How My Bullied Child Became A Bully

William is our fourth biological child. He is the one on the right with his eyes closed. He makes you smile, hunh? He does me too...... and yet sometimes he makes me cry. Not outwardly or anything like that, but inside I sometimes find myself crying because of the continual struggles that are evident in his life.

He was recently re-evaluated for his IEP and I was so ready to put up a fight to keep my son's current services. At our last school, it was like pulling teeth to get them to recognize that William was struggling and needed services to help him. This time was totally different.

Bless my kids' speech teacher who evaluated him-- she is such a sweet and wonderful woman. When we sat down to discuss her findings-- she was half expecting me to be defensive because her suggestion was to actually increase services.

Well, we were both wrong about each other which is awesome--- but more importantly, her testing revealed that William has actually regressed.

See, John and I originally suspected that William was on the Autism spectrum and actually had an Autism specialist agree with us--- but no one else really saw it. It was frustrating to say the least. It always felt as if we were being humored by the services that they gave him. Slowly the other school district did away with most of his services--- and since I saw him progressing from those services I thought that they were no longer needed.

Well, I should have known better. I should have trusted my gut.

The speech teacher's testing revealed that his articulation had regressed to a moderate delay. That was a blow for me..... I felt bad that I had not noticed this. I guess that I am just so used to his speech patterns that a gradual regression was not very noticeable to me. She also noted that he has a receptive language delay whereas most children have a higher receptive language score compared to their expressive language which indicates that he is also functioning against an auditory processing delay as well.

In her class, she has noticed many situations where William has acted out inappropriately out of frustration because he just doesn't get it. She has seen his impulsive behaviors and lack of social skills---- things that make social interactions difficult for William.

She mentioned Asperger's.... I mentioned hyperlexia, sensory issues, and OCD like behaviors...... we both agreed that he should also be tested by the occupational therapist again and psychologist for other areas of concern.

After our meeting, I found out that William had gotten into trouble. This is the perfect time to talk about bullying.

Fellow blogger TylerandBrianne said...
I need some advice and help. What do you tell you children when they are being bullied by another child? Tyler is such a target for bullies due to his kind personality. We have a bully at the baseball field. I told Tyler to tell him to stop and walk away and that is not helping. He has even started pushing (even tried to hit her with a baseball) Brianne. I was so angry I told her to smack him. Luckily she is only 2 and does not understand me. LOL And yes I know I said I would never post again due to the commenter, but I needed some help.


Bullying is something that I am hypersensitive to. I used to think that it only happened in school... but believe me if school bullies are not held accountable for their actions now, they have a great chance of growing up into adult bullies. Bullying should not be tolerated---- and parents need to do their part to shed light on this issue.

Let me go back one day. When I dropped my kids off at church, for whatever reason I decided to hang around and check in on how my kids were doing. It was still free time and so I thought I could meet some of my kids' friends. As I walked into the gym, a boy being chased by my William darted past me. Cool. William is playing chase with a buddy. Or so I thought.

William caught the boy's shirt and grabbed the hat-- his hat out of the boy's hand. William turned around nearly crying when I caught up with him and asked him what was going on.
William said that the boy took his hat and further questioning revealed that this boy took William's hat all the time. William was frustrated and angry and in all honesty, at that moment, I wanted to wallop that boy...... or at least lay into his parents. I also found out that last week, this same boy pushed William off a stack of chairs that he was climbing on--- and William got hurt. How could parents not know that their child is bullying another child?

It was hard to see my son in pain---- it made me remember the pain and humiliation I went through growing up. I was bullied, made fun of, and called names all through school and that is when I vowed that I would do all that I can to make sure that my kids did not bully or be bullied in school.

So back to the trouble that I found out that William had gotten into. The vice-principal called me to say that William had rubbed a boys head till the boy got fed up and chased him. Apparently, one of William's so called friends encourages William to do this to this boy all the time and William does this to look cool in front of that same friend. Only thing is.... I consider this bullying. As this boy was chasing William, the instigating friend shouted out that instead of hurting William, the boy should fight William's younger brother. William immediately jumped on that bandwagon as he and his instigating friend now egged on this tormented boy to beat up my younger son, William's brother Andrew. Andrew was minding his own business and you could tell that this boy really didn't want to fight, but the peer pressure from William and his friend was too much. Andrew and the little boy that had had his head rubbed one too many times started fighting. In the end, the little boy was further humiliated when Andrew threw him down in self defense.

All in all, it was a lose-lose-lose situation--- and John and I were very disappointed to say the least.

As I talked to William I got him to acknowledge that the boy's face who's head he had rubbed was all red from having the same feeling William himself had felt just the day before when the church boy took his hat. I got William to admit that his instigating friend had also shoved this other poor boy into the bathroom stall on a number of occasions to which William just watched and laughed. I was horrified and thankful all at the same time by William's honesty. I was heartbroken for the boy that William had essentially bullied and for the lack of social understanding at everything that had happened.

I was mortified that William had allowed and encouraged someone to beat up his own brother instead of protecting him like I have always taught at home. Sadly, this reinforced my gut instincts that William is struggling even more than I thought.

As William's parent I am responsible for two things regarding bullying. I need to keep my child safe at all costs which means either telling the school, talking to the bully's parents, or removing my child from the situation. In addition to that, I have openly talked to my kids about not tolerating bullying by allowing it to happen because they are fearful of being made even more fun of for telling. My daughter was sexually bullied at school by a boy and she told me and he was suspended for a full week. Similar consequences should go for all bullying including what William did. I asked the school if they were going to punish William and they said they took away a recess and banned him from the playground for a few days. I also took away his gameboy for two weeks, grounded him from the computer, and had him write sentences. We also talked about William apologizing to the boy he had wronged. The other thing I am responsible for is making sure that my child is not a bully to other children. That means that I need to continually talk to them, ask how their day went, ask about their peer relationships, and teach them that being bullied does not feel very good.

The biggest thing I need to accept and swallow my pride about is that I am not a perfect parent and even though I think I am doing everything right and there is no way my child would ever bully---- I should never say never.