Bullying and Special Education

Unfortunately statistics show that children who have been diagnosed with special needs are far more likely to experience frequent bullying than children who were born without special needs. For this reason parents, carers and educators of special needs children, need to be vigilant in order to protect special needs children from bullying and harassment.

Bullying and special education:

Educators need to pay special attention to the welfare of special needs students:

Teachers who have special needs children in their classrooms need to maintain a vigilant watch over the special needs children in their classroom to ensure they are not being harassed for being different, by other pupils. Teachers also need to be mindful of the personalities of the other children in their classrooms, to ensure that special needs children are seated next to courteous, respectful children. As it can be hell for students with special needs to be seated next to students who are trouble makers and will enjoy bullying them.

Teachers should not tolerate bullying in their classrooms:

Teachers should not tolerate bullying of special needs children in their classrooms and should immediately remove any children who harass a special needs child from their classroom. Furthermore, schools should impose suspensions for children who continue to bully their special needs class mates.

Parents of special needs children should weigh up the pros and cons of sending their children to special needs schools:

One way to drastically decrease a child’s likelihood of being badly bullied at school is to send them to a school for special needs children. Where the teachers are properly trained to look after the welfare of special needs students and class sizes are smaller and each student has adequate one on one time with their teacher. Another reason why special needs children are less likely to be bullied at schools for special needs students is that their condition will be the norm and no one will consider bullying them for being born with special needs.

Parents can consider hiring a teacher’s assistant for their child:

Parents who prefer for their child to attend a normal school, in order to gain independence and to learn how to cope in the real world, have the option of hiring a dedicated teacher’s assistant. Who’ll follow their child from one class to the next and will sit with them to help them with their school work. One of the bonuses of hiring a teacher’s assistant for a special needs child is that their presence will stop children from bullying the child which they’ve been assigned to take care of.

Special needs children need to be taught what to do if they are bullied:

Special needs children should be taught about signs of bullying and what to do if they are bullied. So that they know that bullying behavior is unacceptable and they should seek help from an adult as soon as possible.

All of the suggestions which are listed above have been proven to decrease the prevalence of bullying against special needs children both in traditional classrooms and in special needs classrooms.