Not done (aka: dangerously blogging while angry)

An addition to my writing of a few minutes ago. I just read the comments on the news cast website, and I am all the more horrified. Here is my most recent post on my message board.

Post Four: You know, the comments on the news video...VOMIT! More parent blaming for the child with the disability...more wah, wah, we adults lose it because we aren't allowed to discipline and we have no idea how else to relate to children with disabilities other than to discipline (punish) them into submission. More, no one understands how bad it is for teachers and how this child is surely the devil himself.

Not to mention more excusing the teacher's behavior with the notion that teachers are overworked and underpaid. BELIEVE ME. My wife was a preschool teacher, the most overworked and underpaid of them all. And at one point in a preschool with HUGE discipline issues. But being overworked and underpaid still is not a justification for abuse of a child. It is just not.

I appreciated the person who commented, "Did she really think she could bully him into better behaviour?" Well, given the way we have historically misunderstood and mistreated people with disabilities, it is possible she thought she could. But she was WRONG (and unprofessional and abusive).

Someone commented on the news cast website:
"The teacher explained that this student had been a major disruption in her classroom all year: yelling, touching and bothering others, rolling around on the floor, etc."

All of these are actually types of behavioral communication that make sense for a child with aspergers. It is a discipline issue until the teacher figures out what the child is trying to communicate and responds appropriately. The behavior will stop when the need is met. The child is trying to regulate his neurological system. The child is trying to communicate with other children when words fail him. The child is trying to respond to his environment when it overwhelms him. That's hard work, but all this he has had to do all year under the duress of this emotionally unsafe classroom environment.

I just can't get over it.

Saying (as one person did in their comments) "the teacher explained that this student had been a major disruption in her classroom all year: yelling, touching and bothering others, rolling around on the floor, etc." about a child getting evaluated for aspergers is like saying about a child being evaluated for visual impairment: "the teacher explained that this student had been a major disruption in her classroom all year: running right up to the chalk board while the teacher was writing, running and bumping into other students, putting her hands on the walls when walking down the hall, sometimes even causing other students' artwork to fall."