Bullying among Children with Autism

I chose an article about bullying among children with autism.  I chose this article because bullying is such a big topic in all schools.  Children of all abilities experience bullying.  I wondered however if children with autism would experience more chance of being bullied opposed to children without disabilities.  

Approximately 30% of children are involved in bullying.  Either as the bullies, victims or bully/victims.  Most studies involving bullying are focused on the general education population.  This study focused on children with Autism.  Children in inclusive settings have a tendency to experience being bullied on a more regular basis.  This study looked at 1221 children from all socioeconomic backgrounds and all ethnicities.  All parents were asked the question, "How does your child get along with other children" and " How would you describe your child's academic performance?" After answering the previous questions they were asked if their child was ever bullied.  The children were followed over a year to document their experiences.  Bullying was defined as “when a person or group of people repeatedly say or do mean or hurtful things to someone on purpose. It typically occurs when there is a powerimbalance.” (Nansel et al., 2001; Olweus, 1993).  

The results were as follows: Children with Aspergers were more likely to be a victim of bullying.  African American children as a group were targeted.  Children with low academic abilities had low instances in being bullied while those who had a hard time making friends were more likely to be bullied.  The findings of this study are that who spend a great deal of time in a general education setting with typical peers may have the greatest risk of being bullied.  While there are many benefits having children in inclusive setting teachers will need to be aware of the greater risks of bullying towards these children in an inclusive setting.  

I have often wondered if children with disabilities that are in inclusive settings have a higher risk of being bullied.  According to this article children who are high functioning are at a greater risk.  We do not currently have any children who fit the criteria of this article at our school.  We do however have several children that have been diagnosed with downs syndrome.  The entire staff at our school are concerned about other children bullying these children.  This article makes me think that this should be a great concern for the staff at our school.  I did find this article interesting and useful for me.  One surprising factor was that the higher functioning the child the more likely to be bullied.  I wonder if this is because the lower functioning children are so much different that children are more accepting of the differences.  Children who are high functioning may appear to be more equal peers and this makes the behavioral differences seem greater.  Teachers may need to provide explanations to the children in the classroom that although some children may seem the same and can function academically socially they are at a disadvantage.  


Risk factors for bullying among children with autism spectrum disorders 
Zablotsky B., Bradshaw C.P., Anderson C.M., Law P. 
(2014)  Autism,  18  (4) , pp. 419-427. 

Behavioral Disorder

The Article that I chose to read was about Anxiety disorders.  Just as it is hard to detect anxiety disorders in children it was difficult to find many articles about this behavioral disorder.  As mentioned in our book teachers tend to under-refer students with suspected internalizing behavior problems.  Internalizing problems involve inwardly directing actions and teachers often have difficulty identifying them in classroom settings.

I have two children in our school who experience severe anxiety disorder.  I also live with children with this disorder.  With this personal experience I find it easier to notice the quite children who are holding all the anxiety inside.  My children as young as preschool would have a "great day" according to teachers and get into the school and explode.  They would say don't talk to me or start to act out or cry as soon as they got into the car.  They had held it together for 3 hours and couldn't hold it in any more.  After many evaluations we were able to put a name to this and it was several anxiety disorder.  With this experience behind me I tend to seek out the children that are too quite and don't socialize in a classroom.

The article I chose deals with the idea of cognitive behavioral therapy for the treatment of pediatric anxiety in an elementary school setting.  Anxiety disorders are among the most prevalent of psychiatry problems for youth it effects approximately 6-11% of school age children.  Pediatric anxiety disorders can be described as a functional impairment which disrupts children's abilities to accomplish normal developmental tasks.

While Cognitive Behavioral Therapy appears to be effective in a controlled, clinical environment the effectiveness of these programs disseminate into real world settings, such as schools is still uncertain.  At the time of this study they did not know of any other study done on Cognitive Behavioral  Therapy for anxiety study done in a school setting.  The participants of this study were 24 children and their families.  They used a program called Building Confidence to complete this task.  The Building Confidence program contains several child modules, caregiver modules, one teacher module and one school nurse module.  The main idea of the module was to teach the children coping skills in varies situations and how to develop their own coping thoughts.  As the children went through the program treatment was discontinued as the child found that their anxiety levels of the children were reduced significantly.  The children used this therapy at home as well as school.  This study wanted to evaluate the efficacy of modularized CBT program for a childhood anxiety.  After a 1 year follow up 71.4% of students demonstrated a positive treatment response and were free of any anxiety diagnosis.

This article provides hope that CBT can provide help for children with high levels of anxiety.  The easy and fast answer for many people is medicine to deal with anxiety and this shows that with a good plan and work that medication can be avoided and the struggle with anxiety can be lessened or eliminated.

Our book discusses the characteristics of children with anxiety and how this creates struggles in the classroom and social behavior.  This article was more on a solution to lessening the amount of anxiety a child has.  If this method was followed it could help with the social and classroom struggles these children experience.  If anxiety is lessened, modeling for social skills would be so much better received by students.


Galla, B. M., Wood, J. J., Chiu, A. W., Langer, D. A., Jacobs, J., Ifekwunigwe, M., & Larkins, C. (2012). One Year Follow-Up to Modular Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for the Treatment of Pediatric Anxiety Disorders in an Elementary School Setting. Child Psychiatry And Human Development, 43(2), 219-226.

Teaching Children to Cope with Dyslexia

The article I read this week was about teaching children to cope with dyslexia.  When I chose this article I thought it would contain some suggestions for children to use when reading.  It did contain suggestions but they did not pertain to reading but to self confidence.  I never really looked at this component when reading about dyslexia.

This study took place in Australia. In this study they created an entire school that was a dyslexia friendly environment.   When speaking with adults diagnosed with dyslexia they said that they were angry that no one taught them how to cope with their disability when they were a child.   In this study they looked at children in sixth grade and seventh grade. They included child with and with out dyslexia in the study.  They had found that children by middle school who cope with dyslexia tend to become aggressive depressed and withdrawn. It is at this point that many children begin to distinguish that they are different from their friends.  The feel isolated and defined by their dyslexia.  If a child is taught adaptive coping skills they are able to learn to deal with the disability and not become defined by it.

Some of the techniques that they used with the children were that when they became frustrated they would write a negative word on a balloon and step on the  balloon to let out their frustration.  They also had adult guest speakers who also suffered with dyslexia so they could share their stories and the coping techniques that they used. These people sometime became mentors to the children.  They role played, and made videos.   In the classroom setting the teachers incorporated more listening activities, used pictures to tell stories and had children use their own talent such as singing, drawing or acting out a story they had to tell.

They did not have any special education teachers at these schools on a full time basis they took an assistant principle and a teacher and trained them to implement this work.  They did have a weekly check in with the researcher who has extensive training in dyslexia. All children received 10 weeks of a coping program teaching them techniques to use when frustrated or discouraged and given the opportunity to learn martial arts to focus on mindfulness.  The teachers then implemented the changes in the classrooms.  They found that they all of the students benefited from this instruction.  They found that as these students progressed their self esteem and confidence grew that they learned how to use other abilities to help make their dyslexia less disabling.  The students that did not suffer from dyslexia also benefited they too had learned ways to cope with frustration and depression.  They feel that more research needs to be done but more schools in Australia are going to try and implement the tools that were used in this study.

I feel that this article was very helpful for me.  I don't know that I ever imagined that great about of emotional issues that come with suffering with dyslexia.  My girls at this point can fit in even with their lack of ability to read and preform math at grade level.  They are approaching this age and I am going to encourage my oldest daughter to try some of these ideas.  My second child is very self confident but I think I will share these ideas with her as well.  I would love for my school district to read this study.  I don't know if its something that they would ever try but it doesn't seem to have very many negative effects and might be able to be done with a low amount of cost.   I wonder come there are schools like this in Australia and in the UK and none here that I know of.  I hope that there is some follow up work done by this group or that another group picks up this research and brings it to the United States.






Firth, N., Frydenberg, E., Steeg, C., & Bond, L. (2013). Coping Successfully with Dyslexia: An Initial Study of an Inclusive School-Based Resilience Programme. Dyslexia (10769242), 19(2), 113-130. doi:10.1002/dys.1453

ADHD and genetics

I read an article call New Attention to ADHD Genes.  The article noted that it was in 1980 that ADHD was defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  ADHD is defined as a person that has been severely inattentive (forgetful,careless & distracted) or hyperactive, impulsive (restless, impatient, aggressive) for at least 6 months.  The symptoms must emerge before age 7.  Skeptics still question whether ADHD is real or not just a label for normal if exasperating childhood behavior.

Over the past 10 years studies on twins suggest a strong genetic component.  More twins both have ADHD then other disorders.  They scanned genomes of 270 siblings pairs with ADHD and found hints of ADHD on chromosomes 5,6,16 and17.  These gene regions overlap with those that are implicated in autism and dyslexia.  This neurological glitch disrupts the brains executive function.  This is very promising research.  They feel that there may also be environmental risks, smoking during pregnancy, chronic family conflict and diet.

This article was of interest to me because I have two children with ADHD and we often wonder if genetics or something else caused this condition.  My husband feels that he although undiagnosed also suffers with ADHD.  He had a hard time in school and still has a hard time focusing on work especially if he finds it difficult or boring.   I hope that further research will be able to find things other then medicine to help make this a more manageable issue.  I also found that is article was presented in such a way that the information presented was straightforward and not to difficult to understand.

I think that this article was useful for me.  It gave me some history of this disability, and insight into how the medications prescribed work to help manage this disability.   This article would also be good to share with people who still think ADHD is an excuse for poorly behaved children and parents who do not want to discipline them.

Kathryn Brown (2003) New Attention to ADHD Genes. American Association for the Advancement of Science, p160-161