School Accused of Stuffing Autistic Student in A Duffel Bag

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WHAT THE HELL???

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A 9-year-old autistic boy who misbehaved at school was stuffed into a duffel bag and the drawstring pulled tight, according to his mother, who said she found him wiggling inside as a teacher's aide stood by.

The mother of fourth-grader Christopher Baker said her son called out to her when she walked up to him in the bag Dec. 14. The case has spurred an online petition calling for the firing of school employees responsible.

"He was treated like trash and thrown in the hallway," Chris' mother, Sandra Baker, said Thursday. She did not know how exactly how long he had been in the bag, but probably not more than 20 minutes.........

http://news.yahoo.com/school-accused-pu ... 29844.html

That is sick. Not in a positive slang way, but in a horrible abuse of human rights way.

The ones who specifically did it should be fired. The remaining staff needs to come up with a non-abusive action plan for what they will do when a child loses control and also an action plan for how to intervene in that window of time between when a student starts to get agitated (triggers have been triggered) and when they actually lose control. They can learn these things by going to schools that handle only special needs students and finding out what they do.

These sorts of stories seem to come from mainstream public schools with a special ed program. The teachers learned in school how to teach a mentally ret*d child how to read and similar academic things but are at a total loss for what to do when a child loses control. So they wing it with these abusive "solutions" that are motivated more by anger at the classroom disruption than by any knowledge of how to professionally handle the situation.

I'm sure there are exceptions but it seems that when people post these school horror stories, the school is always a mainstream public school with a special ed program and not a school geared exclusively to special needs students.

My daughter's experience (which is common, from talking to other parents) illustrates this to me. In a mainstream public school with a special ed program, she frequently lost control and the teachers were at a loss what to do. There were no abusive incidents (she is quite verbal and describes teacher behaviour, she only described the teachers making exasperated noises) but I was routinely called to pick her up, as this mother was. There were also many, many parent/teacher meetings where they said they didn't know what to do and what did I think they should do. I didn't know. How would I know? My at-home solutions of "leave the shopping mall/playground/grocery store before the meltdown happens" weren't applicable.

She left that school and now is at one just for special needs students. These people are experts at both calming an out-of- control child and at reducing the times that control is lost in the first place. Public school special ed programs should be consulting them for action plans. I have no idea why they don't.

I have no doubt that googling will uncover some incidents at special schools too. But I have noticed a general pattern that these news stories come from mainstream public schools.

Those teachers and anyone else who thought that was a good idea should be fired. I think that part of the training process for new teachers in mainstream public school is to have them observe schools that only have special needs students where they can see how to handle them.

It's sad to still see stories like this, and quite often, too.
Sure, one might say that on an ASD website you'll see these stories more, but that doesn't mean they didn't happen in the first place and that something needs to be done about it.

Behavioral modification is the worst effing way to deal with Autism. It's the very reason i pulled my kid out of a school that claimed to be experts on dealing with all kinds of kids with behavioral problems, including those with Autism.

There's just one effed up problem with that thinking. Autism is a NEUROLOGICAL problem, NOT a behavioral problem.

Stupid fools.

I feel like I'm throwing my kid to the wolves every day. So far so good, but still. Last month a 7 year old autistic boy in an Albuquerque public school had a meltdown. He was unplugging computers, kicking desks and kicking at teachers. They called in the school police, who then handcuffed this 70 lb child to a chair. I could have single-handedly handled this kid, and I'm only 5'2". WTF.

There is a national bill in Senate (US) now. I posted about it. Yes, I know laws won't entirely stop it but it's a start.

"Behavioral modification" is, in effect, a clinical-sounding way of saying, "Teach them that they'll either do what we want, or we'll hurt them."

"'It's a neurotypical world, ma'am. We're just taking up space in it." --Jodi Picoult, House Rules

Well that's messed up.

As someone who was considered a textbook Autistic LFA, that's the treatment I received and if it wasn't for that, I'd still be LFA to this day. In my case it was a predominately behavioural problem and I didn't have mental retardation as a co-morbid, and I improved to HFA within years. So when I hear people say things like this, I can't help feeling that I was very fortunate to have the right circumstances and dedicated parents who worked with me along with a child psychiatrist, social worker and doctor. So yeah, behavioural modification done right works wonders.

I wasn't bulled into modifying my behaviour though, I was merely engaged in, shown and encouraged to behave more appropriately and disciplined while given the freedom to do my own thing frequently too. I wasn't forced to be 'normal', I was merely given enough to understand why it's important to behave and adapt.

Ok, there's a bill in the Senate to stop this. Of course it's not going to be perfect, but it's a start. There's a link to a website here, it will find your senators and etc for you.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt184428.html

My question is why not just have a quiet room or quiet area and let it blow over?

Agreed, that's pretty much all you have to do.

I still remember feeling guilty and embarrassed when they did that to me in pre-school. It served as a good lesson though, don't want those feelings? Behave lol.

Okay, that's great. But what you're describing isn't even remotely like anything I've ever seen around here called behavioral modification. I call what they did with you reasoning, and that's what I do with my kids. It does work a hell of a lot better. Locking them in a freaking room, or putting them in a room that's too cold to work in, or in a basement, whenever they do things that are "unacceptable" (like putting their heads down on their desk because they're tired for god sake), is the kind of thing I've always seen with the behavioral modification tag. And, if they don't want to go into the rooms, or whatever godforsaken alternate place they have for the, then come the restraints.

I don't want to talk about it anymore, because it just pisses me off to no end all over again. If I had known then what I know now about Autism, I would have shouted at the top of my lungs at those idiots, and pulled him out of there far FAR earlier. I'm STILL pissed off that we trusted them.

body bags were extensively used 20 years ago at mental hospital and juvenille delinquent homes.i have seen them used on people who were out of control.they also used bed restraints as well.i have never heard of this in public school

Stuffing a kid in a duffel bag.

This isn't considered child abuse under the law because...?