As a parent of a child with special needs, my bullying radar as a parent is often at full alert. Fears about Michael being picked on is one reason we moved him from a public to a private school. Despite those fears, his classmates never picked on him for being different. I felt relieved.
Then, it happened. I'm going to preface the story I'm about to tell you with, "I know it's hard to believe, but it's true." In mid-April, Michael called me from school (a usual occurrence) saying that his ear hurt really bad. That's highly unusual so I went in. He told me and the office staff it felt like something was in his ear. I looked in and didn't see anything. I suspected an ear ache based on the area he pointed to. I took him home and started calling around to get him seen by a doctor while he lay quietly on the couch. I finally got an appointment. About five minutes before we were to leave, Michael comes into my office and says, "My ear doesn't hurt anymore." I turned around puzzled and he held out his hand, which held a small piece of an eraser. "When I was laying down, this fell out."
An eraser in your ear? Now Michael loves to chew on things and will put just about anything in his mouth, but he's never placed anything in his ear. "How did that get in there?" I asked.
"Well, kids were throwing eraser bits at me in art class and I guess one got in," he said. Wait a minute. Kids throw stuff at you in art class? He nodded and then said it had been going on for awhile. Sometimes it was small paper balls while other times it was tiny eraser bits. He didn't want to say anything about it.
Now the cat was out of the bag. I took him back to school and we saw the school official in charge of students and told him the story. He looked at Michael and basically said he could not believe it. How could someone throw a tiny piece of eraser and have it land in your ear? I told him that Michael does not put stuff in his ear and the aide that usually works with him agreed. And besides that, what about throwing erasers and paper in general? Can we look at that? He nodded and said he would talk to the art teacher.
A couple days later, I checked in and he said he talked to the art teacher about it. I then asked Michael if things had changed. Nope. So I went back to the school official and said things were still not going well. He said he would talk to the kids Michael had named. Since Michael has problems remembering names, he wasn't sure of all the kids' names.
The next day in social studies, one of the eraser throwers called Michael stupid and a dummy who needed to go to resource every day. Michael was so upset when he got into the car that he started hitting himself and was completely out of control.
That night, I sent an email to the principal, vice principal, school counselor and his homeroom teacher. The next morning, the counselor called and said she would "handle" the situation. Since then, I've dealt with her on a number of issues related to Michael's situation. I can't say if the situation has completely improved, but the counselor did have Michael moved away from the kids who were throwing stuff at him.
What got me and keeps me up at night is....would Michael have said anything if the eraser piece hadn't got stuck in his ear? With all the talk in schools about bullying, why are students slow to report it? Why are school officials slow to react? Everyday after school, I now give Michael the third degree and ask him if people threw anything at him, said anything mean to him or stole his basketball at recess (another fact that came out in the discussion of the eraser incident) I think he grows tired of it, but I don't care. I will stay vigilant.
Special needs students like Michael are more likely than their fellow students to fall victim to bullying. Schools need to pay closer attention to when special needs students speak up and understand they might not have or be able to provide all the information that a "normal" student may.
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