Bullying And Our Children With Disability

One hears a lot of conversations about bullying at school these days. It's not something new, some dismiss it. Others want to discuss it but feel there is nothing they can do. Yet others want to attack it vigorously for a few days and let it run out of steam. When the smoke clears, the bullying problem still looms over our children who are spending at least 6 hours, with or without support, in the midst of their peers at schools each day. When threatened by a bully, the child automatically looks around for an adult for help. So, is that adult there to see what has happened, right the wrong and make that child safe again? I doubt it. In most cases, these incidents happen when there are no authority figures around - in the bathrooms and at a distance from that one adult supervising the playground. So then, what needs to happen? What will help address that situation? The schools need to do something, parents demand. School administration says it has in place measures to address the problem and that parents need to do more to help their children by being more actively involved in spending time talking with their children. If we can picture the situation we have on one side parents and the other side school administration shoving the fate of those children back and forth. Both sides feel that they have done enough and the other party needs to do more. Meanwhile, an individual child caught in that situation goes to school every day and gets through his/her day as best as he/she could. Just picture the whole scenario in your head or draw it if you have to see and understand the plight of such a child looking at the adults surrounding him/her. But, the issue rarely gets outside the parking lot of the school where parents sometimes stand around and catch up with each other on school-related matters involving their children.
Us adults not doing anything is no longer acceptable. By not being concerned about it and proactively addressing the bullying issue puts all children, especially our special needs children attending regular schools, at serious risk. While typically developing children can most of the time come back home and tell their parents what happened at school, children like my son cannot. He cannot remember the details of what happened, who was there around him, who was responsible for the incident and what time of the day did it happen. His stories about challenges at school are so fragmented that I can't even make head or tail of it except know that he's been somehow bullied. How many such incidents must happen everyday and go unaddressed because our special needs children can't remember the facts of the story and makes it hard to get it straight even when you'd like to have it addressed?
If you're reading this and you're a parent of these more vulnerable children, you know it in your heart we have to be on a lookout for such situations involving our children at schools. The adults around them, us parents and the school administration, need to listen to each other and work together for a solution to help the child. He/she is dependent on us to keep them safe. He/she needs to trust that we can and will keep them protected by putting our heads together and coming up with solutions - for their sake!