Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Bullying



I’ve been a bit of a slacker lately and not been blogging as much as I should (yeah I know that is an understatement).

Unfortunately that is life and then add life of being a parent of a child with Autism, sometimes life is just overwhelming and if your children are feed, taken care of and the house is somewhat clean then the day was successful and you have to let the other stuff go, including blogging.

Today a pair of local radio personalities inspired me to come back and blog. Their post is actually not the first time I saw it, but it was the first time I saw it from any local celebrity or radio personality, which made it stand out to me (and yes I have more than one person on my friends list that is on the radio), this was the first time I saw a radio personality take on bulling).

The post that stood out was, “Special request to all you kids returning to school in the next few days: If you see someone who is struggling to make friends, or being bullied because he/she doesn't have many friends, or because they are shy or not as pretty, or not dressed in the most "in" clothes--PLEASE step up. Say hi or at least smile at them in the hallway. You never know what that person might be facing outside of school. Your kindness might just make a BIG difference in someone's life!”
As a parent of a child who suffers from Autism, I have worked very hard in hopes that my child will not be bullied in the future, or if he is I hope that he has a bunch of mainstream kids who are there to protect him. Hopefully this will pay off, but you never know.

Of course my child is only in 3rd grade and what most would consider more impacted (we in the world of Autism prefer not to use words like high functioning or low functioning, because those are never accurate on any level. In my world high functioning is potty trained, but for some parents high functioning is verbal. After 7.5 years in this world both descriptions are not really accurate as our children may not be functioning at a real world stand point, which to me as a parent of 1 child with Autism and 3 without would be that as an adult you can maintain a job and live independently.)

It breaks my heart daily to hear my friends, who are parents of less impacted children, talk about their daily struggles at school with bulling. It happens daily. We need to change the world to fix bulling, but a lot of that comes from parents in general. We need the world of parents to stop saying my child would not do that and be parents. Tell your child what is acceptable and that bulling is never ok. We also need parents of child with Autism, no matter how they are supposedly functioning to be honest with their communities. Tell the other children what is going on with your child and why they act different. In my experience when you do this, most children and their parents step up and will do what is best for your child who is different, think peer pressure, use peer pressure for good. When parents and children think a child is different and do not know how to explain why a child acts, different or weird, that is when the child gets alienated. We can change that.

The theory of it takes a village to raise a child is so true, and as our numbers of children with Autism rise it will take a village of other children who know and understand our children with Autism to grow up and understand our kids. I hope that as my 3 children without Autism and all the friends my child with Autism meets encourages other children to be accepting of all kids, and discourage bulling and encourages tolerance.

All it takes is one person or one radio personality or station to help with the cause. Thank you KSON and John and Tammy for stepping up. Here’s to me hoping you continue this outreach and helping our kids who are bullied and especially those with Autism.

Until next time PITAup and do something to change the life of a child with Autism, the life you change maybe your own!!!