stupid school system........

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first of all i live i canada and i'm having a hard time finding the laws that apply here although i'm sure there must be something in place to help me here.

my step-son is 6 and he has a tendancy to be violent and to do whatever he can to try and get his own way. last week he was kicked out of school because of his tendancy to use violence and because he has made death threats to his teacher and repeatedly attempted to flee the school while in meltdown mode. the schoolboard wants us to place him in a mental institution. as of right now i realize that he has problems although in my opinion they aren't any worse than they always been other than he has substituted his hitting himself for making threats while at school. he did try this at home once, did not get away with it and did not try it again. so, he's not allowed to attend mainstream school so i figured whatever i'll stick him in the special ed school for now until this blows over but the special ed lady at the schoolboard office says the school is for kids with developmental delays and that autism/adhd/odd does not count as a developmental delay so he can't attend that school........sooo...what am i supposed to do with him? anyone know how i'm supposed to fix this? mental institution is out of the question as far as i'm concerned.

Hi missykrissy

Your child sounds exactly like mine, although my son doesnt display any of this behaviour at school, but he does at home. He seems to manage things at school but when he gets home all hell breaks loose. Not sure if my reply will be of any help, I cannot believe that they would ever talk of putting any child into a mental institution at the age of 6 in the year 2011 or else I am very naive.

Is there a local citzen advice that you can contact to find out your son rights, I am still shaking my head. All that you mentioned, my son does the same expect its at home. I have been fighting so hard to get support. I know this is not what you want to hear but i am shock reading your post cause the same thing no support, they keep telling me he is fine in school.

What is the schools ethos! they must have guidelines on dealing with children with disabilities.

Sorry I am not much help, but I do understand.

Annmaria

thanks for your reply. my step-son acts out at home alot too and has meltdowns on a daily basis. he just does it more at school and alot of what he does at school is intentional because they know he's autistic they let him get away with stuff because they can't tell if he's doing it to get his way or if it's something he can't help. i can't always tell either but i'm more prone to discipline him and so that cuts down on the problems alot.
i understand, in a way, why the school board doesn't want him there. he does hurt people and he is a bad influence on the other kids. he'll see something in a movie like a kid telling a dragon he's going to cut it's head off for example and he'll say that to his teacher when he's mad. i know where he got it, from a movie, but to others it's a threat. the school is not the only ones concerned with his mental health. he had a meltdown at the doc the other day and he sent us to an emergency psych consult where they upped his meds on us. i don't think the first doc knew anything about autism as ss was making noises and the doc told him he was rude and to be quiet. i said he's autistic, he can't help it. and the doc told him to be quiet and wait his turn which led to him demanding gum and the meltdown starting over again, where he was yelling at strangers they'd better not 'f word' look at him or else and throwing his shoes. these types of things are normal for him. he is most likely also suffering from fetal alcohol and drug abuse which the pshych agrees matches these behaviours more than the asd diagnosis. either way, i am still not sending him to a psych ward. i can handle him at home, yes he's difficult but in the worst case scenario i can still physically take him into his room and put him in there where he doesn't really have anything to hurt himself on and he can't hurt anyone and he can take his time to calm down.

misskrissy
I am afraid you are not alone
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/05/10/macdonald-autisic-child-banned-from-school
I don't have any help to offer just wanted to share this article with you in case it gives you any info about where you might be able to go. So sorry this has happened to you.

what province are you in missykrissy? I can do some looking around for you, see who you might be able to contact for some help, if you want...

cutiecrystalmom

Hi missykrissy

Good luck with all, I hope all goes well!! All I can say go for it!

Ann

we're in ontario. i did a bit of googling and it seems the way we are being pushed out is pretty much just par for the course around here. it's pretty disappointing to see that there is a gap there where the kids can fall between where there should be an overlap. i don't get how he can be too disabled to attend mainstream but not disabled enough for a special ed school...... i have another meeting set up and i'm going to threaten to sue them(although not likely to actually do so), to bring in my local member of parliament and the media if necessary, like this couple has done for their daughter. the system here needs to be seriously looked into by someone who can fix it. as it is now they are basically saying i have to drug him to the point of him being unable to do anything for him to be there because he is special needs and they force them into mainstream but won't let them have exceptions. it's really irritating.

Oh dear, this sounds like my ex aspie mate. He would act violent at home to get his way but when his dad be home, he act different because he was more firm and didn't allow him to behave that way and he handled it differently than his mom did. But at school he act violent and keep getting into trouble but yet at my house he wouldn't act that way but he did to my brothers. He had like different egos.


I don't know if it's an aspie thing or just a coincidence that we tend to display different behaviors when we're at different places. Home behavior and school behavior. At home he acts fine but in school he acts up because he knows it's allowed there. So he has learned it's school behavior and it's okay to do it there but at home it's not okay.

I don't know if its really aspie. It sounds like maybe another disorder.

ODD?

Could it be anti social disorder?

I did things like this when I was younger and my parents actually got me to stay in school. But part of the reason was that the school was actually corrupt and a teacher had made a breach of privacy which my parents could have sued the school for, so we had a lot of legal leverage. See if there is a way to blame the school for abuse of your child and see if it is viable to be taken to court. If you have reasonable claims against the school system they tend to back down.

ODD=oppositional defiancy disorder. he is not diagnosed aspergers. he was diagnosed pdd-nos which recently changed to just autism. he also has problems because he was exposed to drugs/alcohol prenatally but since his birthmother has denied her use no one is willing to diagnose that and have swept his 'anti-social' behaviour into his autism diagnosis.

on a happier note, i got help where i didn't expect it. the school board decided to call the pdoc and try to tell them that SS was having mental health issues and i refused to treat him. if they had only asked they would have known that SS has been in to see pdoc 3 times in the last month and she has been fully up to date on his recent regressions. so she decided to get all pro-active and autism awareness on them. so apparently she told the special ed lady she had no right to remove SS from school since the teacher and ea said they could handle him and that even if he was having outbursts that they should have a system in place to deal with that and that he has someone there who is paid to provide him with that support. then she phoned me up told me that there was no medical reason for SS to not be allowed at school and i should send him tomorrow like usual and filled me on the talk she just had with the school. about ten minutes after that the school phoned and said they would be happy to have SS start attending again tomorrow. (: so obviously she knew which buttons to push. i' m guessing she probably sees this type of thing way too often.

Glad to see you are getting help.

I don't know if this is anyway your son but heres a link to anti personality disorder

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial ... y_disorder

he is not old enough to be diagnosed with something like that

hey missykrissy,

I hope today's school day went a bit better. Good on your doc for laying things out for the school! It must be encouraging to know you have someone in your corner who is willing to help you advocate for your stepson! I did a bit of checking, here is a link to the Ontario Ministry of Special Education Handbook. I have not looked through it completely, but you might find some interesting things in there that you can use. I have reviewed our BC Ministry of Education guidebook for special education and found it helpful to know what is required of the school

Thinking of you and your family and hoping that you can get some support in place soon.

cutiecrystalmom

Edited to add: I just reviewed the document quickly now, you will probably want to pay particular attention to Section D: The Identification, Placement and Review process as it outlines all the steps you take to get a designation as well as an appeals process. There is also mention towards the end of the document, in one of the appendices of the The Office of Child and Family Service Advocacy. Probably if you google that, you will find a contact number for that organization. I would recommend contacting them and they may be able to provide you with some kind of assistance, or at the very least, some direction. And, as you mentioned in one of your previous posts, you are willing to be the squeaky wheel, and that will get you further down the road than if you stay meek and silent. Document everything, as concretely and emotionless as possible. Just the facts and only the facts. Good luck!