Take A Pill

It's been a while since I've written. A lot has happened lately.

I'm so frustrated and unhappy. Nathan was suspended. Again. He hit another child with a piece of paper. They restrained him. Four adults picked him up and carried him by his hands and feet into a small, out of the way room. Once in there, they crossed his arms across his chest, one adult holding each arm, the principal holding his feet (and he has a previously broken toe), and a fourth adult holding his upper arms from behind. During all of this, they kept telling him, "You're just trying to put on a show for the other kids." By the time I got there, Nathan looked devastated, miserable, and heartsick. (Me too.) I feel like this restraint is being used as a punishment, and has nothing to do with safety. Otherwise, why would they need to restrain him AFTER they had gotten him out of the classroom and out of the hallway, and away from all the other people? And why reprimand him while he is being restrained, as if he had any control, as if he were doing this for attention? They've humiliated him, judged him, restrained him unnecessarily, and traumatized him. For what? Because it makes THEM feel better to do so? What the hell kind of effect is this going to have on him??I've been talking to Easter Seals a lot, and there is a woman there who has been very helpful. I called and left a message for her when I was going to get Nathan, and told her that he was being sent home from school, and that he'd been restrained again. She called me back after I got home. Thank God. She talked to me for a long time, before we went to the IEP meeting. She helped enormously. Then she met me at the school for the IEP meeting later in the afternoon.That IEP meeting was a real treat.The first thing that happened was that they told me they couldn't get a new psychologist. At least they didn't try to bring the old one back in this time. But now, because they don't have a psychologist, they didn't do a functional behavior analysis. Oh great.Then the meeting starts, and it was off to a hell of a start, when the teacher begins by informing us that all of the children in the class are afraid of my son. They're scared to be in the same class with him. Then she tells us that one little girl came up to her crying, saying she is so afraid to be in the same room with my son. Oh yes, and there were parents confronting her, also afraid to have their children in the same class with my son. The teacher is afraid, too. Just what every parent wants to hear about their child.They said, "right now, this is crisis mode."After that, the meeting turned to me, and what exactly had I done in regards to Nathan's medication. They had all kinds of little charts to show us how often Nathan melts down, and the duration of those meltdowns. There didn't appear to be any kind of pattern, according to the special ed teacher. She also had a chart to say what supposedely triggered the meltdowns, what happened before, what happened afterwards. Nice little visuals, that seemed to indicate that there is no regular pattern and no consistant trigger, and really offered no answers at all.The school nurse, bless her heart, said she doubts Nathan has ADHD. ROFL! That was the one thing at the meeting that I found fascinating, since the school had insisted, against the advice of the pediatrician, against our best judgement as his parents, and in contrast to their own test results that proved that Nathan definately did NOT have ADHD, that Nathan had to be medicated for ADHD or be expelled. I bet the rest of the IEP team wanted to strangle her for that little slip of honesty. I've never been convinced that he had it.They pointed out that the meds worked before, that Nathan did better last year. Yeah, he sure did. But then he had a teacher who was familiar with autism! No, they don't buy the fact that Nathan's success was due to people understaning his issues and how to deal with them, surely his success was medicinal. Better "up" those drugs, increase their dosage. Ignore the fact that the drugs give him horrible headaches, and that the drugs destroy his appetite, and that the drugs cause heart palpatations and chest pains. Drugs are the answer. It doesn't even matter that the drugs he was taking are for attention deficit, not to reduce or eliminate meltdowns. When this is pointed out, then they say they want DIFFERENT drugs. Sure...when ya find that magic little drug that cures autism, you just let me know, okay?When I said that the ADHD drugs could be aggravating the situation, because you're giving a kid who is already overwhelmed by his sensory issues a stimulant, his OT piped up and told me that she isn't convinced that Nathan's sensory issues are the problem. Huh?? You are talking about my son, right? The one who can't sleep in light? The one who could NEVER sleep in a car? The one who can't eat anything warmer than lukewarm because it burns? The one who screams if you get water on his face? The one who doesn't seem to feel the pain of an ear infection, even though it has burst his eardrum? The one who can't eat flavors he loves if the texture isn't right? The one who can't handle unexpected touch? Or loud noise? Or the intolerable volume of muzak? My kid? Oh, she's not denying that he might have some sensory issues, but they don't explain his meltdowns because the meltdowns are erratic, and the sensory stimulation should be static, unchanging from day to day. Fascinating. I had no idea that a public school had such consistancy. I'll have to learn their secret. But I guess this all just indicates that Nathan really doesn't have any kinds of disabilities. He just needs a good swift kick in the ass, right? (The former principal told me that a few years ago.) I found out that they are now trying to get more para minutes for Nathan - more aide time (or time with an adult). This shocked me, because they were incredibly resistant to this last spring. Para minutes are like gold. Too few paras, and too expensive. I had asked for this right in the beginning, and was told that they wouldn't ask the board of ed for para minutes because "I'm not putting my neck on the chopping block." It's funny how my opinions and suggestions always seem to be ignored, until everything goes to hell that is.I guess for now, they are going to try a new behaivor modifier. A little color chart, where you go from green to yellow to orange to red, as your day goes from good to bad. Sort of like the terrorism alerts that go from green to red. (Ironic, isn't it? That they want to use a terrorism alert to indicate how good or bad Nathan's behavior is?) Sigh. Yes, I know this is a typical chart used all the time, and it wasn't deliberate that it is similar to the terrorism threat. It still just seemed quite ironic to me.Most of the rest of the meeting seemed to boil down to the woman from Easter Seals trying to get them to do a functional behavior analysis, and them not commiting to it. They also mentioned that if this behavior isn't brought under control, that they would consider putting him in a self-contained classroom (not in mainstream classes). Once again, we feel like they are going to pressure us, and if we don't medicate Nathan, they will pursue this route. And it seems like it is all up to us, to fix the problem. It doesn't matter that this behavior seems to mostly happen at school, and that we don't even experience the kinds of melt downs they do, and we don't have a clue why his behavior is so different there, and we don't know what to do about it. If we don't fix it, they are going to push to have him pulled out of mainstream classes, and the only 'fix' they will accept is pharmaceutical. The woman from Easter Seals told us we didn't have to worry about this, that there is a process that needs to be followed, and it wouldn't just happen overnight. But it still bothers us, because we know that the school just wants him out of there. They don't want him. They don't like him. Everybody is afraid of him. Being around him "is like trying to walk around landmines."I just want to protect my baby from these people. I hate that it comes down to this. My son isn't a monster. He just needs the right tools to figure out when he's getting overwhelmed and the tools to help him de-escalate himself. He isn't intentionally bad. He doesn't want to hurt anyone. But he has no control. And no one seems to know how to teach him this control. I don't know what I would have done, had the woman from Easter Seals not been there. She was fabulous. And I found it amusing that she seemed to be leading the meeting a lot of the time. She called them to task a lot, too, which I loved.Right now I just wish I could bundle up my baby and run for the hills.