MESSAGE TO TEENS (OR ANYONE ELSE) WITH MOEBIUS: DON'T BE A BULLY
You would think this would be impossible.  After all, isn't it always those with Moebius or other physical differences who are on the receiving end of bullying?  But--check out what this new study shows:
"Special education students are more likely than their typically developing peers to be bullied. But new evidence indicates they’re also often the ones doing the harassing.
A new study looking at over 800 students ages 9 to 16 from nine different schools finds that bullying experiences vary dramatically between special education and general education students.
And even among students with disabilities, the type of special needs a child has can further separate one student’s experience from the next, according to the study published online in the Journal of School Psychology.
Using school data on student involvement in bullying situations, researchers found that kids enrolled in special education were more likely to both perpetrate and be victims of bullying. They were also more likely to be sent to the school office for disciplinary problems than those in general education.
“These results paint a fairly bleak picture for students with disabilities in terms of bullying, victimization and disciplinary actions,” wrote Susan Swearer, a professor of school psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who led the study.
Among special education students, those with language, hearing or mental impairments exhibited the highest levels of involvement in bullying, the study found, while those with less visible conditions like learning disabilities were part of fewer incidents.
Typically developing students often experienced the most bullying in fifth grade before the behavior started to subside, but those with disabilities didn’t appear to get the same relief. Their level of bullying involvement remained constant throughout the grade levels studied, the researchers said.
The study adds to a growing body of research and anecdotal evidence surrounding the experiences of students with disabilities and bullying. A study released last year looking at children with disabilities and special health care needs found such students experienced more bullying and felt less safe at school than other kids.
And, a survey released earlier this year found that children with autism are bullied three times more than other kids and are also frequent perpetrators of bullying themselves.
Swearer and her colleagues said that schools need to do more to emphasize positive socialization among students. They also said that increased mainstreamiletng of students with visible disabilities in general education classrooms may help prevent bullying."

Just from my own experience, I can imagine this to be true.  I remember when I was in middle school and then high school.  Yes, I certainly was teased and picked on, due to my Moebius.  But sometimes, I teased and picked on other students--indeed, at times gratefully so. 

Why on earth "gratefully" so?  It is certainly not something I'm proud of.  But the fact is that sometimes, I bullied others simply because I was so glad that I was not the one on the receiving end!  I didn't want the focus to be on me; if someone else was the one being picked on, I think I subconsciously wanted to keep it going and add to it--because hey, that kept the focus off of me for that much longer, and I got to feel a tiny bit of that (admittedly disgusting, when you look back on it) sense of "power" and control that bullies get.

Like I said, it's not something I'm proud of.  Don't let yourself fall into that trap.  Don't do what I did.  We've got to be better than that.


“A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life. ”--Muhammad Ali [Cassius Clay] (born 1942)