Bullying.
It's a topic that everyone hears about in the media today.
But what about someone bullying someone who is autistic?
I despise bullies with a burning passion. I have been bullied from 4th grade to junior year of highschool. I thought that maybe senior year that the people who sat behind me were whispering about me. Maybe, I started getting paranoid.
Bullying hurts so much. I have had to take so much verbal abuse from people my age it makes me nauseous. I don't know why I was such an ideal target for bullies. Vulnerability? Naivety? Did me being bullied have to do with my autism? I don't know. They never knew I was autistic yet I was the ideal choice. Maybe haveing autistic characteristics made me more prone to torement because I was different.
94.9% of the time it was girls who bullied me. Words cut deeper that the sharpest knife. It doesn't even have to be words. I 've been teased and made fun of with gestures.
BULLYING OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL
I went to a camp called Camp Hill Top (it was a jewish camp, co-ed) for 2 weeks. It started out fine. The girls were in girl cabins the boys in boy cabins. It was the girls the made my life a living hell. They put gum under my pillow so I woke up with ants crawling on my pillow, they locked me out of the cabin, and shunned me. Why? I have no fricken clue. The one thing I remember the most though is that I wanted to be left by myself, which I find is normal in autistic kids. We want some alone time, that's not so bad just make sure to be social too. I hid in the pool bathroom sitting on the toilet seat moping when I'm dragged out of the bathroom by two of the girls from my cabin both cluthcing my arms and taken back like a prisoner. I now call that place camp hell top. I have never been back since.
That was outside of school. Not much a parent can do about that when the kids are away and can't phone you. And let's be honest a kid doesn't want to tell their parents that they're having an awful time.
I went to another summer camp for 8 summers I will not name this camp because I love it with all of my heart and soul, it is apart of me. This was an all girls camp. Yeah.... It's unavoidable at an all girls camp so much hormones. This one girl HATED me and I mean really HATED me for some reason I can not fathom. I asked her once and her response was, " I don't know your from California.. bla bla..." Whoa back up a sec! That was her excuse! This all happened when I was in 5th or 4th grade keep in mind. She had issues. This all took place at a summer camp in Wisconson. So this was far from home. I was like some exotic bird they've only heard of there it was cool but also strange. Everyone assumes that just because your from Cali that you know someone famous. ANYWAYS!!! Sometimes I was bullied by this same girl and her cohort over the littlest (or not so little) things that meant a lot to me. One year i cried my eyes out and they were smirking. They threatend to flush my pillow and stuffed seal down the toilet ( and they kept calling him catsup which made me upset). I think It's my OCD that made me upset about the name thing I don't know!!
I know a lot of this bullying sounds non-autistic related but it is because I noticed that all of the non autistic people were not being bullied!! A small portion were but not a lot.
So be aware that if your sending your autistic child to a summer camp with non autistic children they probably might get bullied. But you know what? I kept going back to that camp because I looooooove it and they only put a small damper in my whole experience. And I will not let their bullying keep me from doing what I love. Plus what doesn't get put you down makes you stronger.
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