Bullying Students with Disabilities

Bullying Students with Disabilities

Holly Zimmerman

Instructor Margo Bonds

Composition II

December 20, 2014

        Bullying a student with disabilities has become an increased issue within our nation’s schools. In the United States there have been only 10 studies conducted on this topic of bullying of children with disabilities. In “all of these studies found that children with disabilities were 2 to 3 times likely to be bullied than their nondisabled peers. One study shows that 60 percent of students with disabilities report being bullied regularly compared with 25 percent of all students” (pacer.org, 2014, P.1). There are three types of bullying that range from verbal to physical bullying. The effects of bullying can range from school avoidance to increase in dropout rates. The increased rate of bullying a child with disabilities will lead to increased social problems within the educational system.

        In order to understand bullying a person must understand the definition of bullying. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, “Bullying is unwanted aggressive behavior among school age children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated over time. Both kids who are bullied or bully others may have serious, lasting problems” (www.stopbullying,gov,2014). In order for a action to be considered bullying it must contain an imbalance of power and repetition. These actions could be verbal, social and physical.

        The first type of bullying is verbal. This includes teasing, name-calling, inappropriate sexual comments, taunting, and threatening to cause harm. The old adage “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” does not apply to a student with disabilities. Those students often misunderstand simple meanings of what is being said, thus causing them great stress and anxiety, the second type of bullying is social, which includes exclusion, victim of rumors, and embarrassing public statements. A child with disabilities will respond differently than a regular student, which leads to inappropriate behavior and outburst of anger from the student. The final type of bullying is physical, which is considered the most dangerous type of bullying. This includes actions of hitting, spitting, tripping, taking of ones belongings and making mean or rude hand gestures. The effects of physical bullying include physical assaults between students.