Back to School Blues

Post Reply New Topic

Yippy, I wrote that rather sarcastically, but I do mean to say something. That is, I hope you can find some way to kill them with kindness - Oh, I'm so sorry... This must be hard on you... That must have difficult to hear... - and at the same time let them know their communication is complaining and not helpful. Don't keep your pretend role. Try to show them you are willing to help make a difference, but your hands are tied with so little specific info. Sounds like some action should be taken, but you are not the one who has any control or responsibility here.

I still think their complaints should be enough to warrant an IEP meeting. They are saying there is a pbm. You want them to begin to address the problem, for the child, for the other children, for the staff, and for you.

My kids are not in school, so I could be all wrong.

I don't know that I understand it, myself, but can recognize the attitude when I see it, if that makes sense.

Basically, as parents, we are held as being 100% accountable for what our child does, regardless if even the child him/herself can actually control it/understand it. They technically are aware of the situations and issues, but expect that if we only followed their notions of proper parenting that our kids would be able to do as they expect.

When a child goes off and does not follow preferred practices, we must be surprised, otherwise it is assumed we should have proactively handled it.

In others words, if we are not surprised and knew it could happen, then why did we not do something to prevent it?

Not to mention the fact that they are never proactive (ever) about anything, and have likely attended multiple IEP meetings about why the child cannot do /does not understand the general category of behavior the action falls under.

As far as learning from the other kids, the other kids know how to hide what they do/say and that is what ASD kids often have trouble doing. For example, if kids are using slang that teachers don't want to hear, and an ASD kid picks it up, s/he is likely to use it around authority figures. They don't get context, necessarily, yes? The teacher says that the child ought not use that language at all. That is a preference. In real life when interacting with peers, you need to at least know the meaning/use of slang even if you do not use it. If you don't understand context, you are likely to just use it no matter who is around. That takes time to learn, and not everyone with ASD fully understands it even then.

The teacher wants the children to pick up the positive parts of peer pressure that make kids appear to tow the line, but not the negative aspects.

What might be a positive aspect (from the perspective of authority) of peer pressure? If the teacher threatens to punish the class if anyone makes noise, peer pressure will generally keep kids in line even if the punishment itself is not a deterrent. The child does not want the group to have a negative opinion and enforce social consequences of misbehavior. My kid would not care about social consequences. If other kids shush him, he doesn't even notice. He doesn't notice or care even if it is a large group. Teachers consider peer pressure to conform to 'good rules" as a positive.

Somehow kids are expected to follow good peer pressure and resist negative peer pressure. My kid can't tell the difference if he even notices the peer pressure at all. Epic Fail.

Well, what if you did follow their notions and it accomplished nothing and you have empirical evidence that it did nothing?



What if you did proactively handle it before and again it accomplished nothing? How do they figure that their techniques will work for all children from all cultures and neurotypes?



Maybe you did that exact something and it didn't work? Haven't they heard of the quote by Einstein of insanity?



They know about the ASD and I've assumed they read what it entails. How can they conclude that their disciplinary techniques would still work? I don't get it. Are they drinking to much alcohol or something?



I agree with you on this.



OMG, now I have a fundamental understanding of part of my own past. I remember the class including myself was punished when some moron acted up. I feel outrage to this day about it and felt like I was punished for something I never did at all. I used to get pissed at teachers who would do this. In fact, I hated some of them. It was so unreasonable and arbitrarily. How was it morally right to punish those for something they did not do?

Who came up with this?



Why wouldn't the teachers get this and alter their methods?

If you say you tried something a number of times they will either assume you are lying or did not do it correctly or consistently. They look at bad behavior as evidence that correct parenting was not done, and it is hard to shake them of this. If they are not quite so offensive as to state or imply this, they will insist more time is needed to make it work. I've quoted Einstein and they just looked at me like I was a stupid parent who did not understand evidence-based disciplinary techniques.

I had bad memories of peer-pressure fueled discipline, too. That was a common (lazy) way for teachers to get other students to do their job for them. There was always one kid who would ruin it for everyone. Well. that was how I looked at it back, then. Probably, it was some kid who just did not care about social consequences, for whatever reason: ASD or something else.

I had such bad memories of it I actually proactively had theminclude in the IEP docs that they would not employ that method in my son's classes, b/c it would not change his behavior and just make kids dislike him more. (I worded it by saying it was not be fair to his classmates, (which is true) and that worked.)

So what you're telling me is that they and their theories are beyond reproach and question. Is that correct?



I see and if you look at the students across the country as a whole you will see how they turned out with the educator's philosophy.



I am so glad that you did.

OMG, now I have a fundamental understanding of part of my own past. I remember the class including myself was punished when some moron acted up. I feel outrage to this day about it and felt like I was punished for something I never did at all. I used to get pissed at teachers who would do this. In fact, I hated some of them. It was so unreasonable and arbitrarily. How was it morally right to punish those for something they did not do?

Who came up with this?[/quote]

I don't think it is morally right but it is effective, that's why it happens. The teacher punishes everyone in the hope that the other kids will punish the kid who acted up. This is horribly unfair to everyone. The teacher essentially pushes all the kids to bully the person who acted up.
This also happens outside of school. The Stanford prison experiment ("Das Experiment") has students guard and punish other students. The Milgram experiment has people punish other people, who do it because the supervisor says it's ok to do so. This is all people "outsourcing" punishment.
Also, consider the moron who acted up. Maybe that kid did something stupid, but does he really deserve the hatred of the entire class? The teacher should know better and find a more appropriate punishment. You were pissed at the teacher (appropriate), but many kids are pissed at the kid who acted up. That's what the teacher hoped for.

I have come to realize that this is the case for me, at my son's school. The staff respect me for pushing for my son's rights, and I can tell that they like me and admire me as a person/mother, but unfortunately (for them) this is not some feel-good story they are reading in a memoir or magazine article... they are the people who have to actually deal with my family and "put up with" the atypical issues/needs. And I'm sure that as much as they respect/admire me, they'd all be overjoyed if we moved away and become someone else's problem.

What makes me nuts is that I feel we are all playing some elaborate game. Nobody can just be to-the-point or completely transparent/truthful because nothing productive would come of it, and, in the case of the staff, they could get in big trouble for telling the truth about how they feel or what they think. So communication is always a dance and NOT my style of interacting at all. It's a lot of stress.

Like the OP, I was also dreading the return to school. But was hopeful. And then on the very first day--- the FIRST DAY--- I already got a Phone Call of Doom. One of those pointless ones that isn't even useful-- they just wanted to "let me know" that my son was being annoying and that they weren't having any luck in getting him to stop doing what he was doing (in this case, lying on the floor and refusing to move or talk.) Sigh.

I wish there could be some kind of agreement to cease the Pointless Phone Calls or the "Rough Day" reports, when there isn't any constructive conversation to follow. It doesn't help my son at ALL-- all it does is let them complain/vent, and make me feel like I've been scolded and put a big dent in my day (which is my own issue, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't affect me negatively.)

This is basically what the staff does whenever my son does something that confuses them:

1) Panic
2) Throw a "trick" at him
3) Wait 5 seconds to see if that will "snap him out of it"
4) When that doesn't work in 5 seconds, they repeat #2-3, about 50 times in a row, and in the process overwhelming him even more with tools, choices, and "helpful" adults
5) Give up and call me, "just to let me know" (a form of venting)
6) FINALLY, remove him from the situation or environment that triggered the shut-down or problem behavior
7) Discuss with me in person, which always includes a comment (complaint) about how, before removing him, they tried "every trick in their book" to no avail (at which point I'm supposed to sympathize with them)

At first I went out of my way to try to be helpful, offering to go up there, etc... expressed all the "appropriate" emotions to soothe their frustration... but it has become clear that they don't really want my help. They just want the behavior to stop, and they want to be able to complain when that doesn't happen. So now I just try to nod, give a faint smile (to show that "on the team") and just leave it at that. I think I'm finding that "less is more". At least if I want to survive another year without having a nervous breakdown.

Correct. The teacher was not always this way, but the admins??? I have never seen a more rigid group of people, so sure of themselves, and so unwilling/unable to deal with "exceptions" to whatever they were taught.

Edited for quotation errors.

Last edited by ASDMommyASDKid on 19 Aug 2014, 6:23 am, edited 2 times in total.

Yes. I feel the same way.



I also get these phone calls, and afterward I wonder what the point was. It does seem like they just want to complain to someone, and I'm the someone.

When DS was being evaluated at school, his teacher called to complain that the process was taking too long.
She called us....to complain about the school...where she worked. Yeah.

That's because they knew she would get chastised if she tried to complain to them. You had to worry about having a good rapport with her, so she knew she could complain to you, even though you had no control over anything.

That said, sometimes I think they think administrators listen to squeaky wheel parents more than they do to them. My son's first grade teacher kept trying to get me to try to convince them to set up a special autism program so she would not need to put up with my son in her class.

Yeah...

I thought I was proactively keeping on top of things by seeking out the gloom and doom report each day when I picked DS up from school. In hindsight, it didn't help solve any of the problems.

My sons IEP team explicitly told me that I needed to be the squeeky wheel because they couldn't get the district to pay for the shared aide time that was already in his IEP, much less the trained 1:1 behavioral trained aide he clearly needed. The district told me the school already had aides assigned that they just weren't scheduling properly, and I needed to bug the principal about it. Meanwhile, the other parents staged a two-day boycott. The principal's solution? Stick DS in a special day class with kids with downs syndrome and intellectual disability.

No, not bitter at all....

(We pulled him from school and moved to a better district, where they agreed to pay for a non-public program that I found and paid out of pocket for initially.)

My son's Kindergarten teacher knew from Day 1 that he needed a full-time 1:1 trained aide. It took her a while to convince US (the parents) of that fact, but even with both her and us asking for it, he didn't get one until 1st grade, because of money. So even with teachers and parents asking for it, it does still come down to budgeting and what they are willing to try to get away with. When he DID finally get the aide, she became more of an all-purpose classroom assistant and certainly not the 1:1 well-trained aide that he needed. But it all looks "correct" on paper, so it's hard to convince the higher-ups that things are not being done as they are supposed to be. I actually don't think the aide helps my son very much with the things he really needs help on (staying on task, avoiding shut-downs before they happen)-- what she is REALLY there for (and which I'm glad she is there for, even if it's not the original intent) is to take some of the pressure off of the teacher, and be my son's "babysitter" when he's already in shut-down mode, or crying, or whatever other "age inappropriate" behavior he's exhibiting. By taking some of the pressure off of her, it makes him a tiny bit less of a direct annoyance to his teacher. And that helps, if even in a very small way. But it's frustrating that he is not getting actual "help". That would require a very skilled behaviorist, and they are not going to supply someone like that because it would be too costly. They'd rather do what you spoke of, which is to push him out and into a self-contained room for kids with much more severe physical and/or learning disabilities, so that they can wipe their hands of him. It *absolutely* would not be the right thing for him, so I have refused that placement, but they made it pretty clear last year that that was their agenda.

I'm seeing how things go this year, but it's looking more and more like homeschooling may be the better option, as much as it would rob him of some of the few experiences that he actually enjoys about school.

Oh, how I wish I had the money and time to just open a school for "eccentric misfits". Clearly there is a need for something alternative for these kids, run by people who actually UNDERSTAND them (and without a condescending attitude, or the implication that they are inferior).

The excuse they gave us was that the (part-time, and untrained)inclusion aide ended up spending all her time with my son and it was not helping. Well, she actually made everything much worse because she was untrained, and I didn't want her assigned to my son full-time, anyway. I wanted someone who would help.

I.m bitter, too.

DS always liked doing schoolwork when he was younger, yet he still had trouble paying attention, following directions, staying on task, and finishing assignments. As he's getting older, he is no longer finding schoolwork fun. Without the desire (which was the only thing working in his favor) to do the work, I can easily imagine that he may end up needing an aide in order to get anything done and to keep him from driving the rest of the class nuts.
Today I got out all his new school supplies (in which he has zero interest, and I picked out myself) and unwrapped and organized and put his name on everything for him. I doubt he could have even packed his pencil bag on his own. I don't know how he's going to do mainstream 4th grade at all.

YippySkippy, is it inclusion with an aide in the room at least? If so maybe you will get a good aide. We occasionally lucked out.