It's a Jungle Out There by Lori Miller Fox

As many of you know, it can be a constant struggle getting some school people to understand that children with disabilities are not always “acting a certain way” by choice. For example my son has been having difficulty staying awake throughout the school day.  Recently, I had a teacher ask me if he should be consequenced for this “behavior”.  Shocked by her ignorance, I felt like saying, “not only should he be reprimanded for falling asleep, but also for daring to cough, sneeze or breath too loudly.  And most certainly, when we uncover the medical reason for his passing out, you can be certain, we will see to it that he is severly punished.”

I’ll never understand why some school people blame things they can not control on a child’s behavior. So I started thinking about creatures in the animal kingdom and why they do what they do. What if scientists blamed everything that animals did instinctually, on behavior.  Here are just a few of the conclusions they might come up with.

Why do ostriches bury their heads in the sand?
So they won’t hear the phone ring when the school nurse calls to send their child home.

Why do plow horses only plow north and south?
Because, like many school people, that’s the way they’ve always done it.

Why do gerbils eat their young?
Because there are no appropriate school programs available.

Why do cats stare out the window all day long?
Because after high school they have no adequate transition plan.

Why are owls considered smart?
Because a school psychologist gave a WISC-IV and misread the results.

Why do tigers live in the wild?
Because their cubs do better in the least restrictive setting.

Why do hamsters run around and around on the same wheel day after day without getting anywhere?
Because their IEP goals never change.

Why do camels spit?
Because they’re just so disgusted with the district’s recommendations.

Why do circus bears ride bicycles?
Because it’s in their transition plans.

Why do cats always land on their feet?
Because, like parents of children with special needs, they have to.

Comments

[Jon Bennett]

Ignorance, in the most basic sense, is just the lack of information. Many educators lack adequate information and can only make decisions based off of what is available to them. I'm not making excuses for this educator, but it sounds like it was a teachable moment in and of itself. Children are all different and so are the effects of medications and therapy. Its also not always easy to distinguish avoidance behaviors (oh kids these days are very crafty) from the manifestation of a disability. I had a client that would fake seizures (I was informed by his parents that I was being duped)! As frustrating as it may be, we won't know sometimes unless you tell us.

I find it both interesting and absolutely necessary to digest the other point of view, in my case, the view of the parent. I've been in countless meetings where the tone becomes adversarial, simply because someone wasn't totally informed about a given situation. Sounds like you have too!

Thanks for the post. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will share it with my colleagues because we need to know how you feel when we drop the ball; but its a two-way street. Off to bury my head in the sand...

[Charles Fox]

Jon: you raise a valid point but in this case they knew that his sleeping was real, involuntary and had been going on for a long time despite our best efforts to figure it out that we have shared with the school on a regular basis.

[Kathryn]

Wow. I don't know why these kinds of things still shock me. I have to support Charles' response to Jon about informing the school. We had a similar situation with Ellie's sensory aversions to having her hands touched. I told the entire staff teachers and therapists this from day one and gave them several reports from a prominent communication agumentation specialist at Childrens' in multiple copies for all to read about using hand under hand and other techniques. I had ongoing discussions etc. - these folks were informed. Three months later in sitting in on a therapy session - one of those informed people grabbed Ellie's hand, put a crayon in it and clamped her hand OVER Ellie's and proceeded to jerk her little arm back and forth to make her color.

So you see, I think most parents don't keep much a secret about their kids conditions that could effect their school day. The profound thing is how the school folks can't see to hear them or even read them in black and white reports from specialists.

What's up with that?

[jon]

Both situations sound extremely unfortunate and I won't even attempt to justify those actions. No one can speak for everybody, and generalizations are generally unfair.

I will however, charge everyone continue to ask questions and continue to talk about what works with your child, especially in regard to what your child needs and the goals you have set together. Its more than paperwork, more than recommendations, its a process.

[Sherry Hollis]

I know that this post is talking about how schools 'ignore' the true 'behaviors' children have. But I wanted to take a different twist on this, if it's ok.

I guess I want to comment on why schools do the 'opposite' which is stressing on the childs behaviors, and ignoring the 'reasons' for the childs behavior, which most times is their frustration because they are not getting help for their learning problems.

I really believe that the main reason for schools being like this is that they use the 'behavior' issues to steer the parents away from the real 'learning' problems because they don't want to help a child with their learning problems.
On www.wrightslaw.com site, there is an article of someone who did a survey of 5000 school psychs. They had to choose between 5 things that caused learning problems. And all of them chose that it is the childs own fault!

I believe that most times it's not ignorance or not understanding the childs problems, it's that they are blatantly doing this to get out of helping the child with their true learning problems.

[Jon Bennett]

I looked up the article to get a better understanding of your perspective. The article is entitled "The Blame Game" and its about who is responsible for a child's problems at school. In short, what is THE weak link in the educational process. Here is the piece about the survery:

"The school psychologists were surveyed about the number of children they evaluated during the past year for learning problems. The average number was about 120 cases (or kids). These numbers were rounded to 100 cases for each of the 50 psychologists for a total of 5,000 cases."

Three out of the five options to attribute to school failure were the LEA (curriculum, administration, teaching practices) and the other two were from home (parenting or child themselves). While the results are awesome in isolation, in context they aren't. I'd be interested in seeing the same survey given to 50 (not 5,000) parents asking them to point the finger. How many people will honestly admit to failing? The better questions is, "who has the right to blame anybody else?"

This survey speaks to the very point that I'm trying to make: If your child does not succeed at school, its everyones fault. We meet and make decisions as teams. There is more than one signature on an IEP. If it doesn't work, our team needs to fix it. I believe that there are poor teams out there in Oz; that just means that other members must pull the weight. That or find another team.

My responses here are purely to provide an educators perspective and not to be adversarial. If you have legitimate reason to believe that your child is being mishandled or discriminated against, take it up with the authorities as it does not represent education at large. Otherwise, who's to blame?

[Charles Fox]

Jon: Your response to the wrightslaw survey is very useful. The premise though is that school personnel and for that matter parents can see beyond epithets and blame. Dialogue is a always to everyone's benefit but too often the standard response is to erect high walls and shut the parents out which then invites a response that involves blames, hostility, loss of trust and finally due process.

It is a functional team and group of individuals who can be totally professional and willing to take the hard look at the problems that prevent learning.

I often say that the difference between a good district and a bad one is that in a good district problems are owned and solved, and in a bad one problems are denied or deflected. I know more than a few administrators who create an environment that make it safe and acceptable for staff to problem solve and not engage in defensive posturing. For me the issue ultimately is one of leadership at the team, building and district levels.

[Kathryn]

Jon
I checked out your site http://exceptionality.net/showthread.php?t=158

I see that you are a special education teacher. That's great. I also see in this comment thread the same stress that happens between the school and the parent. You said on your site "the disdain hurts" commenting on Lori's list. It’s true disdain is hurtful.

It’s true too that once the IEP discussion goes up the emotional ramp because someone has hurt your child or some parent has insulted your teaching skills it's hard to go back to neutral. Saying, hey remember everyone it’s a process is an understatement. Yes it’s a process – we know – we are the parents of children with disabilities - we have to go through many similar processes to get anything done at all for our children. Saying it’s a process does nothing to make it better. I want to know what’s up with the educators’ end of the deal? Why is there so much negativity from the get go in some districts when other districts are open arms, work with the parents beautifully and make logical appropriate choices for the child? I do suspect money is involved. But there sure could be some sharing of best practices beyond collaboratives which are more like share the poverty not the wealth.

The parent’s only defense and hope for their child to have appropriate and good education is to get savvy on these things very quickly. I have heard the most outrageous things said to parents by the schools to save money. Like we can’t provide transportation for your child to and from school – which is soooo sooo against the law. Or we never send children out of district. That is always total BS. But then again – there are the stories of the great districts that do right by the child with no BS. I have heard less of those stories – I am truly sad to say.

Another thing to know too is that parents can and do go to the authorities. The authorities can say that's not right and the parents can win. But there is not a whole lot that has to change after that because enforcement is quite difficult.

Also, I don't think I would be so quick to write off the survey of the school psychologists saying it's out of context and the survey is bad. Maybe the survey wasn't great but are you really trying to say that school staff doesn’t often leap to putting the responsibility for behavior on the child, especially children that they don't understand well? And that's just it, from my experience, the staff, well meaning or no only have their own filters and experience to view my daughter through. Those that have a ton of experience with cerebral palsy really get her and get a lot out of her. They see more of who she is because their filters are attuned to relating to a child with her issues. Those that don't have experience with CP and children with multiple disability- really don't understand her at all. And maybe that is the problem – too much is expected of teachers in the mainstream when it comes to special needs kids. In our school district the therapists and teachers were held to these metrics that they picked to measure Ellie’s progress. And exploring her world, having less sensory defensiveness were not a part of it. The metrics included easy to measure things like she will 4 out of 5 times pick the blue square when asked to by an adult… So because the IEP was so badly written and then the educators were held to these bad metrics which defined the success in their job they often looked to her when they failed.

Lastly, the experience that Lori writes about and the one I shared about Ellie are not isolated incidents. I know a lot of parents of kids with special needs and they all have a handful of stories like this. I am sure you know tons of teachers and they all have a handful or more of experiences with parents doing something that hurts them.

The conversation does have to begin with mutual respect on both sides. That is something we rarely experienced with the past school leader but now there is a new person in charge and she is totally respectful and it was like a breath of fresh air.

I think it's good that you directed your readers to Lori's post and this site in general. There is a wealth of information here. I agree that there are great educators out there. I do think, however, that the system is broken. And when I say system it's that same one that supports the human rights of everyone but not especially the disabled.

I read many blogs written by disabled people and a lot of them maintain as truth that there would be no such thing as disability if there were equal access for all to all parts of society.

[Sherry Hollis]

Jon wrote--If you have legitimate reason to believe that your child is being mishandled or discriminated against, take it up with the authorities as it does not represent education at large. Otherwise, who's to blame?

Tell that to the thousands of parents who DO this. The reason schools do these bad things is because there is no enforcement to make the schools do right. They never have to 'pay for their mistakes'. Even after due process, when a court order is made to tell schools what to do right, they STILL don't. State education departments are suppose to 'oversee' the districts, but in my experience and hearing others, the states are worse than the schools.

''This survey speaks to the very point that I'm trying to make: If your child does not succeed at school, its everyones fault.''

This is NOT everyones fault when the parent does all they can to follow the laws, and do all they can to make sure the schools follow the law. When the parent has done all they can and the school is still outright adversial, hostile, and violating laws, who's to blame??

You can go to www.schwablearning.org and sign up for free to read their parent to parent message board and see just how prevalent this is all around the country.

One situation that burns me up is my daughter put my grandson in the states only blind school. They told her he HAS to live their as residential because no child who lives out of their district can have transportation, so ALL children who live out of their district have to live there.
He was there 2 months before we found out the truth. He come home on weekends, school wouldn't even provide trans for that. He got very depressed, upset, separation issues.
We found out the state school laws state a child can not live there unless he lives 60 miles away from the school. There's no telling HOW many BLIND children are going thru this horror of being separated from their families.
When we confronted the school, they automatically said 'oh now he can live at home' but denied ever having him live their illegally.
There are parents with kids in this school who have to pack up and move their whole lives near this school so they can be near their children.
This is an outrage!
And YES I have informed the state dept. of education, but it's still happening.

[Jon Bennett]

Once again, I in no way, shape or form condone the actions of anyone that has mistreated a child. What I'm trying to prevent is an "us against them" mentality, but it seems as though the damage has already been done. Just as you all have had bad experiences with schools (as have others) teachers are saying the same thing about parents. You have one IEP meeting to attend, I for example have 16 (this year alone). I too can generalize parents based off of the actions of some, but what good does it do? I think its an outrage to blame people who have dedicated their lives to your children for the shortcomings of a system. Refusing to teach because of a learning difference? Just as you can go to Schwab Learning and find outraged parents, I can go into any teachers lounge and find burned out teachers fed up with unsupportive parents.

I'll bow out of this discussion here, because my goal to partner is obviously hopeless. Bottom line is the problem is much bigger than teaching and parenting in isolation and we can blame each other until somebody gets to bottom of why the system has failed to meet expectations.

[A.O.]

Why don't all parrots talk? Because the school didn't give them an AT evaluation.