Have you heard about Justin Bieber sharing that he’s been bullied in school?
Picture the Justin Bieber I saw in a video as they were introducing the movie ‘Bully’- with his iconic hairstyle, his youthful cheeky smile, and his usual pose with arms crossed. I couldn’t help thinking: what’s not to like about a boy like Justin Bieber? How could someone like him get bullied too?
It was such a coincidence that on the very same day I also came across statistics submitted to the UK government that children with speech and language difficulties are three times more likely to be bullied, compared to other peers.
Children with SLI or Specific Language Impairment are no different from other children except that they have difficulty specifically with developing language skills.
They therefore do not just ‘pick up’ language the way other children do, and need aspects of language (the vocabulary, sentence structure, grammar rules etc) to be specifically taught to them. SLI affects about 7% of children.
It is not difficult to understand how such children can be more susceptible to bullying, if they are not able to express themselves well, or perhaps to understand what other children are talking about.
Sadly, apart from being bullied by other children, children with speech and language difficulties sometimes get mistreated by adults, including teachers, sometimes unintentionally. Here are some scenarios, based on actual experiences of my speech and language therapy clients:
- Children may miss out on instructions given in school due to difficulty with auditory processing in a noisy background or language comprehension difficulty. (For example, the principal announcing during school assembly that students have to turn up for a special school event.)
When the child fails to comply with the instruction (for example, does not show up for the event) he may be mistaken for being malingering, un-cooperative or defiant. Sadly, I know of students who have even been physically punished publicly because of this.
- Children who are not very good at expressing themselves may just repeat or ‘parrot’ something they heard instead. Unfortunately this may be something a parent said in exasperation (“Have you lost your ears?”), or possibly something said in amusement (“Really, I didn’t know a duck has four legs.”) Imagine how it might sound to a teacher if a child repeated that verbatim word for word…
Please share your thoughts on bullying or speech and language difficulties.
What are some of your concerns or worries? What have you found helpful?