I've been trying to find positive things that you cna say about so-so para, but sorry, not here.
Here's a list of where she went wrong:
1) She was outside the safe room with the other para and they were both tallying - with both of them there putting in so much effort AFTER the event, why don't they learn to intervene sooner, to PREVENT? This is NOT supposed to be about "how bad was he today?" it is supposed to be about helping him stay in control of himself and get his work done to the best of his ability. This is NOT helping, it's only making it worse.
2) She brought him back to the room while he was still sobbing.
3) She did not let him deal with whatever he was obsessing about. We have learned that it's often far easier (and quicker) to let difficult child 3 take a minute or two to do what he feels he has to do, than to spend hours arguing about it and in the meantime achieve nothing. The focus has to be on "how do we get the most out of difficult child?" and NOT on "how do we best control difficult child to do exactly what we want all the time?" I'm trying to be nice again - maybe she just doesn't know that you DON'T try to control these kids, you try to lead them and support them. She needs to learn this, fast.
4) She kept hammering at him when he was still trying to regain control. You cannot get productivity out of a kid who is still sobbing. You cannot get productivity out of a kid whose mind is elsewhere because of perceived obligations/needs which are not being met.
5) She interrupted him, repeatedly. To some kids, difficult child 3 included, this is showing lack of respect (so how do we teach HIM respect, if we don't model it for him?) as well as extremely frustrating because he is trying to express himself but not being permitted to. How would an adult have reacted to the way she handled him? If she were the boss in the workplace, for example, and difficult child an employee, how would a typical employee have responded? Because we have found that is the best way to manage difficult child 3 - it is also teaching him, preparing him, for the skills he is most likely going to need. Once an adult, our kids will never have to know how to manage as a child under the supervision of an adult. It's hard enough to learn social skills, than to have to keep learning different rules as you get older. Especially if you have poor understanding of the different rules and of social skills in general. difficult child 3 can't discriminate between people of different ages, he treats everybody as they treat him and he also treats everybody else as if they have the same capabilities as him. Even the same thoughts. I strongly suspect your difficult child is very similar - a lot of what you describe sounds exactly like difficult child 3 at that age in a similar situation. Except your difficult child seems much more tolerant.
6) She seemed to be setting him up for failure, by the way she gave the warnings. She seemed to be saying, "This is gonig to happen." It was predictive. You shouldavoid expressing things as "don't do this." She should have been saying, "Let's do it this way," instead of "stop this."
7) She is using sarcasm. "If you should apologise to anyone, you shouldapologise to me." He was not in apologise mode, not to her. Perhaps if she had let him apologist to you, then he might have automatically apologised to her, especially if she was kind about it and not nasty (as this sounded). Sarcasm is very confusing for kids with social skills problems. It sends mixed messages and actually takes a fairly sopjisticated level of understanding which a lot of difficult children don't have. A trained para should get this in the first lesson.
8) As others have said, she threatened and then actually used the safe room as punishment. THis is clear evidence ofwhat we have said in previous threads - the use of "safe room" has now been too badly compromised, he now perceives it as punishment even though it should never have been used as such. They need to change their attitudes to him and when/how to remove him from the class, as well as where to take him. He needs an alternative work area (he could have stayed there with the level of noise he was making). As I said before, even aside form the aspect of them punishing him with the safe room - by removing him from the classroom to the safe room when he cries, they are also removing him from the work. So he's building up a very nasty conditioned response - he cries, he gets out of doing the work he is finding difficult. He gets out of it for even longer if he can keep crying and allow himself to escalate.
They SHOULD be helping him learn self-control, but this method is actively undermining ANY attempts at self-control and instead actively training him to cry and rage, because it is becoming the only means of expression of his frustration that they will pay attention to.
It's ironic that they count the number of times he throws his shoes and says he wants to stab them, but they won't let him finish a sentence when he says, "I need to apologise to mummy."
So of course he is giving them what he thinks they want!
Shari, we are now VERY close to the answers here. We have triangulated it right down to this - now all we have to do, is somehow train the school to handle him more appropriately. And for tihs, you need an outside expert to come in and do the training, and to also monitor the performance of the paras and the school, while they get into the right habits.
I can understand why you didn't intervene - it would have badly undermined para and even though you (and I at the moment) feel she was doing it wrong, to undermine her would have made her future tasks impossible. However, as soon as the opportunity arises for you to pass on our concerns formally, you need to make her stop this. Perhaps let her know that you chose to not intervene because you didn't want to publicly undermine her, but to NOT ever put you in that position again, because in future, you WILL choose your child and his welfare.
You need to establish a signal of some sort, to let them know that they are about to get undermined if they don't back off fast and let you take control and show them how to handle him better.
An alternative - take a leaf from various doctor shows on TV, when a senior health professional sees someone else doing/saying the wrong thing to a patient, they say, "Dr G, can I see you outside for a moment? NOW, if you would." And insist. THAT should be the signal. because failure to take the cue and get her rear end out the door to talk to you is likely to result in you blasting her where she stands. be prepared for her to attack as she gets out the door with a "How DARE you speak to me like that in front of the child?"
The appropriate response to that is, "It is still preferable to him hearing what I'm about to say to you now - you are doing it wrong, you need to let him finish what he's saying, let him get the various issues out of the way so he can then better concentrate on the task, you need to give him space to calm himself and a little help there wouldn't go astray. The safe room should NEVER be a punishment. We MUST address this at an IEP meeting to be held ASAP, preferably today." [note - I just said all that without putting it in "don't" form - see, para? It CAN be done!]
Where did this para get her training and qualifications? A cereal box? Or did she go to the Academy of Pretty Boy?
When is the IEP meeting?
Marg
