I have met a woman recently..I know, how odd...lol. But...read on....

[DammitJanet]

I have met this woman recently who is a member of this group I attend for people with some sort of "mood" disorders. She seems like a very nice woman and is much more outgoing than I am. She also works full time I believe...or at least 3/4 time.

Somehow I learned that she works with Easy Child kids here in this county. Now Easy Child stands for Exceptional Children or what we call the Sped kids here. Our Sped office is the Office of Exceptional Children. Well I found that very interesting because of ...well...a number of things...lol. First of all, this is the woman who doesnt like us to use the term "mental illness or mentally ill." Okay.

So the other day I was asking her which type of Easy Child kids she worked with and she looked at me rather funny and told me "we dont us the M word anymore!" I just kinda looked at her and had to run through all the acronyms in my brain to figure out what she was talking about...lol. OHHHH...that M word!

So I cleared things up. I asked...well do you work with the Developmentally Delayed, the Cognitively disabled, classic autism, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), Aspergers, High-Functioning Autism (HFA), Emotionally handicapped, Behavioral disordered, Learning Disability (LD), what?

Oh, what is Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), what is High-Functioning Autism (HFA), what is Aspergers? She has the autistic kids in with the daughter, the CD and the behavioral disordered kids.

I simply dont believe her. How can you work in a classroom with Easy Child kids and not know what all those disabilities are? UNLESS...she is not a teacher but is maybe a secretary at a school working in the Easy Child unit? I could have sworn she said teacher. Maybe an aid.

Confused me...but then...maybe our schools are just that bad!

 

[klmno]

They are that bad here. In this jurisdiction, if a kid doesn't need an IEP for a physical disability or cognitive problem, then it's automatically a behavior problem, no matter what they put on paper. I've had more than one sd CM tell me that an emotional meltdown that results in inability to do homework or results in an outbreak of tears is just indicative of a behavior problem. I specifically asked the last one if she didn't think becoming emotional or shutting down due to depression or anxiety was a mental health issue and she no, it was a behavior problem. I kind of understood why difficult child laid out of school and didn't bother trying at that point. (If they'd had me in first grade when I was still breaking out in tears out of the blue because my dad died, I guess I would have been kicked out of school for having such bad behavior.) They really ARE that ignorant. Mental health issue = behavior problem. Period. Of course usually what happens is that the kid really does start behaving worse and worse when being labeled that way and then it's almost impossible to ever reverse the attitude of the sd and the path for the kid.

 

[DammitJanet]

Thats kind of why I gave up trying when Cory hit the HS Behavioral and Emotional disorders classroom. They lumped in all the kids together no matter if it was a kid who was severely mentally ill with something like bipolar or schizophrenia or depression or anxiety in with the kids who were serious juvy kids with simply conduct disorders. And let me tell you there is a really big difference.

But if you put a kid in with bipolar in with a kid with CD, then the bipolar kid is going to have to get tough just to keep from getting eaten for lunch. We had one kid attempt to get Cory expelled from school on a weapons charge. It was in the lunch room and Cory stood up to take his tray to dump it, as soon as he stood up, this other kid slipped a knife out of his pocket and tossed it at Cory's feet and yelled "KNIFE!"

Of course, everyone wanted to blame it on Cory. They called us, Cory's tech was with him. Cory was getting loud and belligerent. We get there and we know its not a knife we have ever seen before. We search him every day, he gets taken to school every day by his tech. So no chance he gets it on the bus. Tech is with him all day in classroom. They are wanting to arrest him. I said oh heck no. No one saw him with it. They claim a cafeteria lady saw it from 40 yards away. No way. 40 yards and under a table. No way. Is she superman? I told them I would file suit.

Meanwhile he is sitting in a classroom everyday with kids who are doing no work, a schizo kid is sticking his finger up his rectum to get poop out and smearing it on his desk, two kids are making out in the back of the room, other kids are listening to CD players, it was a zoo.

 

[klmno]

That pretty much describes my son's experience in Department of Juvenile Justice. And they wonder why he comes out worse instead of rehabilitated. Duh. What exactly did you do to try to rehabilitate him? Then they stand there and tell me I can expect him to live a life incarcerated because he hasn't learned to live in "the community". And when he's an adult, the courts will be harder on him because the "efforts of the juvenile courts didn't work". Excuse me, could you tell me again just exactly what those efforts were? Completely ignoring every written recommendation from expert psychiatrists and standing in court saying that CSU can't figure out what the problem is? And you thought having me cart difficult child over to the courts bldg every few weeks so we could tell a PO what we've been doing was changing my son HOW? If I was a violent person......

 

[Marguerite]

Here in Australia, the support is worst in our high schools. Primary school (aka elementary) have variable quality support; the biggest hurdle is identifying the kids who need it. If the parent relies on the school system, they will generally be let down because every kid identified as needing help, is a kid who is going to cost the system dearly. Where they can, they fudge results to make the kid seem as normal as possible, on paper. It therefore would get 'diagnosed' as a behaviour problem, generally the parents' fault.

But where you get a good independent diagnosis of autism - the attitude to the child is one of "psychiatric disorder".

Secondary school for us starts at about age 11. Your Middle School equates with the first few years of our high schools. Our senior high school overlaps with your college. Our college is another transition but qualifies as tertiary.

The worst support in our system in Australia is in high school. Autism and similar disorders (including ADHD) are defined as psychiatric disorders. It leads to a lot of hurt, a lot of misunderstanding and a lot of teachers refusing to help or follow through, because of either fear, or misunderstanding, or intolerance of mental illness.

Tertiary - it is classified as neurological illness. However, psychiatric illness students get seen by the same department of counselling support. But they know what they are doing, they are compassionate. And frankly by then, there is a huge psychological overlay in the autistic kids, after all the stuffing around that has happened through their primary and secondary schooling.

[recap - primary = elementary. Secondary = high school (includes middle school). Tertiary - all education that happens after you finish school. Includes apprenticeship colleges and other trade education because that can shortcut university entrance.]

There is a woman we know locally, who has a reputation for being a troublemaker. She gets onto various local fundraising committees but is so incompetent and so difficult to work with, that a lot of these things get sabotaged. She comes along afterwards then tries to take credit for it all; after a while people get wise to her. She lies unbelievably. At one point she made accusations about the former school principal, was telling a lot of people some rubbish about the guy that was patently untrue, but some people were believing it. She even began to believe it herself. She also has been saying things about herself that she "supervises university students." That one made it into parliament, when our local politician sang her praises in an important public service nomination. From what we have been able to determine, she does NOT work as a university lecturer; instead, the place where she works (probably as a cleaner, or minor secretary) has had a uni student do some prac work there and she met the student one day in the tea room. This woman has no credentials, but sells herself big. It's only afterwards that people discover they've been burned.

Those of us who know this woman were aghast at the nomination for public service. She's not a worker; she's s saboteur. She finally had the principal confront her on what she was saying, he was apoplectic when he heard.

Then last week, our local politician who had nominated her so publicly, got exposed for corruption and other nasty stuff. She is apparently involved. Couldn't happen to nicer people. We're not telling the media, because this woman would even find negative publicity to be a good thing. But we think it will eventually come out anyway. Just waiting, and watching.

Marg

 

[DaisyFace]

Janet--

In regards to your post - I think you need to just take everything this woman says with a grain of salt. You met her in a group for folks with "some kind of mood disorder"...which could mean anything.

It's entirely possible that this woman just makes it up as she goes along...which is why she seems unable to have an intelligent conversation about these things she has told you.

Let her be...

 

[Lothlorien]

I agree with Daisy. I have a feeling that she may have a mental illness and it may include schizophrenia and/or just chronic lying. I would not take anything she says too seriously.

 

[hearts and roses]

Janet, I agree with Daisy and Loth also. You just don't know her well enough to take anything she says to heart.

Also, my sister is a music teacher who works at the upper elementary level and even without a whole lot of special education courses, she would know the specifics of any particular disability you mentioned. Why? Because she makes it her business to know as a teacher, especially in today's age when most children are mainstreamed in most schools. When I read that, I was appalled. She's not giving the whole story about herself, or, perhaps you misunderstood her.

Regarding the use of the "M" word - I personally do not see what the big deal is. Also, I don't see what the problem is with the use of the word "retard". Retard means slow...as in slow learner. Why the big easy child campaign? Seems silly to me. And terms like "mentally ill" or "mentally disabled" is just a way of capturing any specific type of brain disorder - I can't understand why anyone would find this offensive. To me, the use of "Exceptional Children" is like blowing smoke and another way to make people feel warm and fuzzy about their child's disability. In my Life Span class, we're covering infant and early childhood development and we happened to be going over fussy babies. I commented on how difficult child would cry for 12 hours, then sleep for 12 hours and that no amount of soothing helped calm her down. And then, at 3 months, she just stopped and was way better. Then the teacher put the next slide up on the monitor in which the number one reason for fussy babies was due to the mother's not bonding with the baby or not being emotionally available. I almost ran from the room, I felt all the eyes of the other students upon me because I know they were thinking, "OMG, she was a bad mother because she wasn't nurturing...."!! I did later have an opportunity to clarify that difficult child had issues and that her fussiness was just her personal temperament...and still is today at 20 years of age!

Anyway, I think people should stop trying to be so danged easy child and just deal.

 

[Marguerite]

I think it's a good point about her perhaps being an inmate and not a guard.

The avoidance of the "m" word; the lack of knowledge (coupled with obviously not wanting to know) - it fits. The woman I posted about (similar) also big-notes herself, claims qualifications and achievements for herself (has alleged she has a uni doctorate, when she has never even attended uni as an undergrad; claims to teach at the local college, when she possibly attended a course there once) that she just doesn't have. Her father has warned the neighbours that she is mentally ill; I believe it goes beyond bipolar, although that was one label I was told. Certainly she also has the sexual hyper-appetite, she uses it to her advantage.

The trouble with people like this who lie - they can be so very plausible, even if you're usually an expert at picking it.

Marg