School

From the moment of Fox's first day of school until his last day when we finally gave up on it, it was nothing but endless frustration, stress, extreme anxiety and minor panic attacks. Well that was my experience anyway, the damage it did to Fox seems to be much worse.

At the end of Fox's grade 1 year we had our 2nd annual "please leave our school" meeting with the staff. They always have a spot available for Fox in an ASD class just waiting for us to give the OK. I had no intention of doing this, I remembered his JK year in such an environment and he was miserable, I knew that he enjoyed going to our local school even if they were pulling him from the class a lot for being too noisy or rambunctious or whatever the reason, he still liked it. He loved his EA, she really understood him and was patient and respectful to him and had put in the effort to learn his various modes of communication limited though they were. She never got angry with him when he acted out or ran away or got aggressive so he trusted her and they had a great relationship. Too great apparently. We were told that he would have to have a new EA the next year because they didn't want Fox to be too attached to his EAs. The EA we heard it was going to be did not have a good relationship with Fox, in fact Fox panicked whenever they were together and went on a rampage destroying rooms and general behaviour that always comes out in times of extreme anxiety. I was tired of Fox being in a place that so clearly didn't want him there, I wondered how much of this he could feel and how much of these conversations were happening in his presence. So we went and checked out this ASD class. And much to my shock I didn't hate it. The teacher seemed to really care about her students, the class seemed calm, she even told me that she specialized in literacy development and had some ideas on how we could teach Fox to read. We had trouble deciding and went back 3 times to observe before we finally decided to do it. 

HUGE mistake. Fast forward to the new school year, completely new teacher and staff in the classroom. New teacher not interested in learning about Fox before class starts. Alarm bells were ringing off the hook in my head at this point but we were committed so we sent him anyways. It did not take long for it to all fall apart. He was more stressed then I have ever seen him, he was literally screaming himself to sleep at night. He was so aggressive and out of control, he was just in a panic all the time. We couldn't take him anywhere, he couldn't tolerate being in a store or anywhere with people he would just start screaming, in the car he wouldn't keep his seat belt on and once I got a lock for it he would then just attack his sister in the car. I mean there was much more but you have to wonder what could drive a kid to this, where he's so stressed out that he has lost complete control. Well according to the school he was fine, nothing was wrong, peachy keen jelly bean. I asked to come in and observe and they did not want me to do that, it actually took 2 weeks of persistence for them to finally let me in. I also found out during this time that they had him on a leash because I told them he was a potential flight risk, his teacher told me that he never tried to run, but yet they still walked him around like their little pet dog. Anyways I'm started to feel annoyed just thinking about this, so here is an excerpt of an email I wrote about our visit to observe him in his class. We were there for about 2 hours and it was over an hour before he even noticed we were there, he was just so zoned out, so mentally exhausted to even see us. 

Then it was time for one-on-one learning where they took him to a small room down the hall. In here he had to do 3 learning activities to earn time on the little trampoline. They used a token board. He was doing the learning activities ok, in that he knew how to do them because they were simply matching shapes and colours, very basic stuff. Everytime he matched a colour his EA asked what colour is it, and he would sign it and she would make him try to say it. I must have heard the phrase what colour is it 50 times. She was not accepting his signs as valid communication unless he verbalized, all the while his iPad is turned off and sitting on the corner of the table. At some point she must have realized we probably wanted to see her use the ipad so she asked him to find different colours on the ipad, find red, find black, etc. It was not being used for communication at all, it was a demand based task. After he did his 3 activities he got a break to jump on the trampoline, but she talked to him the whole time, raise your hands, let's count to 10, not a true break. He had clearly had enough at this point, but she brought our 3 more file folder games. She was very insistent that he do them all, and the behaviors started. At one point he got up, pushed his chair into the corner and then flipped it upside down. The EA asked me if he was doing it for attention seeking and I told her that he has been trying to tell her that he's had enough and is done

We had made a list of things we wanted to see changed, arranged a meeting with school staff, tried to put a plan together of how to move forward. But then the thought of sending him into that classroom again just made me feel so sick. I just couldn't do it to him anymore, I deeply regret ever doing it at all. So that was his last day of school and we've been homeschooling since. It took months and months to get over this trauma to the point where he could ride in a car again and go in buildings and be around people again. Way longer then he actually spent in that school. It's horrifying that he went through this.

Now that he can communicate with me I have been able to discuss this a bit with him. He was showing some anxiety this summer whenever his sister would talk about going to school and starting grade 1. When I asked him what was wrong he spelled "I AM AFRAID OF GOING TO SCHOOL". I asked what scares him about school he said "BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE MEAN AND ANGRY".

There has been a few times where he has asked me if he's going to go to school just to hear me say no.

One day I asked him if he could change something about schools to make them better for him what would he change, he said "I WOULD CHANGE HOW SCHOOLS HAVE NO LEARNING AND NO ACTION ABOUT SAFETY OF PEOPLE LIKE ME." When I asked him what the second part means he said "I DID NOT ALWAYS FEEL SAFE BECAUSE PEOPLE WERE NEVER NICE TO ME".

This gave me horrible flashbacks to his teacher telling me that he responds well to a firm voice. Makes me wonder how firm this voice was and how often it came out.

I asked him what we should name our homeschool and he said "MY LEARNING SCHOOL".

So my son's experience with special education is that he didn't learn anything except that school is a scary place where people are mean. Awesome.

After reading Horton Hatches an Egg together we talked about how Horton had to be very patient but he was rewarded in the end. Learning takes a long time just like hatching an egg, but there is a great reward for your patience in the end. I asked him what that reward is, he said "TO KNOW ABOUT LOTS OF THINGS AND TO UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER". Is the reward worth the effort "YES".

I'm going to end this now because it makes me so angry and I'm trying to let it go. So here is Fox's guide to happiness:

ALWAYS HEAR HAPPY THOUGHTS AND HAPINESS LOOKS FOR YOU. NEVER SEE SAD THOUGHTS AND YOU WILL BE HAPPY ALWAYS. 

Hopefully this positive attitude helped him through the hard times and he's able to find some peace too.