A bit of a personal post, prompted by a post on Linkedin by the National Autistic Society
These were;
Identify risk times and places where bullying may occur and supervise autistic pupils if required.
Provide quiet areas with staff check ins for autistic pupils to avoid overwhelming environments and have the option to remove themselves from situations.
Produce strong guidance and rules on bullying that are specific and easily understood by autistic pupils
Work with autisitic kids to come up with anti bullying solutions.
Set up lunchtime clubs so autistic pupils have somewhere to go and engage with interests.
Back in the 1990's neurodiversity was very little understood and no one was diagnosed with anything. Not even ADHD. You were normal, weird or naughty!
I suspect had I been observed in adolescence by someone in the know, all my social difficulties and unmasked "weird" would have been labelled as symptoms and I would have been placed firmly on some spectrum. I relate very strongly to Chris Packhams experiences at school.
As an adult I've learned how to be liked, how to make people laugh. I have learned to focus my tendency towards single minded obsessiveness to get really fucking good at the things I do and have worked hard to develop the soft skills I need to be a successful professional person.... so you'd not really tell without watching my life at close quarters!
I totally feel point 2 and 5, about providing places of refuge within the school environment.
Some of the teachers did seem to intuitively recognise that some kids were in dire need of a safe space to retreat to and would open up their classrooms over lunch. I was quietly grateful to those individuals as "out there" was frankly horrific. Like some kind of endurance test.
I used to call it the "lunch time trial".
Picture it.... you walk around and around and around aimlessly. There is a new brand of abuse through every door, round ever corner and past every different group of people. You eventually make a game of guessing what it's gonna be this time. Any form of queue, whether it be for dinner or classes queue is a particular brand of hell, as you are trapped there in a harrassment freeding frenzy where your one job is to keep your shit together.
I'd have hated point 1. One reason I never told anyone what was happening was because the idea of being "the needy child with problems who needs a support plan and constant check ins" was my idea of hell. I like to think of myself as capable and being a victim of bullying did not make me feel very capable.
Sometimes anti bullying messages are very idealistic, insinuating that if you educate people enough, or set up the right interventions that bullying will stop.
I think that is very naive. Bullying is a complex and nuanced phenomena that doesn't happen in a vacuum..
It will always be a problem for kids who don't fit the mould/lack the deeper intricacies of social skills and therefore neither fit in nor understand how to stand up for themselves. It will always be a problem in disadvantaged places where kids are witnessing parental dysfunction and abuse is normalised.
My experience was that reprimanded bullies just go incognito and apply more subtle forms of psychological warfare which go undetected. I quickly learned not to speak out.
In reality kids who bully the most viciously and chronically are unconsciously acting out a struggle.
One of my worst chronic bullies was it turned out, being sexually abused and subject to nightly kickings from his Dad. I learned that many had similar struggles.
Dark behaviour can come from kids who experience dark things. Yes, some rise above but they're generally exceptionally self aware outliers. The "Cycle of Abuse" is real and serious.
The tactics of a school bully are similar to those of abusive relationships and this is frightening! The dynamics between bully and target carry on into adulthood. The victim attracts further abuse and the bully continues as perpetrator.
The lad I mentioned above has grown into a repeat abuser of women.
The interventions bullies need run far deeper than some trite "anti bullying program". It needs social workers and therapists.
The more helpful messages revolve around accepting that bullying IS complex and WILL HAPPEN.
I went through a period of deep knowledge gathering a decade ago. Over a year, I read every source I could find about bullying until I ran out of new info.
Common themes were the social, earning capacity, substance abuse risk and "life milestone outcomes" for long term bullying survivors. For those who experienced it during the key development stage of adolescence the prognosis is consistently poor.
 I am a lucky outlier, saved by my love of learning. I was able to understand and reframe the experience as something that wasn't really about me. I was able to recognise and therefore challenge the impacts.
We must empower kids with ways to cope with and understand the experience so they don't internalise the negative messages they hear day in, day out. Coach them. Teach them the psychological skills you need to disarm a bully.
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