Where to go from here

KarlaQ

New Member
When I first met my oldest sons they were 7 and 8, living with their dad and his room mate. Their "Mom" (lol)would take them speraticly but my now hubby could never relax when she had them because he never knew when she would call saying she could not handle them, to come pick them up.

It wasn't till later that we found out that she and the boyfriend were almost constantly drunk, and the boyfriend would insist on the boys being in bed before he came home because he didn't like them. It wasn't unusal for them to get sent to bed at 6pm and told to be quiet or else the boyfriend or mom would severly punnish them. Durring all this we learned that the BFs 13 yo daughter was taking advantage of the boys sexualy, expecialy the oldest, Tim.

Tim first went to his aunt on the moms side about it (he's very close to her) she went to the mom about it and waited one week to see what she would do. Nothing would be the answer, except punnishing Tim for trying to get her in trouble with boyfriend. At that point the aunt came to my husband and he sat Tim down and ended up going to the police and filing a report. Sence she was a minor and we were moving out of the state (with mom along for the ride moving to the neiboring town no less) we decided not to press charges.

Mom moved back with the boyfriend within six weeks and the boys would have supervised visitation at the aunts house. After two years of her playing mommy for afew months, going back to boyfriend, playing mommy, going back, and so on she ended up with an assalt arrest agenst my husband, in the hospital, the day my daughter was born! We got full custudy, visitation at husband's descression. Afew months after the court ruling she dissapeared and we haven't heard anything for almost three years.

Now, that youv'e been caught up, We have had the boys in counceling durring all of this, but moved last year, not long after we moved I found out that tim had touched our daughter (3)inapropreatly, rubbing himself on her stomach. When I found this out I managed not to kill him or go through the roof, I called and talked to the crises center before I even let him know I knew. It took a full month! to get him in to be seen by someone other than social workers, we ended up with an in home counsler who was awsome. She worked with him for two months when she sat me and husband down to talk about the possabilty of Schitsophrenia(sp) he is delusional, sees ghosts, and had voices talking to him telling him to do things. We knew he was always in his own world, had a "friend" he would still talk to that had died when he was five, and generaly had his own special view on life, but we had always just excepted that as Tim.
We had him tested durring the in home C. but they nixed the schit. saying no, it is Post Tramatic Stress Syndrom, and put him on Geodon 20m.

But, heres my question, if it is ptsc, where do we go from here, the school doesn't understand the situation, they let the kids tease him for being diffrent and have been no help at all, as long as his grades are up they could care less about his happyness. He currently has an IEP but it does no good to bring up the bullying at the meetings, they kind of say "sorry about that", and go on. The geodon has done wonders, but I'm not in his head so I have no idea how effective it is. Does anyone have any experience with this? Help!
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Sheila

Moderator
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">the school doesn't understand the situation, they let the kids tease him for being diffrent and have been no help at all, as long as his grades are up they could care less about his happyness. He currently has an IEP but it does no good to bring up the bullying at the meetings, they kind of say "sorry about that", and go on. </div></div>

Your son has an IEP and by virtue of the IEP also has the protections of Section 504 (disability law). Both are federal laws that your school district must abide by (whether they like it or not).

Bullying a child with a disability is against the law. In some cases, educators can be held personally responsible for allowing the bullying to continue.

Do some reading at the following links:

REMINDER: HARASSMENT BASED ON DISABILITY IS WRONG, ILLEGAL by the US Department of Education: https://web.archive.org/web/20130331085823/http://www2.ed.gov/PressReleases/07-2000/0726_2.html

Protecting Students from Harassment and Hate Crime: A Guide for Schools - January 1999 . Your school district and/or your State Education Agency should have written policy on bullying:
http://www.ed.gov/offices/OCR/archives/Harassment/policy1.html

Feds Say "Harassment Cannot Be Tolerated" et al. This is on a parent friendly legal website:
http://www.wrightslaw.com/nltr/05/nl.0201.htm

Suit involving bullying in United State District Court of Connecticut:
http://www.wrightslaw.com/law/caselaw/05/ct.scruggs.meriden.damages.htm

A lot of school district's have their policies on-line these days. So do State Education Agencies. Check them out. Then you might want to consider writing a letter to the Superintendent about the bullying being allowed AND the school district IEP committee members being unwilling to address the issue in difficult child's IEP. Send it Certified Mail -- CM is a "must."

My letter would probably go something like this:

Dear Mr./Mrs. Superintendent:

My son, ___, attends XYZ School. He is a victim of repeated bullying.

Even though it's my understanding it is against the District's policy to allow bullying and there are Federal and State laws against allowing bullying, I can not get my son's IEP Committee Members to address this chronic problem in his IEP.

Solutions to this problem and addressing the effects thereof need to be incorporated into _____'s IEP. Is this something I need to take up with the State Education Education Agency, OCR and/or OSEP? Can you help me?

Sincerely,


Mom

cc: District Special Education Director

Send it CM because it's a record that the school district has been put "on notice." Fax it to speed up the snail mail.

If they are smart, you'll be hearing something back from somebody pretty quickly.

Welcome to the site.
 

KarlaQ

New Member
Thankyou Sheila, I have been trying to think of what to say to the superintendant of the school, my mother has pushed me to talk to him, but have been unsure what to say. Should I go into specific problems with teachers and kids names or what, now I can send this and go from there. Hopefully it will make a diffrence, my other son is in the same school one grade behind Tim and has some of the same problems, kids misbehaving and teachers doing nothing, or whatever they do do is hardly enough to fix the problem. We bought a house in this school district last year and had problem after problem with the school. The kids hate this school, but we have a beautiful house on ten acres and we do not want to give it up. They are just backwards here, mostly kids of farmers and rednecks (my husband is a redneck, but one of the good ones) and they just think bullying and teasing is part of growing up. My kids are used to the teachers "having their back" when it comes to these things and here they are as likely to be called tattle tails by them as they are the students. ::sigh:: I am not a pushy person but something needs done.
 

Martie

Moderator
Good for you to going to bat for difficult child.

Bullying is often behind acting out that occurs later in adolescence. It is horrible and we should ALL try to stop it.

Sheila's letter is great in my opinion. Welcome to our world.

Martie
 
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