans, this child had walked to the other end of the house, found my keys, figured out which one was the car key (!), went outside, opened the trunk, and climbed in. NO EXAGGERATION.

Around that same time period, I remember driving to an errand, both kids in the back seat, and glanced in my rear view mirror with horror to see my son “surfing” on the arms of his car seat, yet the restraints were still fastened. Holy Houdini! (I went through about three of four different models of car seats that year trying to find a straitjacket-level security device!)

In First Grade, I dropped him off at school, walked halfway with him to his class (the IEP requested we start to assert some independence in the mornings… ha!) and went on my merry way after kisses and high fives like usual. It just so happened that I forgot something from the house. Coincidentally, I also needed gas that morning and went left instead of right, passing the school again. About four blocks from the school, in a direction I normally never would have traveled, was my son, walking with his backpack and singing, without a care in the world. He apparently walked right out of the building after we parted in the hallway, and the teacher assumed he was absent that day… AHHHHHH!!!! No one knew! Imagine what could have happened if I turned right that day!!!!

So these are some crises that sprouted unexpectedly within the structure of a normal day. What if there was a fire in your home, or you were in an auto accident? What if you were hit with severe weather or a natural disaster? What if your child with Autism creates a public disturbance? How would a police officer deal with him or her?

Would an emergency responder recognize the signs of Autism in your child, or would they treat them as if they were mentally ill, on drugs, or non-compliant?

Why Emergency Responder Training is Needed

Many children on the Spectrum have no visible signs of a disorder. An average child in appearance with socially unacceptable behavior that no one understands can lead to a nightmare if public safety is involved. Your child may get pushed around, put in jail, injured, or worse.

It’s vital for emergency responders to identify the signs and behaviors of Autism and learn how to make your child feel as safe and non-threatened as possible to avoid a perilous outcome. Police Officers, Firefighters, and EMTs learn about alcoholics, diabetics, cerebral palsy, and mental retardation. With as many as 1 in 70 children being diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum today, the time has come for everyone to understand! This should be part of standard training. That’s why I am called to begin such training in my own county and work my way out.

Do you think a Firefighter, EMT, or Police Officer would know how to communicate with or understand your child in an emergency? Feel free to comment below!

Stay tuned for Part II of this post… behaviors, tips, and what you can do in YOUR community to help emergency responders learn more!

Using Visual Schedules

From workingwithautism.info

There are countless times when I expect that my child with Autism simply “should know better” by now.  Did you know that an expectation is merely a resentment in the waiting?  How many times have I repeated, “You KNOW that brushing your teeth always comes next!” or “You KNOW we have to leave by 8, why aren’t your pants on?”

I might as well be the teacher from Charlie Brown, because all my son really hears is, “whaa whaa whaa…” and doesn’t understand why he is in trouble. Again.

How many repetitions does it take for him to understand a routine? Well, how many times have I thrown extra variables into that routine that end up confusing him?  An easy way to take the whole struggle and guesswork out of the mix is by using visual schedules.

A visual schedule is a set of pictures and words that communicate a series of activities or the steps to help children understand and manage the daily events in their lives. Ideally, they should communicate clear expectations for the child and decrease the need for constant reminders and many times, unwanted arguments.

At home, the schedule can be created around basic morning, afternoon, and evening tasks such as brushing teeth, getting dressed, eating breakfast, and gathering a backpack for school. They can incorporate any chores assigned to the child, such as empty the garbage or feed the dog.

Posted in a central and convenient place, the schedule can be easily referred to any time the child gets off task and distracted.

For older children, school-specific schedules can be placed into notebooks for easy reference.  This would be extremely helpful for transitions and the last segment of the school day.

Issues such as difficulty paying attention, understanding auditory input, processing multiple commands, and the inability to predict and plan within their environment are easily addressed with visual schedules, helping children to adapt and stay on-task at home, in school, or in community gatherings.

Social Skills Tips from Special Guest Sue Diamond

Children who present with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, ADHD, Central Auditory Processing Disorder, and language and learning disabilities tend to have issues with social skills (pragmatic language). They want to interact, join in, play, converse, and have friends.  However, many times they are isolated and ostracized by their peers because they miss social cues.  They may not use eye contact appropriately or nod their head to show understanding or interest.

Choosing appropriate questions for a topic and maintaining the conversation may be very difficult and cause for social anxiety.  The topics they do initiate can be limited with either excessive verbiage or limited output, and their peers find it odd.  Imagine the ramifications in a classroom when these students answer completely off topic in oral and written language.  Their peers may laugh, and the teacher may become angry because it is thought to be poor behavior.

These children do best when given direct assistance in knowing the social rules. Once they understand “social thinking” they begin to make progress.  Imagine the child who runs up to her friends at recess to play.  She comes into the circle and stands too close to them.  They become uncomfortable and the social group disperses, leaving her behind.  When she understands “proximity” and how people feel about entering their personal space, she can be successful in her stance the next time.  Imagine the boy who is so excited when a peer comes up to him and tells him that doughnuts are being sold in the girl’s bathroom.  He is literal and does not believe that a ‘friend” would lie, so he goes in and gets in trouble.  Once he understands about rumors, he can make changes.  Most children can navigate their playground at school and understand the subtle, implied rules.  Children with pragmatic language delay (social language issues) make progress when they are given these rules directly.

SOCIAL SKILLS TIPS

  • Discuss a social situation before it occurs. Problem solve what can occur and how it can be handled.
  • Role play greetings and manners.
  • Talk about how to respond when being teased. You can ignore or answer back, “you wish” or “wow that was mean.” Do not get upset. It is the teaser’s bad day. Role play how to say a response with the right tone of voice.
  • Talk about rumors. You may not know if it is true. You may be tricked. Do not pass the rumor. It can be hurtful.
  • Play turn taking games such as rolling a ball back and forth. Whoever has the ball; it is their turn to talk.
  • Play charades to help with body language.  Watch TV with the sound off to observe, label, interpret, and imitate actors’ body language.
  • Use mirrors to look at facial expressions. Say an emotion and make your face match the emotion.
  • Make a scrapbook using magazine pictures and discuss the feeling shown by posture, gesture, and facial expressions.
  • Structure play dates; decide ahead what activities will be played. Make play dates full of fun for social success.
  • Play on/off games such as state a topic and decide if the sentence is on or off the topic.
  • Teach that when asking to play, the child may say no. The child may not be in the mood that day. Say, “okay” and walk away.
  • Talk about negotiating at school. When playing tag, if you are told to be “it” 3 times in a row, you can say, “I was it last time; it is someone else’s turn to be it.”

Susan Diamond is a licensed speech and language pathologist with a private practice in Alameda, California and has over twenty five years experience in diagnosis and treatment of children with language disorders.  She is the author of  “Language Lessons In The Classroom” and co-author of  “Webs For Language”, ECL Publications.  She has also produced the professional DVD “Diamond Social Skills” which provides information, strategies, and games for social language success. Her new book called “100 Social Rules For Kids” will be out this fall. Please visit Susan’s website for more information on social skills at http://www.diamondlanguage.com.

Consequences, Consequences

There was a time when two to three days of the week I’d receive a phone call from the school demanding I come pick up my son for behavior they could not control. As a single parent working full time, you can imagine how well this went over. Aside from job concerns, I also began to suspect that my very intelligent child learned that if he “kicked it up a notch” he got to go home with and spend the day with Mom. What may have started as behavior he couldn’t help soon fused into a nice culmination of sensory and social issues with a dash of escapism.

Some of the behavior described to me included loud, disrupting noises in the classroom and quickly elevated to collapsing on the hallway floor refusing to move, screaming, and literally bouncing off the walls. This resulted in multiple visits to the Principal’s office, being passed off between free teachers, and ultimately a phone call to Mom with the desperate plea that he couldn’t be “reeled in”.

Eventually I called another IEP meeting to see what we could do differently. After all, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, right? Upon a detailed description of these days where Pandora’s Box was repeatedly opened, I discovered two things:

1)   If Justin appropriately asked for a sensory break or self-corrected, they let him go to the Math lab, which was his favorite small group activity.

2) If Justin spun out of control and the staff went through the usual list of attempts to calm him, they would let him go to the Math lab, which was his favorite small group activity.

That’s right, there was no delineation between reward and consequence. They were one in the same.

(to illustrate that I’m also learning along the way, I have been known to demonstrate the same behavior with video games in lieu of Math lab… see the picture?)

The solution: a result of two hours of brainstorming

Rewards are for appropriate behavior, or for the ability to recognize and ask for help if he can’t self-correct.

When a red flag is established, in his case it was blurting out noises in the classroom, he had one opportunity to reel himself in or ask for assistance. If he did not, he received a warning, and then was to be taken calmly to a previously established consequence. No parading up and down the halls screaming, no being passed off from teacher to teacher, no pleading or bargaining… straight to the consequence. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

I found that this eliminated the excess drama and need to get attention from all our reactions. Learning that he no longer got to go home for behavior issues quickly stripped away the formerly blended lines between what he could help and what he could not.

It’s a learning experience for all of us: parents, teachers, and school administration. It’s worth it to take the time to get on the same page with all players and accept that each solution may be perpetually evolving.