Aspies For Freedom

Sometimes I wish the BELT were brought back. In old cathedral schools, they would belt or cane boys who acted like complete idiots. I wonder if you can do that with chains. I recently dropped one of my chains on my foot and it really hurt.

This sort of thing isn't condoned, generally these days, but by the middle of highschool I had some fairly effective techniques for dealing with bullies.

One was the fact that I went to a small, newly opened school and I was always in the highest grade.

Another was I carried a pocket knife and everyone knew it - it was the mid to late 80's it wasn't a big deal back then.

I also wore steel capped shoes/boots because I'd learnt in primary school (elementray for those in the US) that I was a prime target for having the toes of my shoes crushed. -- not that it was an appearance issue.. well it may have been we had a uniform and my mom always made sure mine was neat.

A year or so after gratuating I was invited by a feriend from the grade below me, to his 18th (legal drinking age here).
We were crossing a major road on our way home (he didn't live far from where we'd gone out so we were being responsible) and I heard some yobbos (hoons, hooligans, trailer trash) call out '***s'
Now at this stage even I wasn't sure if I was or not. I responded by clearly flipping the bird and calmly preceading across the busy road when it was safe to cross a the crossing.
Next thing I knew I was grabbed and thumped from behind. Not to worry I'd learnt a thing or two from my younger brother who had a passing interest in Self Defense. I turned to face my assulter, raised my arms infront of my face and stepped in - That's right I stepped closer.
The guy may well have been drunker then I was because his punches didn't land, they were mostly undisciplined wide swings which just glanced off my raised arms.
He did manage to shove me to the ground, I don't remember exactly how, but I do recall his buddies were yelling at him to come get back in the car because the light was green and the trafic had started to move again. Unfortuneately for him, my being on the ground didn't pan out quite the way he was expecting... Mostly because he ended up on the recieving end of an upwards thrust to full extension of my right leg, which at the time ended in a heavy size nine, 10 hole, steel capped Dr Martin boot.
I got up, dusted myself off and my friend and I kept walking.

yeah, Ignoring bullies dosent work, no matter what you try to do, their always a step ahead of you, what you can do is try going to a teacher but that prolly wont work, the teacher and the bully will prolly have a good laugh, cause whos the teacher going to beleive, the bully who has perfect social skills and the ability to lie and cheat, or the aspie whos generally awkward and has no skills with that type of situation.  

so if that dosent work, theres only one way to stop it, and thats to beat the bully, fight for who you are.  you have a damn right to not have to take that bullshit.

I have always been much shorter and smaller than people my own age at any age and still am. Additionally genetics seems to have made me look very vulnerable. Most of my life I have had two responses, sometimes indepentant of eachother but often in tandem in the following order:
Go cometely rigid and still, statuelike, don't move out of a mixture of frozen terror and some although consistnatly proven wrong, incredibly strong belief that if I just stay real still don't move, they will go away.
The alternative/following response was meltdown, biting footstomping headbutting punching clawing freakout style on the person causing me that much distress.

I have been the target of neighborhood kids and sometimes kids in the speical schools I attended and then again at the institutions and homes I have lived in. I can see when someone is looking for a target and aside from the occasion when there has been someone with a thing like Down's that manages to make them even shorter than me or people in wheelchairs there tends to be.. me.

I don't recall 'that's not ladylike' or anyting of that sort being impressed on me, I really doubt it would have any effect if that had been attempted.
I just don't think I respond to that sort of thing. I might be very short and female and built very 'petite' in my shape (even as I am chubby now) but I've never felt particular feminine or whatever, I'm still getting used to my own body and I suppose I'll always be getting used to my own body as long as I'm in it.

since I've been living independantly I've had the chance to learn a Japanese martial art called Okinawin Uechi Ryu which I went 4 times a week for e hours each of those days to learn for 3 years. The dojo (karate school) and the sensis (Karate teachers) were very patient wtih me and due to my combined disabilities and poor gross motor skills I made for probably the very worst karate studen there ever was but it meant alot to me and while people passed me by and learned and earned their belts much faster than me, I did learn alot in those three years and I know my belt's rank's worth of karate very well anyway. We learned full contact, bare handed 'the real stuff' so that our bodies and minds knew exactly what to do in the real world outside of that dojo if it were needed.

I've had occasion to be assaulted or have rather attempted assaults on just a few occasions since then and was able to successfully render my attackers in each case pretty well incapacitated just like I've been trained (I know quite a few ways to make getting somebody's next breath their major concern so they're pretty much laying focused on getting that next breath and getting after me or much of anything else isn't going to be on their minds) not getting up any time soon which gimves me plenty of time to then run like hell (that run like hell part is important btw).

Just the other night someone online who expresses frequent stories of how he likes to rage and beat up women (and all of his stories are ONLY of beating up women I've noticed) started to bully me, starting with attacking me because of my age (he hates people in their 40's evidently) then moved onto my gender (a few 'colorful phrases to try to attack my womanhood thrown in) and then we moved on to his calling me a '***' etc and telling me how he'd beat me up if he met me, etc.

Here's the thing I think about and about bullies and the whole situation and the actual advantage here:

If somebody bullies me and they 'win' seeing as I am a 5'0" multiply handicapped woman, that's not much of a 'victory' for them, but if I come out of that sort of thing unscaithed and they're the ones laying on the ground struggling for their air, how proud are they going to feel then that they've just had their butt whupped by a 5'0" multliply disabled woman?
That makes them the object of redicule then for having been 'beaten' by somebody like me.  I made a point of pointing it out to this particular bully that I don't think he'd be 'walking too tall' after getting his butt kicked by 'the little *** woman.'  (Especialy since this particular person appears to be a woman-beater I almost actualy wish this guy would get on a plane and come here just for this).

I enjoyed making that statement to him for knowing the truth in it as I said it. I've also taking to critiquing a bully's method or whatever, having been the target of enough of them and in enough places I suppose I have enough experience to be able to tell them when "you're not very effective here, you can't even adequately insult or scare someone like me?" and in that way also kind of laugh them off.

The same holds true for social settings that are of the social bullying type.
Out arguing and socialy beating me up is pretty much like beating Stevie Wonder at Nascar. What did you 'win'?
Hoever If I manage to 'win' one of those social bullyings (say what I need to, stand my ground, repeat whatever back to them, whatever, stay calm, even laugh about the situation) what have they got then? They were out argued, out socialized even then,  by a person with autism. Nothing to be too proud of then for them either.

Its times like these I'm describing where I admit I feel something that goes like "Go, me! yeah!"

The only thing I havent' learned to cope with very well on this topic is when encountering a social gang of bullies. being ganged on is pretty hard. I'm still working on an answer for that one.

Droopy

ignoring doesn't work. the bullying in high school made me drop out and i eventually graduated at another high school, which wasn't much better. anyway, i got picked on so much and i never did anything about it. that led to more and more people picking on me, physically and verbally.

nobody stood up for me. not even my "friends." i was a little weakling, the target of everyone bc i wasn't a rich prep. and i did have different mannerisms than everyone else. i remember one time someone asked me why i walked around with my hands in fists. i don't know why i did it.

i took tae kwon do and got to be a blue belt, but i quit. i wasn't very good and they made me do 300 pushups in one night.

kids are so mean! i'm 27 and i still get laughed at and whatnot. i can't wait til i'm out of here.

Hiya, I know its been a few days since any other posting, but I am new to the site and the question and responses on the topic of bullying is I guess what I have been looking for...

I best tell you a bit of whats going on..

My son is 8 and he has AS. I took him out of his old school because the next school he was due to go to was, lets just say, pathetic.  I had fought with them when my eldest daughter was there over her dyslexia.  

So I found a great school, a smaller village type as he hates crowds and big classroom noise.  The teachers are great, they meet his needs and allow him to do his literacy work when he is ready.. he says he doesn't need to write as he can speak. Maths, he would sit there all day and complete.  Anyway the problem are the kids, I have always known kids are cruel, I have seen it all in the past with my eldest daughter when she was a victim of bullying.  These kids however are really horrible, they exlclude my son at playtimes, won't let him join in with games, he finds himself sitting alone at lunchtimes, namecalling etc etc the list goes on.

The problem is that I know that if one of those children forced Josef to lose his temper he wouldn't stop.  One good thing is it would teach them a lesson, the bad thing is that he would be the one at fault and be to blame. He was scapegoated alot in his last school.

Thats how I came to find this site, he finally told me what was going on in his new school, and for me it was really upsetting because I know exactly the struggles that Josef has with the social side of things.  You see, Josef wants to make friends, he doesn't understand what it is that they don't like about him, and he said that one boy is starting to call me (mum) names and I just know that is what is going to push him over the edge as he is very protective of me.  I can't even speak to the school yet because they are on a half term break.

I don't really know what I am asking here, as I have so many concerns because by the looks of it, it doesn't get any better.  I guess I just want to say thank you because everything you have all typed has been a help to me.

thanks again  :grin:
Jane

Hi rossco

I think I am very protective over Josef too.  He has so much about him, that even I find it hard to understand why the kids at his school prefer to exclude him, but then again I am starting to realise I am more like Josef than I realised, or should that be he is more like me??

I will be speaking to the head and the teachers about this, hopefully then they can sort out the ring leaders of the boys giving Josef hassle, but also include something where they can get him more involved in group activities.  Josef really used to shy away from groups, but in his desire to make 'friends' he overcame this, thing is, I really know he is wondering why he bothered.  When he first went to football, I asked if he had a good time, he was excited about the chance of being picked for a team and playing matches, so I asked if he scored any goals, he said no because noone passed him the ball, but he would next time they played at practice. With Josef being unable to read situations the fact that they excluded him went by him un-noticed and for the most part still does.  If I was the teacher taking practice then I would have set up a scheme where each child gets a chance at kicking the ball to include them.

On the exclusion thing, Josef had his first birthday party this year, he hasn't been ready for the crowd and lack of space thing until then.  A small group of kids from his old school were invited, and all his new class from his new school, some turned up, but i think it was more a case of a free feed than actually wanting to get to know Josef.
I know what you mean about your son not being invited back to parties, Josef was never invited to any whilst at his old school.  

Anyway, thank you for posting a response, it is all valuable help to me, I can see any problems that might affect Josef, find ways in which I can help and gather lots of different insights into problems that can affect people on the spectrum.

Jane

You know what's funny? I have a hard time not picking on bullies! Whenever they pick on me I easily find a weakness and expand on it. I make them fell horrible about themselves sometimes. As a result people tend not to pick on me face to face.

They are just so easy.