How to Address Bullying and the Special Needs Student

 Bullying in schools is a terrible plague on all students but especially special needs students. It affects the entire school’s learning environment negatively and can destroy the lives of its victims. It can be especially destructive to students who have special needs because they are such easy targets and they are the least likely to have an advocate (student or adult) stand up for them. Most special needs students have a very difficult time making friends in school and most almost never have a friend who isn’t also special needs.

One major reason that bullying can be more dangerous to special needs students is that many special needs students will acquiesce to bullies if they think it will appease the bullies who are victimizing them. A horrific example of this is when four high school students in Concord, New Hampshire were bullying a special needs student for a prolonged period of time. The bullies told the special needs student that they would stop bullying if he agreed to allow them to tattoo a vulgar picture on his backside. Of course the fearful special needs student agreed with the hope that the bullies would stop, and of course the bullies simply continued with an even more vulgar way of bullying this student. They took a picture of the tattoo and began showing it to others. Eventually the victim’s family was made aware of the situation and charges were filed against the bullies.

Many classroom teachers or administrators may not know a special needs student is being bullied because the special needs student may not be able to appropriately express what is happening to them or may be so scared that they are simply unwilling to bring it to the attention of their classroom teacher or school administrator. An example of this type of situation took place in Hellgate, Montana when multiple special needs parents complained about bullying of their special needs children. However, multiple educators involved in this case claimed that they were not made aware of the situation until the parents came forward.

Bullying of special needs students is a problem that needs to be addressed, and it needs to be addressed by parents and educators for special needs students. Some specific actions that parents and educators of special needs students can take are:

• Parents and educators of special needs students need to teach them that they are allowed to say “no” if someone violates their personal space or body
• Parents and educators of special needs students need to teach them that they need to communicate any acts of bullying against them immediately
• Parents of special needs students need to be aggressive advocates within their schools to make sure that educators are taking bullying accusations seriously
• Parents of special needs students need to document everything (ex: accusations, proposed remediation) and educators need to follow through with any proposed remedies and let parents know what those remedies were
• Educators need to take accusations of bullying against special needs students seriously

Many special needs parents and educators are so busy trying to make sure that their special needs child is receiving the appropriate academic and health care needs in school that they might not even be aware that their special needs students are being bullied unless there are obvious physical bruises or marks. However, despite the many time demands that might be on a special needs parents and educators, they must remain proactive in their efforts to protect special needs students from bullying. Special needs children, just like all children, are perfectly made by God and should be treated as such.

Truly Yours,

John Giotis

Headmaster, School of the Immaculata