School Rules

[Eileen]

Originally Posted by Eileen

But substitute, your daughter's situation IS exceptional and should be regarded as such. It's ridiculous that she has to deal with ill-informed teachers who don't take the time to consider how her needs might be different from someone else's.

(And incidentally, even with my defined procedures, the kids know to come and talk to me if there's something out of the ordinary that would cause more emergencies than might be considered normal.)

[substitute]

Yeah... well I looked up Quaker schools in England but they're all private and cost a fortune (around $4000 per term at this age - she's 9), so that's the end of that idea Shame, cos looking at the school websites they do seem ideal for her. But the nearest one is quite far away so she'd need to board anyway.

I went around various other schools in the area with her today but none of them have any places free for her age group.

I did consider homeschooling a while ago with her, but we figured we'd give it a chance and then pull her out if things became difficult so as to make the school experience counterproductive for her. I think it's just about reached that stage now.

What you say Eileen sounds fine where the kids are normal, but in her case as you acknowledge, things aren't normal... the social givens that can be taken as read with normal kids don't apply in her case... she's not going to approach a teacher with a special problem like having wet herself or something, if she feels this teacher is apt to deal out arbitrary punishments for 'nothing' (as the nickname issue seems to her).

But my situation aside, I'd like to know what people think regarding that particular rule about the nicknames, I'd like to hear different perspectives on that...

[cafe]

Oh, man! If they did that with my younger son, I'd be bringing him clothes to school on a weekly basis. He still has accidents at home because he is busy with something and doesn't realize he has to go until it's too late.

I could just see him stripping his wet clothes off and walking out of the bathroom in all of his glory, okay, with his hand over his 'glory' and a puzzled expression. He'd ask the first person he saw to get him some underwear, sure, but the damage would already be done.

[Ivy]

Eileen, that is completely reasonable to me. You're controlling the classroom, not your students' bladders. Hifive.

This topic is slightly sensitive to me because I had a medical issue as a kid that meant I needed to use the bathroom as soon as the urge hit, or I would get a urinary tract infection. Most of the time if I went at every opportunity it was enough but sometimes I did have to leave class. I had teachers who understood and worked with this like you do until 3rd grade when I got one who didn't allow potty breaks except for her own prescribed ones, which were not frequent enough for me. I don't remember how many times I sat squirming and trying not to cry. And I did have an accident a few times. In third grade. Way past the time when kids normally have accidents at school.

[substitute]

That's just it Ivy... she's too old for this sorta thing to be brushed off as normal by the other kids, and she's starting to get bullied for it - which again, the school just denies.

Finding all of this out has shed a lot of light on why we've been having some of the problems at home with her... it's no wonder she doesn't tell me when she needs the bathroom, or when she's wet herself, if this is what's going on at school.

[cafe]

How do the laws work there for special needs kids? She really should be able to get the accommodations she needs at the very least on the bathroom thing.

Edit: Honestly, I would be so ticked. I am ticked and it's not even my kid. Anybody can make a mistake once, but if a child has wet themselves once and their parent has made it clear that there is a problem, kid says they need to go to the bathroom they go. Immediately if not sooner. To not let them is just sadistic.

[Ivy]

Poor kid. Sounds like she doesn't have an advocate at school, except for you (and you're not really "at" school).

You could ask them if they had a diabetic child who had to leave to give herself insulin, would they also worry about other kids wanting to go give themselves insulin as well.

[substitute]

Quick update...

I decided to give them the Easter vacation period and the week before it, during which I kept her off school, to wise up about Asperger's and then the first day back I went in and had a long chat with the headteacher and her class teacher - and met for the first time their special needs coordinator - yes, despite my autistic daughter going to the school for over 4 years, they've never even told me about or introduced me to the special needs coordinator and my daughter had never met her before.

Well, since then she was given a detention for doing karate chops - not on anyone, not hurting anyone, but just doing them into thin air. Apparently, chez-lui, it's 'racist'. WTF???

And she's been sent out of the class still, for things she didn't understand. I asked her when she came home whether there was any trouble, she said she got sent out, I asked her why and she gave me a load of wild speculations. I asked for the teacher's exact words, and she said 'she didn't say anything, just "get out", I don't know why".

Again I had a conversation with the relevant staff, during which I discovered that in the OED, under the word 'rigid', there's now just a photograph of this headteacher.

So I thought fuck it. We all know what's best for her, and today we started homeschooling. And we got along very well

-----

But all that aside, I didn't really want this thread to be just focusing on my individual case, I was hoping people might pick up on the principles and stuff of what's going on here, and comment in more general terms, give opinions on this whole thing, cos it's not just that the autistic kid has a problem with these rules, I wonder if the rules themselves aren't just stupid, for any kids to be expected to follow?

[elfinchilde]

the trouble, Sub, is when people obey the letter of the law and not its spirit. A strict pedantism and blind adherence to rules that were created for good purposes means that, more often than not, the rules get permuted and turn draconian.

But enforcement authorities will never quite see it as such, because from the viewpoint of the authority, it's much easier to issue a blanket rule, than to go by a case-by-case basis.

I do think your daughter was right though, that it was over 'nothing', and she didn't do anything wrong.

it isn't the spoken word that matters, but the meaning behind it. If i were to affectionately and lovingly call my indian/african friend "hey blackie", that would on the surface, sound racist. But if you take the tone into consideration?

Isn't it less prejudicial to call someone 'blackie' in affection, than 'your majesty' with a ?

but ah. this is the way children see: it is not the way pedantic authorities see.

would have actually told your daughter to call her friend MiMi instead. short form of it, and as cafe said, a secret code. Negotiation has to be done, in order to be part of a group. Part of socialisation is not just learning the honesty of society, but also its hypocrisy.

[heart]

Originally Posted by Eileen

I'm in favor of teaching people to plan when they take breaks in a sensible way because it is disruptive to have people asking for passes and leaving all the time (and I've seen the same kids every day wandering the halls very slowly during classes, peering into other classrooms' windows, wasting their time and missing instruction for a "bathroom emergency"). However, it's unreasonable to categorically deny people bathroom breaks... ESPECIALLY if they have a medical reason for needing to take them.

What I do with my (almost all non-autistic, mind you) kids is this: each six-weeks grading period, I give them a pass with three "outs." If they need them, they can use them. If they don't use them, I give them extra credit at the end of the six-weeks period. It's just up to them. If they want the points, they'll schedule their restroom visits for between classes. If they have an emergency, they have three opportunities. I think this is a reasonable way to address the whole bathroom issue. I have almost no issues with kids leaving class because they are given a choice and recognize that they're using their own agency with regard to bathroom visits (and you'd be surprised how many kids learn that YES! THEY CAN CONTROL THEIR BODY FUNCTIONS!).

The problem comes when teacher's start playing medical professionals. I've had interistial cystitis since I was a toddler and I always had doctor's notes explaining why it was painful and unadvisable for me to wait for regular breaks to go pee if I felt the need to go and teacher's in grade school always, always, ALWAYS took it upon themselves to take a stand and argue with my mother that I was too young to have a condition like that, that it was not really that painful, they shamed me when I had to go off their set schedule. They were convinced it was not a true medical condition, refused to be educated about it and contuinued to believe that I was just needing to learn to control myself. They were so flap jawed about it to the other kids that I think it played a part in my becoming an object of ridicule. A lot of times it was easier to deal with severe pain at times rather than deal with the conflict, I hated conflict of any kind. The teachers would beam with pride over how they were improving my condition!

You might be open minded but many in the profession are not. In high school because of the break between classes this was not such an issue and high school teachers on the whole were more liberal minded about breaks.

But it is not always the case that high school teachers become more reasonable minded. I have a friend who became a high school teacher and just a few years ago she had a student with some kind of irritable bowel disorder whom she took a stand against. Like me, she was an object of ridicule in school and this teen was very popular. She said he needed to be taught a lesson!

She tried to face the school board down about it and lost. She was very upset, saying the tax payers paid her to teach a given block of time and she was not going to let anyone go to the bathroom on her time. She took herself so comically serious about this. Like she's got such wonderous words of pure wisdom that losing ten mintues of them is going to warp this child for life, he's not become all he was meant to be because he didn't get the full 50 min with Ms. Genius or something! I lost a lot of respect for her judgement over it.

Seriously, I had less problems with employers as an adult when it was at its worst in my 20's and I had to pee once every hour or two than I had with the school as a child. That's pretty sad when an adult can get more understanding than a child can.