what to tell your kid when they get physicaly bullied

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I will be so pleased if anyone ever comes up with an answer to the problem of bullying that actually works. I tried various different approaches as a child, none of which had any effect, and suffered for years (mercifully most of mine was not physical). I still have not worked out how to handle it as an adult, although it happens less often and I have more freedom to choose who I spend my time with.

My daughter is currently having some problems with bullies at school and when she told me I was very honest with her and said that I did not have all the answers, but that she was not on her own and me and her dad, as well as her teachers were all here to support her. I had quite a productive talk with her class teacher and the head and she seems to be happier for having talked about it and they are keeping a close eye on her at the moment. In her case it is not so much physical bullying either, but I still worry about the effect it is having on her as she seems to be developing a lot of anxiety about various things.

Not allowed to hit back? How about locks and submissions? Learning martial arts is great for AS anyway.

If he is being physically bullied my advice is listen to get clear about what isnt acceptable. Call it out clear and serious - if that gets ignored then what else can you do? In order for bullying to occur the people involved must believe they can get away with it, either hiding behind peers or friends or that they can physically win the fight.

In general, it is best to not reflexively knock people out, but it can be forced up you to defend yourself. However, this can result in escalation and revenge attacks if you get someone who is more connected. Its a minefield.

My advice is make it a last resort but a certain asset.

Verticalmum and LIttleBlackCat, the only real answer to bullying is homeschool. Get out of the bullying system. Not everyone can do that. I homeschool but I'm thinking of setting things in place to put my son in high school eventually. When I do, I will not care if he gets suspended for defending himself properly. Adults go to jail if they did what was done to Verticalmum's son. Our kids should not have to take it.

Martial arts teaches to apply only the force necessary to stop the attacker. When they take the classes several times a week, they do learn exactly when to apply what moves and how much force to apply. It's not only head knowledge. They body goes through the exercises so that it becomes instinctual. Plus, the kids carry themselves differently when they feel they are strong, and they do become strong. I am just very grateful for what martial arts has done for my son so I hope this helps someone. TallyMan is correct - this is no answer for when the bigger kids come make a game of fighting. That is a serious situation and I'd do everything to get my kid away from ever seeing those kids.

Look, my method worked for us. I freely admit it may not be for everyone - but it's worth a shot if you haven't tried it.

In fact, I've used it myself as an adult when being harassed on a bus - I walked up to the driver and loudly told the harasser to leave me alone. The bus driver is required to act when seeing a patron be harassed - and while they may not notice the harassment, they sure notice the response. I've also had other people come to my defense in similar situations.

The keys are: PROXIMITY to people who can and should help you. CLARITY of message: say you want the aggressor to stop, loudly enough for everyone nearby to hear you.

Maybe its other for boys, but when i was physically bullied (meaning hurted) i fought back and made good experiences with that. So i can ignore namecalling, or being ignored and all that other kind of psychic bullying, but when someone hit me, i returned it.

Maybe if you are a boy, then the bulliers will be startled up and try to get you another time, when they have more around them and so. As a girl, when you are not just taking it, but returning it, the bullier has to make a choice: Hit harder and start a real fight, with the misadvantage for him that even by his friends only few will be proud of him for treating a girl until one is serious hurted, even more if he needed the help of others to do so, and on the other side he can loose: So he can hit again afterwards as often as he wishes, but he will always be the bully who got beaten by his girlvictim. So there was a boy who tried to pull away my T-Shirt by force to touch my breasts and i hit him in the face, so his eye was swollen and above it the skin was laceraced (? damaged) and his nose hurted him (but was not damaged) and he lost his balance and lied on the ground in an instant, and when that happened the situation turned because his friends who came watching laughed him to the ground and he lost their respect. So i wasnt a active classmember anyway and normally just read between the lessons, so i think no other boy wanted afterwards to risk getting the class clown just for bullying the "passive reading girl", which you got easily ignore. The following 5 years in this school, nobody bullied me physically.

So whenever it was after the first strikes obvious that i am really willing to fight, and not afraid of getting hurted or to hurt another one, so maybe the laughed and made some jokes or they insulted me and so on, but they did stop the physical fighting und normally spared me from physically bullying afterwards.

Edit: I think a girl should learn self defense if you can make sure, that she is able to recognize the different of defense and attack, because many boys and man see you as an easy victim for sexual harassing, when they recognize that you have a mental disorder. If you never need it: Just be happy and its not useless, because you still have the advantage of doing sport. But if you will ever need it, theres no time to learn it then.

Momsparky - reading your response I think you read my comment differently from how I intended it. I can see that your approach would work well in certain circumstances and plan on using it. However, I still feel a level of exasperation in dealing with bullies in general. With the best will in the world teachers cannot watch everything that goes on and kids are very good at picking just the right moment when they are not being watched to do things (or stop doing them). Also, even if you are able to prevent the worst attacks, you can't make people like you and if the whole class has decided to exclude you they will find some way to let you know it.

No problem, I understand.

To me, exclusion is different from bullying, or at least needs to be handled differently - social exclusion is often about poor social skills on the part of one or both children, and about learning social boundaries. (I'm not trying to excuse this behavior, mind you, but I think it is better handled with a talking-to from a school principal or social worker once it's been sorted out who is doing what to whom.)

Physical and verbal attacks are another thing altogether. No kid is going to be able to handle it on their own, and the question is whether or not the adults are willing to step in and solve the problem or not.

With my son, in addition to the shoving that was going on in line, they were also stealing his lunchbox. We documented every instance of this - plus we documented where the lunchboxes were showing up when they were found (in the bully's classroom, for instance.) We gathered evidence and brought it to the school principal. This is also a good pattern to follow if there is cyberbullying. If your child has followed through by finding an adult and loudly protesting, you can document that as well; it means they can't say they didn't know.

Bottom line, the school is obliged to provide a safe environment for the child. If a particular child or group of children is targeting your child when he or she is not supervised, the school needs to deal directly with the kids in question.

Momsparky, my son thinks your idea of complaining loudly close to adults is very clever. If I were to tell him to do it, he wouldn't. He read it here and liked it. I think he'll do it.

I was bullied horribly for years in school. My mother and grandmother would always come to the school and complain, call other kids parents and complain, etc. They told me to tell them or another adult and they would handle it. That really just made it worse for me. I already felt helpless to know how to handle the bully, but that made me feel more helpless in the whole situation. I was never encouraged to stand up for myself or tell the other kid off or hit back or anything. It made me feel very, very weak and I didn't have very much confidence in myself or my ability to handle things at all.

It wasn't until some friends started pushing me to stand up for myself that I finally did, and stopped telling the teacher or my mother, etc. I learned to stand on my own two feet and fight my own battles. I wish I had been encouraged to do that when I was younger.

Obviously there has to be a middle ground, and with my kids I've tried to find it. I don't think a parent should have the child go to an adult every time or step in to handle it for the child any more than I think a parent should be completely hands off and say "Handle it yourself".

I think giving the kids a good front line defense to use first and telling them to then go to an adult or step in yourself if that doesn't work is really the best way to go. Help them come up with a few good comebacks for verbal bullying, teach them to give the other kid a withering look, and while some are not advocates of this, I'm very much an advocate of hitting back if someone hits you. This isn't to say that those will completely stop the bullying, but it can at times depending on the bully, and it does show that the kid isn't a doormat or a victim, and it does help empower the kid to feel that they have some control over their situation.

I've taught my kids that people will treat you however you allow them to treat you. That doesn't mean that once you speak up/hit back/turn them in that it will all magically stop. It means that you do not have to take it, and when you don't just passively take it, you are taking a step to show others that you are not their door mat.

I agree with the martial arts suggestion. The instructor taught my kid that the first line of defense is his voice. Then they practiced what they'd say and how. They also learned how to subdue a bully to prevent them from hitting. Most of all, it gave him the confidence he needs to know he can take care of himself.

Good luck,

thank you all so much for your thoughtful replies.
My son has been doing karate for nearly a year, and it has helped his co ordination. But it seems when it comes to him being attacked by others, he freezes. So Im thinking the creaming/shouting is the best defence I can suggest for him.
I am going to try and get him to role play with me so it becomes more automatic. He says he cant really scream loud enough, he says nothing comes out when he is frightened and in a situation. He is fine when it is me and him mucking around, he can scream in fun, but when under pressure, almost no sound comes out. Is practice the key to this?

Thank you all again for your replys.

Is practice the key to this? That's an excellent question. I know lots of AS kids have difficulty applying what they learn, when it is AS related. In other words, they can take classes on social cues and it makes no difference in how they relate to kids. But it can't hurt to try.

I grew up with abusive brothers and father, and I cannot scream at all, but I've never practiced. After he practices with you, I wonder if one of the karate instructors would take some time to "attack" him with the sole purpose of having him practice screaming.

(Years before my son began martial arts, he took a safety class there. It was not a karate class, it was a child safety class. As they taught different things, they had some of the children practice on the instructors. I thought that would be great for my son who had been abused earlier by a boy 4 yrs older than him. They never chose my son out of the crowd until the very last activity. They were teaching the children to "go bananas" if they were ever caught by a stranger. Finally they chose my son and he did scream and go bananas. Afterwards I thanked the instructor for choosing him b/c he had crawled into the fetal position when he was abused earlier that year. The instructor told me he could tell he'd been abused. He said when he approached the black belt who was to grab him, there was a look of familiarity in his eyes, and he was all business (while the other kids thought it was all fun and games). Anyway, this story might not help you but maybe to show that the instructors might know that this is important.)

I often lose the power of speech when I'm frustrated; I don't think any amount of practice will give it back to me. I have found that when working with myself and my son, if we can't do something one way, we need to think of a totally outside the box way to deal with it.

If he's capable of making some kind of sound, it's possible that you can get him to amp it up by practicing what it feels like rather than what it sounds like (when he's stressed, sounds, even his own, might seem louder.) Practice putting his hands on his stomach and throat to feel his diaphragm and his vocal cords. Do both types of sounds in practice, with and without his hands - so he learns alternate cues to check whether or not he is actually screaming.

Can he leave? When you say he freezes, does he totally freeze, or can he do other things with his body? It may be that karate is too complex, but walking (or running) to a safer location may be possible.

Thanks momsparky. Yep, totally freezes. Showing how to use his diaphragm is a good idea though.
Hi aann, yes the karate class does similar exercise where the kids have to scream and go nuts, and he does fine, nearly deafens everyone.........but real life stuff, totally powerless it seems.
I will talk to the karate teacher about maybe talking to my son about other things he can do.......good suggestion, and ask the teacher why he freezes, and if he can think of any solutions......
Thanks.

Another idea ( l like the one about going to the the supervising teacher and yelling out) is to teach him to put up his hand and say 'stop' in a strong voice. I have worked as an aide with kids and one year worked with a beautiful placid boy who just didn't stick up for himself. With alot of encourgement he was starting to do this by the end of the year. Boys can be boys and have rough play but teaching him to ask them to stop whether a bully act or just mucking around was important.

This is key. DS simply can't tell the difference - but if somebody is fooling around (the US version of "mucking about" although I like yours better) and you ask them to stop and they don't - then it IS bullying. Asking kids to stop and being very clear about it is very important for a kid on the spectrum.