Children with autism spectrum disorders are bullied far more often than their peers.
Many people with autism have trouble recognizing social cues, which makes them awkward around others. They also often engage in repetitive behaviors and tend to be hypersensitive to environmental stimuli, all of which makes kids with the disorder ripe targets for bullies.
That may help explain why the highest functioning children in the current study were at greatest risk of being bullied. While their social awkwardness was more obvious because they actually interacted more with mainstream peers, this made their actual disability less visible, likely making their condition harder for their peers to understand.
Children with autism who could speak well, for example, were three times more likely to be bullied than those whose conversational ability was limited or absent.
Another factor that often leads to exclusion and derision is fear. Many generations have had no personal experience with people with special needs, and they fear them. They pass that ignorance on to their children.
According to many parents of children with autism, inclusive classrooms need to increase the social integration of children with autism into protective peer groups while also enhancing the empathy and social skills of typically developing students towards their peers with autism and other developmental disabilities.
Indeed, although autistic people are often claimed to lack empathy, their problems usually relate to an inability to understand the minds of others, not an actual lack of care when they know someone is suffering.
Meanwhile, people without autism aren't supposed to be impaired in understanding others' pain, so what's our excuse?
Autism and bullying