Bullying among children with special health care needs is a highly-charged topic for parents, and writing about it brings not only opportunities to examine the research, but also some unexpected feelings. Reading articles, blogs, and watching YouTube videos of parents working together with teachers, administrators, and legislators to prevent bullying is inspiring; it is through these collaborative efforts that bullying prevention will succeed. But my own child’s story keeps creeping in; unresolved outcomes from bullying experiences in the past, which may never be completely resolved. The experiences of my child with special health care needs, his challenges with being bullied, and my attempts to protect him, are similar to many of the stories found in case reports and news articles.

My second child was born in 1990. He was a very quiet baby. I used to call him my “Baby-Baby,” because he was so small and fragile. He weighed 5 lb 6 oz at full term, and had to be delivered by emergency C-section because he was in distress. At 9 months old he had tubes put in his ears, when we realized that he could not hear. Once the tubes were inserted, he startled for the first time as he was being driven home from the hospital. How long he had been unable to hear was never determined, but it went back to at least age 6 months and certainly this contributed to delays in his language development.

I worried about his development almost from the moment he was born. Having had a child previously who was typically-developing, I could tell that things were different for this second child of mine. When I asked what was wrong, however, I was told simply that he had developmental delays. At 18 months old, he was referred by the developmental pediatrician for enrollment in an early intervention program. Through the program, he began to receive a range of services including speech and communication therapy, feeding therapy, physical therapy, and special education services. A few years later, he was struggling in his developmental preschool and I requested his medical charts. When I read them, I saw that “autistic like tendencies” were noted throughout the chart, however, the word autism had never been used with me when discussing his condition. Neither I nor his teachers had the advantage of knowing some of the specialized strategies that might be beneficial for his development. Those were the days when the diagnosis of autism did not come early. It was when he was almost 6 years old that he received the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder.