Next Time Just Ask....

Behavior, behavior, behavior everything is a behavior in the minds of many school people. Sometimes my head could explode trying to explain to school people that if you simply asked some basic questions, you would discover that there are other non-behavioral explanations for actions of students. Failing to ask, everything appears to be a behavior. Here are some prime anecdotes that illustrate the point.

• Sometime ago I represented a 2nd grade student who had anxiety and OCD. He had a great sense of humor but his OCD was making his uptight teacher very on edge.  She berated him every time he opened his mouth and said something she considered "weird". By mid-Winter the boy told the teacher "one day you will regret having been so mean to me." The teacher became so concerned with this comment she actually thought about involving the police. Instead, mom came to pick him and took him home. On the way home, she asked what he meant by his comment. The boy's response was that he was prepared to run away because the teacher had been so mean to him all year.  When the teacher would never see him again "she would regret it." Of course no one ever asked what he meant when he uttered those fateful words.
• A High School student consistently refused to see the social worker. The school considered him obstinate and his refusal to be a behavioral issue. When I met with him, he told me that he did not want to go to the social worker because everyone could see him. When I asked him how that was since the sessions were behind closed doors, he explained that there was a window in the door that made privacy impossible. Of course no one asked why he would not go to see the social worker since they had pegged him as a hard and fast behavior problem child; no need to ask any questions.
• A young child with severe graphomotor issues would have a tantrum every day at about the same hour in the morning. His work was not adapted and he had no access to modified scissors or glue. When I asked the staff what event coincided with the episodes their response was "cutting,pasting and gluing;" all activities that were hard given his graphomotor issues. No need to delve into major FBA analysis asking simple questions sufficed. Asking the obvious questions and modifying the materials and expectations even a little bit solved the problem.
• Another High Schooler who was considered "defiant" because he showed up to class with no pen and no paper. A brief discussion with the child and a visit to his locker revealed that his possessions were in such disorder, that retrieving a pen was a daunting task that made bringing a pen practically Mission Impossible.  Again, assigning a label of behavior allowed staff to escape asking any additional questions and took them off the hook for further responsibilities for this child.

The lesson in all this is that the next time staff is making snap behavioral judgments at a minimum ask your son or daughter to explain their side of the story; the answers may surprise you.

Comments

[Sherry Hollis]

Some of the reasons for the so called 'behaviors' that children might not have the answer for is, they have a learning disability that they do not understand, sometimes don't even know they have it. They can not answer 'I don't want to read because I can't read'.
Their behavior happens as an effect of being so frustrated in not knowing how to do their school work.
Teachers of all people should be able to distinguish this.

[Scott FitzGibbon]

So, how can we as parents successfully get the school district managment to understand this kind of issue in a way that gets them to meaninglfully change the way of thinking of rank and file teachers and administrators?

[wendi damerval]

My son is 8 and suffers anxiety, adhd, ocd and odd. Since age 5 the Richland Washington School District has used isolation, seclution and restraint to control our son's behavior without our knowledge until we found out and took him out of school. They justify these practices by writing IEP's when the children are only 4 that include the permission to use the this force on small children. They call the written authority an Aversive Intervention Plan and a Behavior Intervention Plan. They tell the media that parents agree to them but the truth is the parents are not informed of what they expect to be able to do to the child once the parents sign them. Although our son's psychiatrist, behavior therapist and psychologist disagree with these practices on our son the school will not allow him in school unless we sign these plans and allow them to do this to our son as they see fit. We have refused and fought in Due Process and Mediation and have contacted our state Governor Christine Gregoire, Marie Cantwell, State Senator, Doc Hastings, State Representative, Terry Burgeson, OSPI, and many others. None have been willing to come forward to stop this use of force against handicap children.

[Sue]

This goes hand in hand with the extra scrutiny our kids get all the time. People in authority spend so much time focussing on the disability instead of the whole child. Because so many children with disablities are subject to de facto segregation from their non-disabled peers, they are already viewed as different, inferior, unpredictable, possbly dangerous. Remarks or behavior that may be ignored when a child who is labeled normal is the author, get "documented" when one of our kids say or do it.

[Araminta Self]

my son is having fine motor issues with his fingers manupulatign sissors is hard for him given his brain anomoly; he has particial Agensis of teh corpus callosum. He is also very smart and can sense when a teacher is BSing him; he is only in first grade! Anyway, I walked intoteh classroom one day to pick him up from school early and what I saw appauled me. He was curled upin a fetus position and crying unconsolably. His teacher was pretty much ignoring him because she was helping an other teacher's class who had joined her class with this same project. My son was begging her help, it was so pitiful. She flat out refused to help telling him he was being to emotional and she wanted him to calm down. This is when I entered. She suddely changed her tone when she saw me; I found it odd that she was helping studnets that were not her own but her own studnet she flat out refused to help or even ask another student to help him. I have been a thorn in her side for a while holdign her accountable lately for other issues. She went to him and then acted as if she was coaxing him. He was so fustrated by that time he told her to just leave him alone. It makes me sad to even write this. I feel so often that the teacher's accountabilty is often not questioned. I want this changed.