Yes, anger management is part of his plan at behavioral health- I feel very strongly that he shouldn’t engage in those behaviors, even if I can understand why and how he could, after what he’s been through.
I have been in touch with my state representative. I was hesitant to go to that extreme- it does seem extreme to me- but now I’ve done it and am waiting to hear back.
It seems that half the problem is that he hasn’t been fighting back. I too was bullied extensively. Because I was larger, I was seen as the aggressor. Unlike obbn, I did not fight back. I should have. Yes, the short-term consequences would have been bad, but the long-term consequences which are still with me today are far worse. And my parents left me there. They were in no wise as supportive of me as Alice is of her son.
While I get that it makes Alice’s kid’s case better if he is neither rude to nor fights his bullies, it’s pretty pathetic that we’re so bad at dealing with bullying that we require kids to exert more self control than adults in these situations. No adult who was assaulted would be expected to be polite to their attacker.
The only variable her son can control in any of these situations is himself. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with helping him learn that and use it to his advantage. Sure, nobody would tell an adult who being attacked to not fight back, but if you are constantly being attacked and having to fight back, ending in an unhappy situation for all parties involved, perhaps there’s some merit in adjusting your response to see if it creates a better outcome for yourself.
Don’t get me wrong: the bullies need to be handled here by the adults for sure and those adults are not doing enough, BUT it’s a good life lesson for her son to learn about controlling the only variable he can in life situations.
I don’t think teaching him those things is a reflection that we’re bad at dealing with bullying. Rather, I think it’s just a good life lesson.
If you know it’s not fair, then why do you believe it? No kid should have to put up with getting bullied in any way, let alone beaten up multiple times. The kid should beat the shit out of his tormentors, and you should applaud him for it - and if you don’t, then you’re the one whose sense of fairness is distorted.
If you can take him out of the school and home school for awhile, or move him to another school. Counseling is really helpful if you can swing it as well. The kid needs to know they are not inferior to other kids. If you let them stay in that environment without counseling that’s what he is going to internalize. He may have a hangup about it his whole life. It is not more important allowing the school system to run him through their assembly line to get their money than to provide him with positive reinforcement. Teachers and administrators will do nothing helpful. If they try they will just make him more of a target. Having self esteem is very important for children and they can learn plenty at home or in home school programs. In fact they usually learn more.
Would it be possible to enroll him in Judo school? Using the bullies’ momentum against them could be seen by authority figures as just plain boys-will-be-boys horsing around yet still get the point across without any of his fists flying.
Huh… I don’t know much about TUSD. But I do know that when I was in the Amphi school system (80s) it was the most economically diverse school district in the city and still had gangs (I remember knife fights at lunch and between periods between rival gangs) and bullies and while I wasn’t well liked except among a specific group in the drama department, I wasn’t overly picked on, either… but I sure saw kids who were, and the special ed kids got it the worst.
I ran lights and sound for a show they did in the little theater (not the auditorium, this was a small 250 seat theater that the drama club did shows out of) mostly for family and family friends… anyway the show they did was mostly singing and dancing and skits. I was reduced to tears during the skit where one kid would step to the middle of the circle and all the other kids would start chanting “retard, retard, you are a retard!” and the kid would come back with some socially acceptable comeback that they apparently taught the special ed kids to deal with this… but I realized watching the skit, and several of the others, that these were problems those kids dealt with daily. All the time. After the show (which included a couple of weeks of rehearsals in addition to the show itself, so I got to know several of them pretty well) I became friends with a few of them. I ate lunch with them sometimes and several of them signed my yearbook. They were the most resiliant kids! I say this to give you hope that your son will be able to overcome this with proper support.
Anyway, back in the 80s Amphi was full of both the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich. Now they’ve built Catalina Foothills High School and suctioned off the affluent kids and Amphi is considered (officially–they get extra funding and stuff) to be a low-income school district these days. Or maybe it’s just the high school–I’m not sure. But anyway, I’d be very cautious about putting him back in Amphi if you can avoid it. From what I hear it’s overrun with drugs, gangs, and stuff like that. They have a fence around the campus now with guard posts. They never had that when I went there.
I don’t know what part of town you live in but at 13 is your son in middle school or high school? I don’t have much experience with middle schools (or are they still “Jr. High” in Tucson?) but from what I remember of high schools: Tucson High (at least back then) had a good reputation despite its location. As did University High (except I don’t know its location and I think you may have to test in). I would hope that Catalina Foothills would be better, too. And there are (or at least were) several magnet schools in town that attracted kids with special interests–who tend to be the weird kids in a normal school–maybe a school like that would be more accepting? Avoid Catalina High (on Pima) unless it’s changed drastically. They had regular bomb threats there that evacuated the school and I remember one time (I rode the public bus and we stopped in front of their school) they left a girl on the ground, handcuffed to the bus stop, all of her things scattered on the ground… and the bus driver just pulled away and didn’t say a word. That was a true nightmare school.
My son (16 now and it’s become less of a problem in recent years) was picked on quite a bit in school, too. The school rarely did anything about it and if they did punish the kid, they’d punish my son just as much. If one got suspended, so did the other, etc. It was highly unfair. They also refused to give him an IEP even though we had hired a woman to work with us and the school (I forget her title, she was referred by his psychiatrist–who actually came to a school meeting personally to say that he needed an IEP!!!) Given their seeming indifference I wouldn’t have expected them to follow/enforce the IEP even if he had gotten one.
Based on my experiences with schools in many states and watching my son be bullied and goaded into bad behavior (for which HE would then get in trouble)… I even had teachers admit to me that he was picked on in class and when asked what they did to put a stop to it they got silent on the issue… I am of the opinion that you need to bring in outside guns. Not literal guns, obviously, but lawyers or some sort of intervening special interests group, political or otherwise. I don’t know if the ACLU would be an appropriate place to try… Maybe even the police. threaten to bring charges against the school for failing to stop assault against your son, with a police officer there to back you up0. But I think you need to bring in someone/group with authority from outside the school system, and you need to bring them in at a high level of the school hierarchy. That is, don’t bring them in to talk to the teachers, or even the principal. Go to the superintendent. Go large and loud, with backup. If you’re afraid of TV how about a local paper? The AZ Daily Star or (is the Citizen still around) may not go for it but the Tucson Weekly likely would? Or start a blog, and maybe see if there are other parents of bullied kids who would contribute? Make the public aware and encourage them to call and write. Public opinion counts for a lot.
I’m kind of rambling, I’m sorry, but I’ve fought this battle before and I know how hard it is and how powerless you feel. I’m just trying to think of anything that might help. In my son’s case maturity has helped the most, and you can’t grow that overnight. He still reaches a boiling point, though, where he snaps and has gotten violent… and the bully kids know that, and try to push him to it when they can. We’ve told him to immediately go find a teacher when they start it so that there is a witness and chances are the bullies would stop in the presence of a teacher.
To end this long and rambling post, I’ll sum up with my main point: get an outside group involved. If that’s a lawyer or a special interest group, or the ACLU, or a newspaper. What about getting your son a cheap digital camera, especially one that takes short video clips? When the bullying starts he can start documenting it in real time and that alone might make them back off?
What isn’t going to work in my experience is sit-down talks with his teachers. Even if the principal (or more likely the vice-principal/assistant principal) it’s likely to be long on promises and short on action.
As a last resort, have you considered–or would it even be possible with your situation–to homeschool for a year or two? Maybe find a homeschooling group? It would let your son mature and grow and get a break from the bullying for a while and give him a positive learning environment. It might give him the time to build the confidence he needs to go back to public school.
Ok, I’m done. I feel for you and hope things get better. Just remember, even bullied kids can grow up to be well adjusted adults. It isn’t a doomsday sentence, or doesn’t have to be.
You may have mentioned this already but I don’t remember: is your son in therapy? Not for his special needs in school but psychological therapy? That helped me greatly when I was growing up. I could get you some specific recommendations if you were interested–my mom is a custody attorney in Tucson and knows all the child psychologists and who has the best reputations and so on.
We’re talking about a kid in special ed, dealing with kids with behavioral disorders. I don’t think that would work in this case.
Thanks, Opal- I appreciate your post and your advice. Yes, he is beginning therapy. It does need to be at a behavioral health facility, as he can get meds, counseling, and anger management classes all there. And yes, he’s in middle school, aka junior high. I’m not able to homeschool him- I readily acknowledge that I couldn’t do that. He does need to be in public school, because he gets some services through the system that would be otherwise unavailable or very inconvenient.
I just spoke with the assistant principal again. We spoke for a long time, and she convinced me to have him come back to the school. They are claiming that there is not one single opening in any special ed classes throughout the district. I find that hard to believe, yet I can’t think of any reason they would lie about it. She claims that there are new procedures in place, that now they will show that they care about him and the situation, yadda yadda. I’ve agreed to try again until the Christmas break, and then reassess. When I told him, he flipped out and became abusive to me. It’s very disheartening to make all of the phone calls, the emails, the letters, everything I’ve done to try to help him, and then be the object of his rage that I couldn’t do enough for him. At this point, I’m thinking it will all be a moot point soon, because he’s going to go over the edge either at home or at school and get himself put in the justice system. 
I don’t see why it isn’t. An adult who was beaten up, say, at work would have immediate legal recourse, would not be expected to remain in a work situation with his attackers (because assaulting someone at work gets one fired immediately), and would not “lose all credibility” by being rude to the attackers after the assault. Yes, the kid can only control himself, but he’s in a weird situation here, because most people can use that to leave the situation. He can’t, which is why allowing bullying to go on this long is an abject failure of the school system; they’re obligated to protect those who can’t leave their custody to escape abuse. Not responding to an attack is only a great life skill for people who are stuck in situations they can’t leave and who are continually vulnerable to attack. However, because that isn’t a situation anyone should encounter in civilized society, I don’t think it’s necessarily a great life skill for someone going out in the world, because it teaches them that it’s okay for them to just have to take it. That the situation has gotten to this point is insane.
I understand why he flipped out when told there was no space for him in a different setting, even if his anger was misplaced. Telling an adult they were stuck going back to a workplace where they were attacked, and where the abuse is likely to continue, wouldn’t probably result in a calm, measured reaction either. And this is a special needs kid! You and he have my sympathy.
My son goes to Dodge Middle School, which fits your description of “a well-respected and high-scoring TUSD school way, way out on the eastside- supposedly a “good” school” - if this is where your son attends, I might have an idea. My son is in 8th grade and is 6’2", but is actually a gentle guy, and might be able to help yours out.
Let me know.
Don’t send him back there! !!!
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That’s very sweet! I bet your son is a gentle giant, and I’d love to take you up on your offer. But no, the school is similar in name to an E! personality- it’s not Dodge.
I haven’t heard from him yet today, but he should be home any minute now, and I’m very anxious to find out how it was today. I really wish I didn’t have to send him back, but having him at home with nothing happening was really stressing me out, too!
Snip.
Alice, Please don’t take this the wrong way, you are a long time poster and I’ve enjoyed your contributions over the years.
You deserve every little bit of that anger and more.
Just above you mentioned that you were done and through with that school. You made a decision to remove him from the situation, and no doubt he was extremely grateful for that. You listened to his needs, you *protected *him, and whether or not you actually discussed it concretely you made it clear to him that the torment was over. You chose to run. You chose to tell him, "it’s cool, I’ve got this. "
Now you are telling him that he has to go back. You are telling him that he is going right back into the shitpile and you’ve done nothing, NOTHING, to help HIM alleviate matters himself. You broke your word to him and you are his mother. Do you really think that he should trust the other miserable, uncaring adults who previously did nothing at all when the one person who promised to fix the problem has reneged?
I don’t know your child. I don’t know what he can handle and what he cannot, but he needs better tools to deal with this situation on his own. I suggest you provide them, or keep your word, learn to deal, and home-school him until an acceptable alternative is found.
If all this sounds harsh, it is meant to. I was tormented mercilessly around the same age as your son and it left deep and serious scars on the person I became. I do not wish this on any child; I understand how serious it truly is. You need to be a parent. you need to cut the waffling bullshit and either be prepared to go to war for him or put a sword in his hand and teach him to do it himself. I wish both of you the best of luck, and If I can be of any assistance whatsoever in my limited capacity feel free to PM me.
You might look into the Human Rights Commission (under whatever name is appropriate for your state). The bar for an HRC prosecution is very high, but the investigation by itself sure got our son’s school’s attention. You do need a legal hook to get them involved, such as perceived sexual orientation, or, perhaps (in your son’s case) having a physical disability.
I know- I feel very bad for making him go back. But I don’t know what else to do. No one is giving me any other options. I’m not able to homeschool him- I work full-time, and I wouldn’t have the first clue on how to teach anybody anything, much less someone with special needs and learning disabilities. I’d really be doing him a disservice doing that, I believe. My email to the state rep went ignored, my phone call to an attorney went ignored, and every day that he stayed home was a day that he wasn’t in school. I don’t want to come across as someone that’s unreasonable and unwilling to work with the school and put his education first. I feel really, really bad about it, but I don’t know what else to do at this point. 
Next time it happens, alert the police. Every single time.
PM me for my email and we can chat there.
I think this will be my next step if it starts back up. Today seems to have gone well- he had several meetings at school today, where he was (once again) given some tools to help him cope if he continues to have problems. He says that nobody bullied him. I’ve told him that we’re going to take it one day at a time, and if it does start again, I will try yet other things. The above idea is something that I will consider and probably will try, if I need to, seeing as how nothing else I’ve tried seems to work. I told him that he should have made a video about bullying before that gay kid did recently, and then Lady Gaga would be his friend, and we could go on the Today Show. Missed it by that much!
I hesitate to post this because it’s so awful. But I feel I must, because it IS so awful. A local boy just killed himself because he was being bullied and could get no recourse from the adults at his school–the counselors, the administrators, the teachers–all failed to protect him. Granted, he was being bullied for another reason–his sexual orientation–but bullying is bullying. He felt, for whatever reason, that his situation was just too intolerable to continue living. Kids don’t think very far into the future. He could not see that if he had just held out for another semester, he’d be out of that hell hole.
Please listen to Acid Lamp’s advice. I think it is spot on.