16d • 🏫 School Wins & Stories
Bullying and neurodiversity
With a lot of respect, I’d like to share something I posted today in my own community. I feel this space is also a good place for us to talk about this topic, and I hope it can be helpful.
Bullying of neurodivergent people (autism, ADHD, dyslexia, among other conditions) is very common. Studies estimate that around 77–84% of autistic children experience bullying at some point, which makes it a very high risk factor. Neurodivergent individuals have a significantly higher risk of bullying, school harassment and victimisation, both in educational and workplace settings. They are often targeted with mockery, verbal harassment or social exclusion because of differences in communication, behaviour or sensory needs, which has a serious impact on their emotional development and sense of safety.
This bullying often takes the form of verbal and physical harassment, isolation and exclusion, frequently based on differences in communication and sensory processing. The impact can be severe, including low self‑esteem, depression and anxiety.
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Bullying and neurodiversity: it’s not “just jokes”, it’s real harm 🧱
When we talk about bullying, many people picture a couple of mean kids in the playground or an annoying colleague at work. For neurodivergent people, it’s almost never just that. Bullying shows up in classrooms, corridors, group chats, universities, offices, “informal” meetings and comments that hide behind the excuse of humour. And its impact is not just “I felt bad for a while”: it touches safety, health, and how a person sees themselves in the long term.
Why are neurodivergent people such an easy target?
It’s not because they are “weaker”. It’s because the context paints a target on their back.
Some patterns that often show up:
- Difference is visible. Communication style, eye contact, stimming, intense interests, hypersensitivity to noise or touch… all of that gets read as “weird”, “too much”, “not normal”.
- Social rules are opaque and shifting. Many neurodivergent people don’t easily read unspoken rules, irony, or the mood changes of a group. Others read too much and over‑analyse every cue. In both cases, they become exposed in groups that value sameness.
- Power goes unquestioned. When teachers, managers or families don’t understand neurodivergence, they may side with the aggressor (“you’re too sensitive”, “it wasn’t that bad”) or even be the ones who humiliate, expose or ridicule.
- The environment is already hostile. Noise, lights, constant changes, lack of predictability. A nervous system that is already at its limit has very little margin to tolerate attacks, and very little energy to advocate for itself.
Bullying doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It appears in places where difference is seen as a problem to fix, rather than a sign that the environment and culture need to change.
What does bullying do to a neurodivergent nervous system?
For many neurodivergent people, bullying is not a single episode. It accumulates.
Common consequences:
- Mental health: anxiety, depression, panic attacks, sleep problems, fear of going to school or work, suicidal thoughts. These are not “overreactions”; they are the body trying to survive in permanent alert mode.
- Trauma and hypervigilance: constantly scanning the classroom, office, or group chat, waiting for where the next joke or criticism will come from. That is no longer a “social skills issue”; it’s a trauma response.
- Masking and self‑erasure: learning to hide who you are in order to survive. Not moving, not stimming, making jokes about yourself before others do, copying speech and gestures to blend in. This can protect in the short term, but in the long term it burns people out and leaves a deep sense of “I don’t know who I am without the mask”.
- School and work: changing schools, repeating a year, dropping out, quitting jobs, being passed over for projects or promotions, being quietly pushed out. Bullying doesn’t just hurt; it quietly shapes life paths.
When we minimise bullying with phrases like “kids will be kids” or “that’s just how this field is”, we’re saying: this level of damage is acceptable to us.
Changing the question
Instead of asking “how do we make them tougher”, a neuroaffirming approach asks:
- What is it about this school, university or workplace that makes bullying easy and almost consequence‑free?
- What do adults in charge actually understand about neurodiversity? And peers?
- What real options does a person have when they are being targeted? Can they tell someone without things getting worse?
- How can we design environments where the nervous system is not always at the edge?
What helps in practice (adaptable to each context)
Some ideas that often make a difference:
- Clear anti‑bullying policies that explicitly include disability and neurodivergence, not just “violence in general”.
- Spaces where people talk about neurodiversity with real examples, not only through the lens of diagnosis and pathology.
- Peer support and ally roles: programmes where classmates or colleagues learn how to be upstanders, to interrupt harmful “jokes”, to include rather than exclude.
- Accessible ways to ask for help: being able to write, to talk in private, to use simple forms; not depending only on “speaking up in front of everyone”.
- Sensory and communication accommodations: headphones, quiet spaces, flexible schedules, permission to leave the room or meeting without it being seen as lack of commitment.
None of this is a “special privilege”. These are basic conditions so that people don’t have to choose between learning/working and staying safe.
What type of bullying do you see most often affecting neurodivergent students?
Verbal (name-calling, mockery, “jokes”)
Social (exclusion, rumours, ignoring)
Physical (pushing, hitting, damaging belongings)
Online / digital (messages, group chats, social media)
I’m not sure / it’s not always visible
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Bullying and neurodiversity
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Anti-Bullying + Mental Wellness Toolkit — Age Appropriate Material, Complete w/ 12 Short Lessons, Resources, and a Community Helping Every Kid Belong.
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