I’d like to first direct you to this very short article.
Now aside from a few statistics that probably didn’t surprise you, this article doesn’t say very much about what happens to so many kids.
I haven’t mentioned this before but I have two amazing little brothers who happen to have a few learning/physical disabilities each. Both have Tourette’s Syndrome and ADHD and one also has epilepsy.
Thanks to two very persistent parents, an army of creative teachers and special-ed tutors and some necessary medications they are doing above and beyond at 18 and 20 what we thought was possible for them when they were in preschool. Both needed intense speech therapy to learn to speak and the youngest was hooked up to monitors every night for awhile. The oldest is an honors student at a great college now with little academic support for his needs. He even just started his own company. The youngest is awaiting college acceptance letters but out of ten hasn’t received one rejection (cross your fingers!). He’s going to be an engineer and his favorite class is physics. Basically, they’re pretty smart kids particularly in their areas of expertise. As I said, this was not always the case. Growing up with brothers that needed a lot of extra attention probably made my childhood a bit different from most but I wouldn’t trade it or them. Which brings me to the bullying.
My brothers were bullied.
I was bullied too (completely unrelated to them or their conditions).
Most children are bullied at some point.
However I think it’s different when it’s not for your clothes or your shoes or your weight (or in my case my hair and my height). When it’s about your ability, or in that case your disability it’s different. I learned to tame my wildchild hair and embrace it and figured out some snappy comebacks about my height but it’s not the same thing.
How do you keep from getting mad at 4 years old when other kids aren’t saying your name right because you yourself can’t pronounce it correctly?
How do you read aloud when called on in middle school when you’re still reading at a fourth grade level?
How do you keep your friends from chuckling when you can’t go to a sleepover at 13 because you still have to go to sleep at 8pm or you may have a seizure? How do you explain you don’t do well in 3D movies or some 2D action movies in theaters?
How do learn to stop clucking your tongue loudly or blinking your eyes rapidly in school so kids don’t notice you have tics when you’re excited or overwhelmed?
My brothers could not stop these things from happening. A handicapped child can’t just hop out of their wheelchair and a deaf child cannot suddenly hear. Yet they are made fun of these things. So while my hair and height made me stick out and maybe your glasses, puffy coat or really loud laugh made you stick out too, my brother was getting hit and pushed around in the hallway because his brain worked a little differently than their brains. So while you can get a new coat and contacts and learn to stifle your laugh if you can’t roll with it, he couldn’t change his brain. So he punched the bully in the face. It literally took physical violence from a disabled child to get them to back off.
I’m not saying any bullied child should have to change a characteristic about themselves to try to suppress bullying. I’m just saying in some cases a child may grow out of that characteristic or really learn to embrace it. However I feel that is more difficult when you’re bullied for a disability and can really only think to equate to it to being bullied for other isms (racism, sexism, etc.).
As I said, while these stories are still sad, my brothers are not people to be pitied. In fact they’d never label themselves “disabled” and most people who know them wouldn’t think they fall into this category. In fact I was pretty surprised they didn’t mind me writing this piece about them, I was worried they’d feel I was “outing” them. But they are wildly successful for any kid let alone ones with IEPs and I think that’s why they can take pride in the bumpier journey they’ve had. They are two of the most strong-willed, determined, funny, caring individuals I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. I will never really find the words to explain the great men they are becoming. However they had such cheering section helping them on their way to success, getting them past these bullies. They have relatively mild disabilities for that matter. Think of the disabled children who do not.
All I’m trying to say is, bullying based on disability is culturally ableist. While some will just say it’s some sort of Darwinian “survival of the fittest” and “kids can smell weaknesses, so just be stronger” is that really conducive to the century we live in? A school that goes by this policy is institutionally ableist. Disability should not be viewed as a “weakness” but as a difference. While it’s true kids will pick on others for being different, it doesn’t make it acceptable.
The Ableism Project 