Care & Feeding: Theresa the Bully

[minoanmiss]

My son will be in second grade next year. Our elementary school is small and there are only two classes for every grade level. In kindergarten, he had a classmate “Theresa,” who bullied him and also other kids. It was very hard to get help from teachers and the administration about this because Theresa is mildly autistic and is part of the special needs program. But name-calling, hitting, and making up mean stories have nothing to do with autism. For first grade, I was able to get a promise that my son and Theresa would be in separate classrooms. My son has thrived and made friends and did great this year. He still saw Theresa at lunch and recess, and she was still mean to him, but it sounds like he had friends around him to make it easier, and his first grade teacher intervened much more firmly than they did in kindergarten. Now that the school year is over, I made a request to keep them separated next year. The principal said she would not promise anything, and that enough time had passed that she didn’t see it as an issue. From parent gossip, I’ve learned that other parents have also tried to separate their kids from Theresa, which is probably why I’m getting pushback. I’m so frustrated. My son cried multiple times a week in kindergarten, and it took a lot of effort to bring him back from hating school last year to successfully making friends and enjoying activities this year. What do I do?

—Don’t Break What’s Working! <

Dear Don’t Break,

First: I’m not sure you’re the best judge of what does and does not “have to do” with autism. Second: I implore you to step back a bit and try to see the big picture. Multiple parents are begging the school to keep Theresa, a child, isolated from their children. Whatever the root causes of this child’s behavior, she is troubled and in pain. What is it you would have the principal do? Keep Theresa in a room of her own? Keep her only among children whose parents haven’t noticed that she’s struggling and lashing out?

I’m not suggesting I don’t understand your focus on keeping your child safe and happy. But when the issue is another child the same age—yes, even when that other child is “mean”—your wish for your child’s happiness shouldn’t come at the other child’s expense. That would be a cruelty much greater than Theresa’s. Unlike her, you’re a full-grown adult who should know better.

Besides: A second grader isn’t a kindergartener. Naturally, you should continue to be attentive to how he’s feeling as the new school year begins. But keep in mind that he will be much better equipped this coming year to handle Theresa’s behavior toward him (as he exhibited at lunch and recess in first grade) and that the second grade teacher will be better prepared—because there’s now two years’ worth of information—for possible problems that may require a teacher’s intervention. And it’s not so terrible for your child to learn strategies for dealing with people he finds difficult or even painful to be around (he will be having to do this his whole life, as we all do)—in fact, schooling at this age isn’t only about learning language arts and math and science (etc.) skills; it’s also about learning social and interpersonal skills of all kinds. And then there are the lessons you will be teaching him: about resilience, inclusion, empathy, and not running away from problems.

—Michelle

Comments

[azurelunatic]

So this sounds like it's time to get together with the other parents whose children were targets of Theresa's bullying and start making pointed requests of the principal.

So, maybe starting the year by isolating Theresa from the schoolmates she's bullied in the past is a non-starter with this principal. Okay. So what is the plan if Theresa calls your kid a nasty name? What is the plan if Theresa persists with name-calling? "Persists" would look like any of: stopping one day but resuming the next day, picking a different name for the same student, picking a new student to call names. What is the plan if Theresa makes up mean stories about your kid? What about if she persists? What is the plan if she hits another student in a way that is clearly deliberate and unprovoked? (What is the plan for determining whether Theresa is provoked into a meltdown vs. makes an active choice to use violence outside of a situation where others aren't giving her space that she needs?) And so on for all the specific forms of bullying she's carried out in the past, and a general sense of what's going to happen if she invents new ways to make her classmates miserable. Clearly there will be some details of the plan that will (and should) remain private between the school, Theresa's parents, and Theresa, but as the parents of a student who was a target of Theresa's bad behavior in the past, I think you (and the other parents in your situation) have standing to demand some answers, and you may be able to force the issue by working together.

[minoanmiss]

You deserve whatever Michelle got paid for her non answer.

[azurelunatic]

Theresa's teacher should not assume that the kids are starting with a full blank slate. Teachers and administrations really, really want to do this but in a case with bullying that has persisted for two school years so far, that's a really bad idea. Theresa's teacher will probably need a list of the kids who Theresa has targeted, ranked from worst to least-worst, and should make up the seating chart so that Theresa is not seated near kids who she has a history of bullying. If it's unavoidable, that's what the badness ranking is for. Second grade probably won't be doing formal Group Projects, but Theresa should not be working closely with kids she's bullied for any length of time.

Weirdly, the hitting thing is the one that I think has the potential to be actually autism related, because if even one sense is in a state of overwhelm and someone who doesn't know how to regulate is being crowded, sometimes they will make space for themselves in whatever way they can. Theresa honestly may need an aide monitoring the situation and defusing things before she has a meltdown, and helping her learn how to regulate before things get too bad. But this letter has nowhere near the level of detail for a bystander to figure out the further circumstances around the hitting. And in any event that sort of thing is beyond this parent's realm of authority or need to know.

My little nephew came home from school (first grade or kindergarten) one day with a fantastic bruise on one leg. I asked how he'd got it. He said, cheerfully, that a specific kid (one of his friends) had kicked him. I was furious and wanted to march right down to school to bend the teacher's ear about the situation, but he was too cheerful for me to think it was an act of meanness. So I asked him what was happening before his friend kicked him. Turns out it was a missed kick in a recess game of some soccer-adjacent sport. At that point I calmed back down.