Navigating the Battle Against Bullying: Advocacy and Empowerment for Parents of Special Needs Children | Ep8

When I first witnessed the signs of bullying in my own son, the emotional toll was undeniable. It's a conversation no parent wants to have, yet it's one we can't afford to avoid. Join us on the Special Parent Podcast, where we tackle the daunting yet crucial subject of bullying among children with special needs. As we move through the layers of this issue, I'll share not just personal moments but also the crucial signs that could signal your child is a target, the thin line where bullying intersects with harassment, and the profound impact this has on our children's rights and well-being.

This episode is a heartfelt guide brimming with strategies for advocating for the unique challenges our children face. We're not about passive listening; we're here to arm you with actionable steps to create an open dialogue about bullying, to navigate the school system effectively, and to embolden your child through the power of self-advocacy. Expect to leave equipped with knowledge on leveraging IEP meetings, understanding school policies, and even how role-playing can prepare your child to stand firm in the face of adversity. Together, we're building a fortified community that upholds the values of love, compassion, and collective strength needed to protect and empower our special needs children against bullying.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This program is made possible by friends and partners of the Special Parent Podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:05

I believe that empowering parents of special needs children is like giving them the superpower of unconditional love and unbreakable determination. They are not just parents, they are true champions shaping a bright future for their incredible children. I'm Dr Deanna Iverson and I'm glad you're here. I'm Dr Deanna Iverson and I'm glad you're here. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Special Parent Podcast, a podcast with the mission to empower parents of children with disabilities to navigate the everyday challenges with hope and clarity, to celebrate the joys that come with raising a child with special needs. We're building a community of parents to help one another, so I'm really glad you've joined us here today. Today we're going to talk about what to do if you feel your child is being bothered by a bully. You know, I have a son and he has been picked on by other children. So how can we help our children with bullies? Well, first of all, we have to understand that bullying does impact learning, and so we might not even know our child's being bullied, but we might start to see things like they're avoiding school, or their absences are climbing, maybe their grades are lower than they normally are, or they're starting to have a major change or shift. A bullying can also impact a child's ability to concentrate. So maybe a teacher is calling you and talking to you about your child's ability to pay attention in class or the way that they're interacting with other students. Bullying can impact learning. Sometimes we don't even know our child's being bullied until we've approached and started to actually deal with some of these other situations, finding out why are we avoiding school, what is the concern? Why are the grades falling? Is it I am having trouble concentrating? Is it that in class I feel like everyone's looking at me? Or is it that I'm starting to feel that either I'm a shadow and I don't matter anymore? What's causing these kinds of things? So we have to start looking for other cues sometimes. Sometimes, our children just tell us. For example, my son told his dad, my husband, the other day, dad, this kid told me at school that I have lice. And we were like you don't have lice, yeah, but he teases me about it every day. Well, our son has eczema. We're like well, you don't have lice, buddy, so this is something you need to do. And then, as we started to try to talk to him about how to handle it, he goes well, he teases me every day and makes fun of me because of my KBG. So KBG is my son's rare genetic disorder and we're like well, does he say anything else? And we started to notice as we inquired that there was a little bit of a pattern of behavior with one student in a particular class.

Speaker 2: 3:09

So bullying can actually be considered harassment by the Office of Civil Rights when that bullying is based upon a child's disability. Not that I think we need to label things specifically as harassment or bullying. I think it's just important to understand and to help our children learn that it is against the law to do this, because we understand the impact it can have on us. So we need to do something about stopping it. So bullying is officially defined as unwanted, aggressive, repetitive, so repeated over time, threats, name-calling, teasing or even deliberately excluding people. Harassment is a little bit different. It is abusive behavior that will annoy, threaten, intimidate or cause fear. So bullying becomes more of that harassment when we actually start to have the fear factor come in or our children become intimidated or feel threatened.

Speaker 2: 4:12

So what can we do as parents? Because the key thing here I'm here for you guys, we're all here for each other this community is about what do I do if I feel my child is being bullied. First thing is feel my child is being bullied. First thing is advocacy. We have to be the advocate for our child. A lot of times I always say help your child, learn to advocate. Part of that is that you have to advocate for them while they learn to advocate for themselves. So, first and foremost, talk to your child about bullying on a frequent basis. Normalize this discussion. You know when we start saying, hey, this is what bullying looks like. Maybe it helps them recognize when it's happening to someone else and maybe they can be a change agent in their school. When we normalize it, it also takes the fear away of talking to us about it, and that goes for any conversation we have with our child. When we normalize the conversation, it takes the fear away of having the conversation with us. So they're more likely to talk to us about things when they know that bringing up a topic is not going to be something that's going to upset us as the parents or cause us to overreact. As the parents Use lots of different words in addition to bullying.

Speaker 2: 5:35

You can use the word harassment, but that has pretty strong connotations in it. But I would say bullying, teasing, I would say making fun, are they calling names? So use all of that other verbiage and terminology when you talk about it, so that way, when they hear that it's happening, they can properly classify that all of these things really fall under the same category. So talk to your child about it, normalizing it, use multiple words to describe it. Number three they may have been threatened not to tell. So normalizing this discussion helps them feel safe to talk, helps them understand that if they tell you, they're still going to be protected, be prepared to handle questions and emotions. So you need to set yourself first and manage your own emotional responses. So I've had two podcasts so far that have talked about self-care. One was with a special guest, and both of these are going to help you learn to set yourself, manage your own emotional responses, so that way you can handle your child's emotions and that you can handle the questions Questions that may come up for them, but also the questions that may go through your own mind.

Speaker 2: 7:00

It's very easy to see our child hurting and want to just bring out that mama bear. Mama bear doesn't always communicate well with all the parties at stake, though. So, as much as we love our mama bears out there when we can keep our emotions in check and save the mama bear moments for when we're talking to a friend or to help empower somebody else, moments for when we're talking to a friend or to help empower somebody else, keeping our emotions in check. They'll also models for our child. This is how you need to handle it, because if the child can help keep themselves constant, self-assured, then they will be better at handling the situation. So we're modeling for them as well as providing ourselves a more powerful stake.

Speaker 2: 7:50

Now here's the hard one. Try not to judge the other person, the one that's being brought up, as being the bully. We, as special needs parents, know what it's like to be judged. We, as special needs parents, know what it's like to be judged. We, as special needs parents, completely understand what it's like to have someone speak into how we're doing things or how our child is doing things and feel. But you don't understand the whole story. We have to admit we don't understand the whole story. Not that that's an excuse and not that we let them get away with it. It's just as parents, if we can give compassion and we can not be judgmental, we can focus on solving the problem better.

Speaker 2: 8:36

Another way to advocate is consider counseling to address the emotions from your child and from yourself. So have a counselor, work through the emotions for your child, help them build strength and self-confidence for themselves and ways to handle it. And counselors whether that's at the school, which I always say we should involve the school. If this is happening at the school, or if this is an outside counselor or both, your child needs to have tools of how to handle this situation. If it's happened once, it's most likely going to happen again and even as we become adults and our special needs children become special needs adults. They're going to experience this in adulthood. So they need to build a toolbox, they need to build a list of things that they can go to when the situation happens. And you, as the parent, if you attend counseling to help you learn how to deal with it and help you learn how to help your child, you're going to be modeling for them that appropriate behavior.

Speaker 2: 9:35

So I said let's involve the school. First thing, start with the teachers, the counselors If your child has an IEP 504 or anything else like that, the special education case manager, and if that's not working, then the administration. So if it's happening in class, like it was for my child. Then, starting at the teacher level, solve the problem. The teacher and the counselor. I emailed both the teacher and the counselor. Problem was solved. Child has not bothered my son again, why? Well, they moved proximity. The teacher made sure the proximity was not an issue, but number two. The counselor has pulled the child and spoken to the child. I also did involve the sped case manager. Even though she didn't chime in exactly for the resolution piece, I involved her because I wanted her to know everything that was going on in case something came up later that needed to be part of his IEP. We didn't have to get to admin, but I also work at a school and I've seen it have to get to the administration level because no matter what the teacher and the counselor does, all the good things that they're doing, it's not enough and the student's going to keep going. They're going to try to get to them at lunch or something like that, and that can become when it goes from teasing to bullying, to harassment. So that's when you need to involve administration.

Speaker 2: 11:00

When you do talk to the school, be very specific and provide clear evidence. If this is cyberbullying, it needs to be screenshot and all those things, because when you take a picture with your phone, it time and date stamps it. So make sure to give specifics of the situation and provide some clear evidence. If you have it Document, I always suggest you use emails when communicating with the school about anything. But if it's not an email, if it's a phone conversation, I again would screenshot that you had that phone conversation and take some basic notes. But even if it's a phone conversation, I like to follow up with an email to the person I had the conversation with. That starts with thank you so much for the conversation today. I just wanted to summarize what we discussed and what the action steps are going to be and again, specific action steps for prevention. Google Docs is sometimes a great log because it timestamps everything that you do. So it's a way to say I did record this on that day.

Speaker 2: 12:10

Also, understand the limits of the school. Discipline will go both ways. So if the behavior is only related to while on campus, transportation, those kinds of things, and it's one way a child to your child then that is something the school can jump in on. If the children start going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and because the bully's acting inappropriate. Now your child acts inappropriate, the school is going to have to work with both children for the safety of everybody on campus. The good news is, if the school is doing it right, they're training your child correctly also and the other one. So remember, discipline can go both ways, depending on what happens. The school cannot jump in and be involved if it's something that's happening outside of school completely. So even if the child attends the school but everything's happening in your neighborhood, that's a different situation. So one of the things I would do is review district and school policies. All of district and school policies from every school district I have seen are pretty much posted online.

Speaker 2: 13:19

It's okay to get an advocate. That advocate can help you navigate how to communicate with the school. If you feel that it's not going well, you can discuss this during IEP meetings. Classes or situations. Some of them may not be appropriate for your child based on what's happening with the bullying situation. So I discuss it during IEP meetings too. So I discuss it during IEP meetings too. Another thing is talk to the school about developing a peer advocacy program. There's one called PACERS P-A-C-E-R PACERS National Bullying Prevention Center and I'm going to have that resource under our resources page on the website. This, as well as any other program peer advocacy program, a buddy system those kinds of things can really help students because they feel that they know other kids on campus and other classrooms on campus that are safe places to go to if they are feeling intimidated while at school. So we've talked about being an advocate. We've talked about talking to school.

Speaker 2: 14:41

How do we teach our child to be a self-ad? What am I comfortable doing? Because it may come down to the fact, mom, I'm not comfortable saying that, I'm not comfortable doing that. So they definitely need to be involved in the response in the plan. Teach them how to practice communicating in a straightforward way. You can do this by role-playing. You can set up a situation that's similar to one that they've disclosed with you, or talk through it and have them practice communicating in a straightforward way. For example, the bully says to my son ew, gross, look in your hair, you have lice. And I tell my son to look at him and say leave me alone. And then our plan of action is you will get up and you will go to the nearest staff member, because it's already a pattern of behavior. So part of that is standing up for himself but then going and doing something about it. So have them practice communicating in a straightforward way.

Speaker 2: 15:54

Speaking up for themselves is very empowering. It will build self-confidence. It will build a way of thinking about who they are and feeling comfortable and knowing that they can take care of the situation or at least be a part of that. When they learn to actually say things like leave me alone or stop. And one of the things I don't teach children is don't try to fire back with some quirky comment or some other insult, because that's when it starts going back and forth. And when it starts going back and forth you end up usually just creating a bigger problem, because now the bully got what he wanted. He got your kid to be like woohoo in this game. If they say leave me alone or stop, or I don't like that, you said that or that was really rude, and then walk away, they've got to be able to walk away, get away from the situation. That is very empowering for them.

Speaker 2: 16:59

Another way to teach self-advocacy is to have your child describe their own strengths, is to have your child describe their own strengths, sit down with them and say hey, bud, part of the human element, part of being who we are is knowing our strengths, but also knowing our challenges and things that we need. So when we say know our strengths, one of the key things about knowing our strengths is knowing what we're good at. Not everyone's good at everything. I don't care how much I'm going to practice, I am never going to be able to play professional football. I'm not built that way. That's not who I am and that's okay. It's absolutely okay that God did not build me to be one.

Speaker 2: 17:45

I have other strengths, so what I need to do is know my strengths and now use my strengths. I also know my challenges. I know the areas that I'm not the strongest in. For example, I know that when it comes down to conflict, I am a processor, which means I'm not real good at firing back right away or having a conversation I haven't prepared for. I'm a lot better at preparing. That's why, typically, after something happens, I'll think about it and then I'll need to circle back and have the conversation again, and so that's one of my challenges, because it doesn't always work for the other people that I'm communicating with.

Speaker 2: 18:29

I also know my needs, my need I'm an extroverted person and my need in a community. So I look at my child and I say what are some of his needs, what are some of his challenges, what are some of his strengths? And then we sit down and we have that conversation together. I think it's really important to not tell them your perspective of that. It's more important to guide them to come up with their own. When we guide them, it's amazing Sometimes we learn things about our child we did not even know existed, because we are learning how they see themselves. And that's so important as a parent to learn how they see themselves, because that can help them feel empowered and that can help them fix many problems that come up in their lives, including this bully problem.

Speaker 2: 19:22

Take responsibility for yourself. When we teach self-advocacy, we teach our children. You have to take responsibility for yourself. Where are you? Self-advocacy we teach our children. You have to take responsibility for yourself. Where are you at the locations? What words are you using? What actions are you taking? So we have to teach them.

Speaker 2: 19:36

So, for example, there was a student I was working with and he was having a situation with another student that was picking on him. This student's response to that picking was to fling insults and he was quite good at flinging insults, I'll be honest. But what that did was ramp it up, ramp it up, ramp it up to the point where then there was a fight. And this all happened very quickly we're talking in less than a two to five minute period. When I worked with that student as a counselor, one of the main things I pointed out to him was what could you have done differently to change the outcome of that situation? I did not blaming him he did not get in trouble but he still could have done something differently is there are certain places I don't go because I know that they're not the safest places to be. There are certain words and actions that I don't choose because I know they're just going to incite negativity in other people. So teach them to just take responsibility for their parts, because sometimes, if we tweak something, it could have had a completely different outcome. And finally, most importantly, like I said, the walking away. They need to get help every time. So PACER, the PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center, has a great action plan that you can start with. It includes all parties. It's something you can go through with your child, even if you don't actually use the paper and write it all down. It's a guideline for parents. So I suggest that and again, that resource is on our webpage, so we'll review the tips and tricks for today Know your rights and know the rights of your child.

Speaker 2: 21:16

Pay attention to changes in mood, academic success, patterns of behavior. Self-harm if that's part of it ditching classes. Self-harm if that's part of it ditching classes or lost possessions. Oh, I lost it. What you don't? Lose things, what are you talking about? So lost possessions a lot of times are a key that someone's taking things from them. Next key normalize the discussion. Make sure to talk, make sure to listen, make sure to ask great questions and take them seriously.

Speaker 2: 21:49

Reach out to school officials and advocates for help. There is a helpline for bullying. If you don't know it, you can Google search a bullying helpline, but we also put it on our resources page if you need that. Help your child build a strong support system. Invite other kids over to meet you at the park. Help them build a community of people around them so they at least feel loved and accepted outside of some of this negative attention.

Speaker 2: 22:14

Because, again, this is a life skill Special needs kids become special needs adults and they still need that community that love and accept us and practice and role play. Often, if you practice and role play bullying situations, teasing situations, both verbal and physical responses like walking away, getting help, et cetera you and your child will both feel more empowered and able to handle the situation. Thank you so much for joining me today and I hope that you have found this helpful, as I did, especially finding resources on how to help my child when he was bullied, and remember this is what special needs parenting is. This is teaching love. This is teaching self-compassion. This is teaching that there's hope. This is teaching that we, as parents, can get together as a community to navigate these everyday challenges. I hope that you have a really great day and we'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 1: 23:14

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