I recently wrote a post on Medium about a very unfortunate incident that took place at my 15-year-old son’s school.
Basically, my son was repeatedly bullied by a couple of students, who kept calling him names and teasing him by touching him on the shoulder over and over to get him to react.
Eventually, my son had enough and screamed at them, threatening to defend himself. Yes, I know screaming at your classmates is not the ideal response, but under the circumstances, it was a very rational one. The school then decided to suspend my son and let the other two students off the hook.
I was pissed, my son was sad, and the bullies were elated.
Taking into consideration this is not the first time my son has been bullied, and after realizing the authorities had no intention to help, I decided to remove my son from that school.
From now on, he will be home-schooled.
Oh, and if you are wondering what is it about my son that makes him so prone to being bullied, the answer is very simple: he is autistic, and, for many people, that means he has no right to be in a mainstream school.
Talk about a comment.
I received several comments on that post, most of them sharing my anger at the situation. However, one particular response gave me pause.
Now, let me say that, after considering this person’s reply in its entirety, I don’t think they were trying to annoy me. Instead, they wanted to understand what I think about the way my son should behave at school.
The comment was: “This suggests that you want your son to be treated the same, but he can act as autistic as he wants.”
Yes, that made me put on my thinking hat. Was I doing that? Was I expecting my son to get preferential treatment?
I had not requested immunity from consequences; I merely questioned the lack of intervention against the bullies. My realization, however, went deeper: My son will act as autistic as he “wants” precisely because he is autistic. He cannot opt out of it; this is why it is a developmental disability.
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