I just got off the phone with my son’s teacher, and I don’t know whether to laugh, cry or just yell at her. She said that my son was given cafeteria duty as a punishment instead of being suspended for the rest of the school year, and that I should have a “strict verbal exchange about his poor upper social skills.” His crime? My son, who is in a special(but very poorly funded) school program for students who have learning disabilities, held out a toy totem pole and made a sound like he imagined a laser would make while waiting for the school bus to take him home.
The students at this school have already been warned not to discuss video games on school property, even during recess, “because a passerby might not know that they were talking about a game when they talk about how tobeat bosses on the different game levels, and think that they really are plotting to detroy real people!”(her exact words.)
Of course my son has difficulty with his upper social skills, you self-righteous moron.He is in your shitty little castoff program because he has Asberger’s Syndrome! The fact that he has any social skills at all is a fucking miracle, and your moving his fucking program to a different fucking school every fucking year so that he has to fucking relearn how to fucking socialize with a whole new fucking set of fucking rules is a major fucking cause of his fucking “poor upper social skills”!
I now have to try to repair the damage she has done to my son, who was ashamed to give me the note she sent home with him, and explain to him why he was punished.
Fuck.
Fucking hell. It’s worse than I thought. My stepson starts school next year, and I suspect this is the sort of crap I’ll be dealing with. “Poor upper social skills”? My arse. He was being a little boy. I grew up with toy guns, and Wile E Coyote trying to drop anvils on Roadrunner’s head, and I think I’ve hopefully managed to contain any resulting “poor upper fucking social skills” to the occasional Pit rant.
This shit makes me really fucking angry. I’m bloody disgusted. Best wishes to you Czarcasm. Go in there and stir 'em up.
Wow. This is way, way, way over the top. I’m sorry you and your son have to go through this and that we live in a world where anyone in school administration could be this short sighted and stupid.
Holy shit… That’s just plain idiotic. They threatened suspension for pretending something was some laser gun?? And I thought it was getting bad in my high school senior year. Sheesh.
They are trying to impose something that is not human or normal on little kids. Making “laser” sounds is NORMAL for a kid. NORMAL. Trying to supress every normal kid-like noise or action in these children is ABNORMAL and NOT HUMAN. Boy, this stuff pisses me off.
My parents graduated from South Boston High School in 1974, and occasionally remark how glad they are that they got out of school before the forced bussing began. (Links aplenty abound … look 'em up, if you don’t know.)
I was in my senior year of high school (at a private school, thank God) the year of the Columbine shootings, and I’m glad I got out of school before all this started. (My first year in university was the first time the university had to cancel exams for a bomb threat … 3+ exams are now reschduled each exam due to threats. So I haven’t avoided “the crazy times” completely…)
Czarcasm, I feel for you and your son. You don’t deserve this [checks forum location] shit. Good luck to you in your battle(s) with the administration. I note your location, and sometimes wonder if it’s really “Pre” ?
If the program is so horrible why don’t you do what’s best for your son and move somewhere where they have a program to support his needs.
No question the school made a knee-jerk idiotic decision but instead of willfully putting your son into an unsupportive program why don’t you do something about it.
When it comes to the welfare of your children there really are no excuses. Ie. Job, location, whatever.
I’ve just come back from reading the OP to a friend of mine who has Asbergers, and who is the parent of an autistic child in turn. Once she finished snarling over the situation you’re in, Czarcasm, she suggested perhaps consulting anti-discrimination laws where you live, and contacting the local autistic association for advocacy.
The same crap happens here in New Zealand, unfortunately, with children like my friend’s and yours slapped on the head with “anti-social” labels, teachers saying they “can’t cope” with the children, that they’re “difficult”.
The only, unrealistic, option in many cases seems to be home schooling. These days, in these economic times, who can always afford to do that? All in all, the situation is very, very wrong.
Your son has Asberger’s Syndrome? Wasn’t there someone on the research team they could have named this after whose name wasn’t ass-burger? Christ, as if the kid doesn’t have enough problems!
So, does your son’s school send the kid in a wheelchair home with a note for not running laps in PE? Give the deaf kids detention for not listening in class?
If all he did was make a sound effect, I’d confront the teacher and demand an explanation of how this was interpreted as discussion of video games; sounds to me like this problem existed entirely in the mind of the teacher.
And ditto what yosemitebabe - schoolchildren accompany their actions with sound effects - it’s normal.
And the teacher in the OP is a world-class lackwit. The whole business about not even discussing video games on school property is something I’ve never heard of before…it’s hard to believe that school officials have become that soft-brained.
Tell your son he did nothing wrong. It’s just that some of the grownups at school haven’t yet developed “next-level thinking.”
Czarcasm, my sympathies entirely. Having been a teacher for a long time, I can really understand how the skipping from school to school each year is horrible for your son. Part of the challenge for a special needs student is developing a routine, behaving in the way that is expected by the teacher (and this would change every year)! Yikes.
Not to defend the teacher (because I think she sounds unprofessional and inarticulate, from your description), but a lot of teachers are forced to make and enforce really far out rules because of school shootings and bullying. It’s totally illogical and way over the top. So sorry your son is suffering because of it.
More zero tolerance bullshit. I hate the idea of zero tolerance, and I think that after the school shooting crap dies down, all students affected by it should be paid reparations. And preferably, coming out of the coffers of the schools that had the shootings, as it was their blindness that caused them in the first place.
