A mother reflects on how subtle exclusion hurts children with disabilities, and why Malaysia’s Anti-Bullying Act must address more than physical harm.
MY daughter can’t tell me what happens at school. She can’t come home, throw her bag on the sofa and complain that someone called her names, refused to sit with her or pushed her out of a game.
She is non-verbal, so I piece together her world through teachers, therapists, her brother and the little clues she leaves behind in her mood.
As a parent, you learn to become part detective and part interpreter. A few weeks ago, after school, my son casually mentioned that he had helped his sister at the playground. To him, it wasn’t a big deal.
A few children had decided she wasn’t playing “properly”, so they simply stopped including her. She doesn’t always understand the unwritten rules that seem so obvious to other children.
Sometimes, she gets overexcited. Sometimes, she misses a cue or takes her turn at the wrong moment. But she still wants to belong.
My son wandered over, stood beside her and quietly encouraged the others to let her join in again. There was no dramatic confrontation, no shouting match worthy of a parenting advert. He just reminded them that she was there.
I was incredibly proud of him. But after the pride came something else: fear. Because if he hadn’’t been there, I would probably have not known. And that thought sits heavily with me every single day.
I have lost count of the number of times people have brushed these situations aside with, “They are just kids” or “She needs to learn social skills”.
Maybe she does. Perhaps the children doing the excluding need to learn something too. We have become very good at expecting vulnerable children to adapt to the world while asking very little of the world to adapt to them.
That is why Malaysia’s new Anti-Bullying Act struck a deeply personal chord with me. As a journalist, I have edited reports about the legislation, the tribunal and the legal mechanisms now being put in place. Professionally, I understand the policy.
As a mother, I understand something else entirely. For families like mine, bullying isn’t always loud. It doesn’t always leave bruises or produce tearful complaints.
Sometimes, it looks like a child quietly eating lunch alone because nobody invited her over. Sometimes, it looks like everyone running off while she stands frozen, unsure what happened. Sometimes, it looks like exclusion so subtle that adults barely notice it. And when your child cannot explain what she experienced, proving any of it becomes almost impossible.
The new law won’t magically change playground behaviour overnight. Children will still be children. They will make mistakes, misunderstand differences and sometimes be unkind without realising the impact.
Perhaps the rest of us can stop hiding behind the phrase “kids being kids”. Because repeated exclusion is still exclusion. Humiliation is still humiliation. Harm doesn’t become harmless simply because the people inflicting it are eight years old.
What gives me hope is not only the law; it is my son. Nobody instructed him to step in. He wasn’t following school policy or worrying about legal consequences. He simply saw his little sister being left out and decided that wasn’t acceptable.
If an 11-year-old can recognise that everyone deserves a place in the game, surely the adults responsible for shaping our schools and communities can recognise that too.
I don’t expect my daughter’s world to become perfectly inclusive. I just hope she grows up in a Malaysia where being different is not treated as a reason to be ignored and where protecting children who cannot always speak for themselves is seen not as an act of charity but as a matter of basic decency.
After all, every child deserves someone who notices when they have been left standing on the sidelines. Not every child is lucky enough to have a big brother who does.
Hashini Kavishtri Kannan is the assistant news editor at theSun. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
The Sun Malaysia