By CAMERON LUCADOU-WELLS
A HEARTBROKEN Endeavour Hills mother said there were no suitable schools for her son who has Aspergers and has been routinely bullied at two schools.
‘Leanne’, who doesn’t wish her, her son or the school to be identified, said a similar plight was endured by hundreds of other parents and their children with Aspergers.
She said her nine-year-old son, ‘Sean’, once so happy at kindergarten, had become depressed through school.
His self-esteem had plummeted to “nothing”, to the point that he lists himself in a loser’s column and writes in his diary that he’s sad, lonely, miserable and humiliated.
“I’m stuped [stupid],” he writes.
Sean is at his second primary school, having endured unbearable social isolation and repeated taunts about his sports skills, his writing, his drawing, even his colouring-in.
“Many times he has come home in tears. No one wants to play with him. He has sat at a table at lunchtime and no one sits with him,” Leanne said.
“It’s heartbreaking. It gets to the stage I’m nearly too afraid to ask what happened at school that day because it’s so cringing.
“The current school [staff] is supportive and do implement strategies to help, but there’s only so much they can do. There’s a lot of teasing. Kids say to him: ‘You suck! You make our team lose’.”
Leanne fears the bullying will get worse when Sean reaches high school.
Like many children with Aspergers, he becomes a target for schoolground abuse because of his social naivete and points of difference.
He can’t enrol in a specialist school because his below-average IQ of 76 is still too high for the 70 IQ threshold.
Nor does he qualify for a funded teaching aide to help him at a mainstream school. Under the state education department’s disabilities funding criteria, his verbal skills are considered too high. “I would hire a full-time aide if I could afford it,” his mother said.
“They need to remove that criteria to help kids with Aspergers. Maybe even build a specific Aspergers section at a school — just provide the mainstream schools with the resources. Give these kids somewhere to go.”
Murray Dawson-Smith, chief executive of ASD advocacy and support group Amaze, said children with Aspergers were commonly bullied.
“They behave differently but look the same as other children” he says. “So they are thought of as ‘fair game’.”
He said the criteria were excluding many children who needed help.
“They may be able to express themselves verbally but they may have no idea what they are saying.”
Schools were “making an effort” but teachers needed training to identify and support children with ASD.
Education Minister Martin Dixon told the Journal there were no plans to loosen the criteria.
“We work with parents to come up with a program with the resources we’ve got and for what’s best for the child — that’s the main thing in the end.”
He said funding had increased for students with a disability, plus $40 million was invested in training mainstream teachers to “deal with and recognise students with autism”.
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