I have four children. Three of them are grown and all of them went through the same school system that my youngest now attends. I have called, over the years, so many "parent teacher conferences" for each of them that I couldn't possibly begin to count them. Given that all of those meeting requests were met with "absolutely, I'll meet with you on _____ date", or "sure, what time can we talk?", why is it a request of the same nature in my sons special needs class is always met with some sort of procedural guideline B.S. being spouted out by whichever staff member at the time feels they are threatened by my request for a meeting?
I am continuously told throughout the special needs education system that "we all need to work together as a team". So why is it that there is always at least one (sometimes all) team member that feels threatened at the request for a meeting?
My son is blind, severely autistic, and developmentally challenged. He is (in his own way) begging my husband and I not to send him to school every morning. He tries to go back into his room, he tries to just stay in the bath tub all morning, he tries to hide behind the couch, he tries to run the other direction when walking to the vehicle to drive to school. I was asked " well how do you know it's school that he doesn't want to go to?" my answer in my head is "well asshole, I know it is school because if I tell him I want to take him to the store to run errands, he walks to the truck himself. When I tell him we are going to the Post Office, he hurries to the front door. If I tell him we are going on an outing, he helps get himself ready to go."
First of all, why question the parents motive of calling for a meeting to figure out why he is so resistant to attending? Isn't this the parent working in the best interest of the "team" mentality? I assure you, if I weren't trying to be diplomatic and follow the system, they would know it because I wouldn't "request" a meeting, and I wouldn't say "their might be a problem". Instead I would say, "Ok, which one of you assholes is differing from the plan with my son and making him scared to come here?"
I have learned over the years (as I answer my own questions from above) that the person that gets defensive is usually the one that has differed from the ARD, the parents requests, or the child's indicators of abilities or tolerances. This is the easiest way to find the vigilante! Call for a meeting! Not an official meeting........just a "get together" in the classroom to discuss what the problem might be. Whichever one of the specialists or classroom staff members starts stuttering first or stating that they just don't understand is the one you better focus all of your attention on in the meeting. Someone's gone rogue at this point and taken your child's progress into their own hands with their own agenda.
In my son's case, it's "give them an inch; they'll take a mile". If a specialist finds my son will tolerate one activity that they thought he wouldn't, all of the sudden with no real time for him to adjust, they're off to the races with their own little eager beaver agenda of how much they can get him to do! Now they can't see the forest through the trees and their over eager approach leaves my son feeling inundated , overwhelmed, and shut down.
According to them , however, "things are going just great". Do you know why they think this? Because by the time the meltdown, shut down, or digression from their activities happens, they are long gone from their 30 minutes with him and are not there to witness the fallout that the regular classroom teacher or the parents see afterwards.............after my son has processed the upset.
I am no expert. I have 14 years experience raising my son, however, and I like to use the "bucket" analogy to describe some of his tolerances and behaviors.
I can explain........
Let's say that your body has inside of it an empty bucket. This bucket is called "tolerance". We'll call stress "water". Now every time you experience stress of any kind, a little bit of water is poured into your tolerance bucket. Some days, it might not take much "water" to overflow your "bucket" on your drive home, because your "bucket" was already almost full from the stress at work. In my son's case, I hear therapists say all of the time........"well I know I can MAKE him do this because he's done it lots of times before". This is the statement that makes my head spin the fastest. Hello? Bucket? His bucket was already full when you began this activity, he tried to tell you by pulling away quietly, he tried to tell you by turning his back, he even tried to tell you by punching his head..........what did you do? You pushed him further because "you know he can do this". You pushed him further because it is more important for you to complete YOUR agenda than it is to actually REACH this child. Well, genius.........now he can't do anything at all for the rest of the day because you have overflowed his bucket by ignoring his communications and left him overwhelmed and completely shut down. So how much progress was made for this day in school? None. All progress gone; In fact, we can erase the progress that was made for a few days prior and probably the progress that would've been made for the next few weeks because he has lost the ability to trust that you are "listening" to him.
"Autism and Assholes"
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