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School - one step forward, two steps back...
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 205657" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>That sounds really, really bad. Unfortunately, it also sounds really, really familiar.</p><p></p><p>There has been a pre-judgement made - "difficult child is a problem therefore he is ALWAYS the one at fault." There is also a control issue - the teacher and her daughter both seem to be asserting their own authority even if it means going over the heads of others supposed to be given the task. The classroom aide should have been involved as soon as she was present; difficult child shouldn't have been blocked like this.</p><p></p><p>What really upsets me - you have yourself become desensitised to this already. I am not blaming you at all - this happens to parents who try to toe the line and work hand in hand with the school. As I feel we should. But I fell into this trap as well, of bending over backwards to be seen to be fair, where our own child is concerned. The trouble is, you end up bending so far back that you let them discriminate against your child even while you watched, and you still didn't intervene. With what I know now, I would have been out there as soon as I saw my child apparently in time out. There should be no justification for putting a child in time out before all else when that child has been the one to report an incident. The incident should have been dealt with first, the arm looked at by someone less inclined to judge. Your thought on calling the other child over should have been, "Oh good, they are going to do conflict resolution with these two." It shouldn't have been, "Oh good, they're both in time out."</p><p></p><p>I'm not saying that you shouldn't see your own child's faults - of course it's a good thing that you do, in so many ways. But the teacher has got you brainwashed. It is what teachers like this do, in trying to justify their own actions. They will blatantly lie about the child in order to protect their own skins. Not just your child; but any child. When challenged by a parent (or supervisor) they will try to raise anger against the child as a way of deflecting your anger at the teacher. </p><p></p><p>I got brainwashed. My best friend got brainwashed. It happens. My friend's son was accused of being a thief and drug abuser, accused in front of classmates. His crime - he had picked up a bottle of prescription codeine that had fallen out of my bag. I had left the school at that point but he saw my name on the prescription label and made the private decision (he said) to bring it to me after school. I believe him - he was 10 years old at the time and along with his mother was a very good friend who I trusted.</p><p></p><p>After school his mother (absolutely furious with the teacher's behaviour - she had made a lot of trouble for the boy) went to the school to see the teacher, with me in tow as witness. The teacher very quickly deflected my friend by saying, "You don't know just how concerned I have been for your son, for the last six months at least. This was just the last straw - I have had a year of him lying, not being a team player, shirking his work, being deceitful. Stealing just seemed the next step."</p><p>My friend was successfully deflected and went home scolding her son who said, "Hang on - I thought you were on my side? What did I do that was so wrong?" and found himself grounded. Until a few days later, when his mother read his most recent school report, written the month before. The report was glowing - honest, trustworthy, a team player, works hard, achieving top marks. So either the teacher was lying when she wrote the report, or lying when she attacked the kid's character. Can't have it both ways.</p><p></p><p>Your son sounds like my son - "I'm sorry I'm so bad." He genuinely believes he is bad, and probably believes it is inbuilt, part of his basic make-up the same way his hair is the colour it is. This is how difficult child 3 was, after years of teachers always assuming that if there was an incident involving difficult child 3, then it must be all his fault. We know now that generally it rarely was his fault, but he WOULD react if provoked.</p><p></p><p>Your son did the right thing - he reported an incident. What is more, he reported it to someone he probably already knew would punish him, but being punished is still preferable to allowing bad things to continue and to allowing pain to continue to be inflicted. </p><p></p><p>A child reporting an incident of violence or bullying should feel safe enough to do so. He certainly shouldn't be belittled for it. Also, research shows that in most cases, a child making an initial report of violence or bullying is likely to be speaking the truth. The teacher should always give the benefit of the doubt.</p><p></p><p>The attitude at our local school, when a child reported being hurt by another, was generally, "Sort it out amongst yourselves." This is wrong. However, it is unfortunately common.</p><p></p><p>I'd be back and complaining. I'd also diarise the incident so you have your own notes of this while it's still fresh. What you wrote for us here is good, but you need to keep your own copy of this in your files at home.</p><p></p><p>Be strong. Do not let them browbeat you, do not let them make you doubt your own values or back off in any way. What you observed was discriminatory, was damaging, was belittling to the child reporting being injured. Your son was bitten - she should have seen this if she looked. But even if there was no mark, to a child who has just been physically injured, to be told "You're lying, so now you can sit in time out for lying," is adding emotional abuse to the physical he just experienced.</p><p></p><p>She called the other boy over - why? Was he punished too? Or was it to say, "difficult child says you bit him. He's lying, isn't he?" </p><p>She might have said, "If you bit difficult child then he must have provoked you,"</p><p> but I doubt she did because she was so insistent to you afterwards that difficult child had not been bitten.</p><p></p><p>What we experienced - difficult child 3 would come home from school bleeding at the knees (I don't mean simple grazes, either) and telling me, "The mean boys tripped me up." difficult child 3 couldn't identify the bullies by name, but he COUDL describe events. I always had to question him carefully, to avoid "leading the witness". So instead of saying, "Who else was in the gang that attacked you?" all I could ask difficult child 3 was, "What happened first? Then what happened? Then what happened?" </p><p>I wrote it down, as you have just done with us, then sent in a note to the teacher next morning outlining the incident as I had understood it from difficult child 3. "The group of boys including X, Y and Z and their four friends have been bullying difficult child 3 for some time, with little shoves here, a push there. Yesterday he said that X put his foot out to trip him just as difficult child 3 was running past, then they all laughed when he fell."</p><p>difficult child 3 came home from school the next day puzzled and confused. I checked the note form the teacher. "X denies that it happened and he has six friends who all say difficult child 3 was running and fell over his own feet. I have explained to difficult child 3 that because he's autistic, sometimes he doesn't understand and can get the wrong idea. I questioned difficult child 3 about the incident, I asked him if perhaps he may have just tripped over his own feet. difficult child 3 finally admitted he could have been mistaken."</p><p>I talked to difficult child 3 - he said that when he was told that he couldn't trust his own senses (my words) that he had to accept that he must have been mistaken. "But I could have sworn I saw X stick his foot out. But Mr S told me that because of my autism, I just saw something that couldn't have happened."</p><p></p><p>The teacher was so zealous in his search for an easy solution that he taught difficult child 3 not only that he had to accept these attacks would continue, but he couldn't even trust his own observations. The teacher also taught the bullies that they could do what they liked to difficult child 3 and nobody would punish them for it. The problems escalated and difficult child 3's behaviour got worse.</p><p></p><p>If you can't get this fixed, pull him out of school. I haven't gone back to check your entries - is he complaining of feeing nauseous? Is he vomiting? Or just feeling off-colour? We had all this with difficult child 3, even to the point of him running a low-grade fever. He wanted to be at school, he loved it. But he was getting sicker and sicker, so very ill that his teacher insisted that mere anxiety couldn't account for it. But it was eventually demonstrated to be anxiety. Everything else was ruled out. And when he finally left that school, there was no more nausea.</p><p></p><p>GO fight for your kid. But be prepared for this teacher and her daughter to try to lay a great deal of blame on your child.</p><p></p><p>If you can do some investigation, talk to other parents and try to get evidence of other similar problems with other kids. You might need their support.</p><p></p><p>Good luck, go for it. My heart just breaks for you and your son. Neither of you deserve this. No wonder he seems to present as ODD!</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 205657, member: 1991"] That sounds really, really bad. Unfortunately, it also sounds really, really familiar. There has been a pre-judgement made - "difficult child is a problem therefore he is ALWAYS the one at fault." There is also a control issue - the teacher and her daughter both seem to be asserting their own authority even if it means going over the heads of others supposed to be given the task. The classroom aide should have been involved as soon as she was present; difficult child shouldn't have been blocked like this. What really upsets me - you have yourself become desensitised to this already. I am not blaming you at all - this happens to parents who try to toe the line and work hand in hand with the school. As I feel we should. But I fell into this trap as well, of bending over backwards to be seen to be fair, where our own child is concerned. The trouble is, you end up bending so far back that you let them discriminate against your child even while you watched, and you still didn't intervene. With what I know now, I would have been out there as soon as I saw my child apparently in time out. There should be no justification for putting a child in time out before all else when that child has been the one to report an incident. The incident should have been dealt with first, the arm looked at by someone less inclined to judge. Your thought on calling the other child over should have been, "Oh good, they are going to do conflict resolution with these two." It shouldn't have been, "Oh good, they're both in time out." I'm not saying that you shouldn't see your own child's faults - of course it's a good thing that you do, in so many ways. But the teacher has got you brainwashed. It is what teachers like this do, in trying to justify their own actions. They will blatantly lie about the child in order to protect their own skins. Not just your child; but any child. When challenged by a parent (or supervisor) they will try to raise anger against the child as a way of deflecting your anger at the teacher. I got brainwashed. My best friend got brainwashed. It happens. My friend's son was accused of being a thief and drug abuser, accused in front of classmates. His crime - he had picked up a bottle of prescription codeine that had fallen out of my bag. I had left the school at that point but he saw my name on the prescription label and made the private decision (he said) to bring it to me after school. I believe him - he was 10 years old at the time and along with his mother was a very good friend who I trusted. After school his mother (absolutely furious with the teacher's behaviour - she had made a lot of trouble for the boy) went to the school to see the teacher, with me in tow as witness. The teacher very quickly deflected my friend by saying, "You don't know just how concerned I have been for your son, for the last six months at least. This was just the last straw - I have had a year of him lying, not being a team player, shirking his work, being deceitful. Stealing just seemed the next step." My friend was successfully deflected and went home scolding her son who said, "Hang on - I thought you were on my side? What did I do that was so wrong?" and found himself grounded. Until a few days later, when his mother read his most recent school report, written the month before. The report was glowing - honest, trustworthy, a team player, works hard, achieving top marks. So either the teacher was lying when she wrote the report, or lying when she attacked the kid's character. Can't have it both ways. Your son sounds like my son - "I'm sorry I'm so bad." He genuinely believes he is bad, and probably believes it is inbuilt, part of his basic make-up the same way his hair is the colour it is. This is how difficult child 3 was, after years of teachers always assuming that if there was an incident involving difficult child 3, then it must be all his fault. We know now that generally it rarely was his fault, but he WOULD react if provoked. Your son did the right thing - he reported an incident. What is more, he reported it to someone he probably already knew would punish him, but being punished is still preferable to allowing bad things to continue and to allowing pain to continue to be inflicted. A child reporting an incident of violence or bullying should feel safe enough to do so. He certainly shouldn't be belittled for it. Also, research shows that in most cases, a child making an initial report of violence or bullying is likely to be speaking the truth. The teacher should always give the benefit of the doubt. The attitude at our local school, when a child reported being hurt by another, was generally, "Sort it out amongst yourselves." This is wrong. However, it is unfortunately common. I'd be back and complaining. I'd also diarise the incident so you have your own notes of this while it's still fresh. What you wrote for us here is good, but you need to keep your own copy of this in your files at home. Be strong. Do not let them browbeat you, do not let them make you doubt your own values or back off in any way. What you observed was discriminatory, was damaging, was belittling to the child reporting being injured. Your son was bitten - she should have seen this if she looked. But even if there was no mark, to a child who has just been physically injured, to be told "You're lying, so now you can sit in time out for lying," is adding emotional abuse to the physical he just experienced. She called the other boy over - why? Was he punished too? Or was it to say, "difficult child says you bit him. He's lying, isn't he?" She might have said, "If you bit difficult child then he must have provoked you," but I doubt she did because she was so insistent to you afterwards that difficult child had not been bitten. What we experienced - difficult child 3 would come home from school bleeding at the knees (I don't mean simple grazes, either) and telling me, "The mean boys tripped me up." difficult child 3 couldn't identify the bullies by name, but he COUDL describe events. I always had to question him carefully, to avoid "leading the witness". So instead of saying, "Who else was in the gang that attacked you?" all I could ask difficult child 3 was, "What happened first? Then what happened? Then what happened?" I wrote it down, as you have just done with us, then sent in a note to the teacher next morning outlining the incident as I had understood it from difficult child 3. "The group of boys including X, Y and Z and their four friends have been bullying difficult child 3 for some time, with little shoves here, a push there. Yesterday he said that X put his foot out to trip him just as difficult child 3 was running past, then they all laughed when he fell." difficult child 3 came home from school the next day puzzled and confused. I checked the note form the teacher. "X denies that it happened and he has six friends who all say difficult child 3 was running and fell over his own feet. I have explained to difficult child 3 that because he's autistic, sometimes he doesn't understand and can get the wrong idea. I questioned difficult child 3 about the incident, I asked him if perhaps he may have just tripped over his own feet. difficult child 3 finally admitted he could have been mistaken." I talked to difficult child 3 - he said that when he was told that he couldn't trust his own senses (my words) that he had to accept that he must have been mistaken. "But I could have sworn I saw X stick his foot out. But Mr S told me that because of my autism, I just saw something that couldn't have happened." The teacher was so zealous in his search for an easy solution that he taught difficult child 3 not only that he had to accept these attacks would continue, but he couldn't even trust his own observations. The teacher also taught the bullies that they could do what they liked to difficult child 3 and nobody would punish them for it. The problems escalated and difficult child 3's behaviour got worse. If you can't get this fixed, pull him out of school. I haven't gone back to check your entries - is he complaining of feeing nauseous? Is he vomiting? Or just feeling off-colour? We had all this with difficult child 3, even to the point of him running a low-grade fever. He wanted to be at school, he loved it. But he was getting sicker and sicker, so very ill that his teacher insisted that mere anxiety couldn't account for it. But it was eventually demonstrated to be anxiety. Everything else was ruled out. And when he finally left that school, there was no more nausea. GO fight for your kid. But be prepared for this teacher and her daughter to try to lay a great deal of blame on your child. If you can do some investigation, talk to other parents and try to get evidence of other similar problems with other kids. You might need their support. Good luck, go for it. My heart just breaks for you and your son. Neither of you deserve this. No wonder he seems to present as ODD! Marg [/QUOTE]
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