The Floating Nightmare

[Master_Wang-Ka]

That’s right, you wretched little fuck. Keep dancing.

I oonched the car another few inches backwards, out of my parking spot, and hit the brakes. It was dark enough that I could see the red brake light shining off the little bastard’s face, there in my rear-view mirror.

He didn’t take the hint. He gleefully stayed right where he was, daring me to run him down. He laughed, stuck his tongue out, and kept doing his little happy dance, quite secure in the knowledge that I wouldn’t dare just hit the accelerator and turn his seven-year-old ass into imp pate, right there in the grocery store parking lot.

His mother suddenly appeared in my rearview. She grabbed him by the arm and made angry faces and mommy noises, and yanked her idiot spawn clear of my rearview. She reappeared briefly, mouthed “sorry” at me, and vanished again.

I craned my neck, checked behind me, just to be safe. Nobody there. I backed out of the parking spot and drove home.

The little fuck was right, of course. I wouldn’t have run him down under any circumstances. I don’t harm children. I don’t. That’s my job, actually. Not harming children. I keep them safe, even when they seek to harm others, or even themselves. I teach them the things a human needs to know in America, whether they want to learn it or not. And I exercise patience with them, *no matter what * kind of insane shit they say or do.

No harm. Not even harsh language. This is what I do, you see. Because every child, EVERY child, has a right to a free, appropriate public education. The President says so. Even if your child is a rotten little poison maniac who should be taken out and shot for the good of society.

And I’m the one the children have a right to. Because I am mighty, you see. I have endless patience, the wisdom of saints, the education of savants, the beatitude of the angels, and a personality that makes Santa Claus look like Darth Vader.

That’s all bullshit, of course. All I really have is a firm working knowledge of psychology and human nature, and state certifications in a variety of educational fields. It makes me the ideal person to lock up with your insane children. Not only can I teach them any subject (often against their will), but I will only laugh when they call me things that they wouldn’t have put in *The Exorcist’s * shooting script, or when they spit at me, fling furniture around, or try to remove their own eyes.

Or mine, for that matter.

I’m a good actor, I suppose. And an even better liar. And I suppose I do have a modicum of patience. It keeps me from listening to the savage cries that come from the far-back reptile brain inside my skull, the calls of rhyme, reason, and common sense that insist that the only sane thing to do right now is to find an antelope femur and pound the little bastards’ heads into paste for the sake of the species’ gene pool.

The little bastard at the grocery store didn’t know this, of course. He simply found himself in a position of power over an adult, and immediately, impulsively, chose to be a dick about it. It’s okay, really. I see a lot of that at work.

But the little boy in the grocery store didn’t know about the day I’d had… or about the Floating Nightmare.

Today was the last day of Teacher Inservice before the school year starts, next Monday. All week, I’ve been trying to find out what my situation is. Am I going to have kids in my self-contained class unit, or will I be roaming the building, working with my kids as they attend regular classes? Or both?

Naturally, no one could or would give me a straight answer. Everyone’s trying to tie up their workload and salvage as much of the weekend as possible, while knowing they’re going to be back on Saturday, to maybe get a little ahead on the paperwork before it all hits the fan…

…when the Facilitator puts his hand on my shoulder. “Bad news,” he said. “They’re sending you a Floating Nightmare.”

“Crap,” I said. “Where from? What grade? Diagnosis? Procedures? Requirements?”

“He’s coming from East Central. No idea about the rest. The secretary’s on the horn with his old school, trying to get some details. Scuttlebutt marks him as a real desk-flinger, though.”

So… you ask… what is a Floating Nightmare?

PICK ONE FROM COLUMN A, ONE FROM COLUMN B, AND AT LEAST TWO FROM COLUMN C.

(A) The CHILD
*Bipolar, medicated
*Bipolar, unmedicated
*Autistic but undiagnosed
*ADHD, unmedicated
*Undiagnosed, but major family issues of some sort
*Nothing wrong with him, he’s just a rotten little monster
*Any of a hundred other ugly possibilities
(B) The PARENT(s)
*In major denial about their kid’s problem
*Not in denial, but hoping problem will go away
*Not in denial, but assuming the SCHOOL can somehow make problem go away
*Not in denial, but trying to figure a way to make the school pay for treatment
*May or may not be in denial, but they spoil the little monster rotten
*No parents, kid in foster care
*Parents crazier than the kid is

(C) The BEHAVIOR PROBLEM
*Near-total lack of impulse control
*Berserk temper
*Random major psychiatric problem (OCD, schizophrenia, etc.)
*Spitting
*Compulsive use of foul language
*Combative
*Shrieks and howls from time to time for no apparent reason
*Compulsive masturbation, regardless of time or place
*hell, make up your own and insert here

Now, you’ll see, after you’ve assembled your own Precious Li’l Darlin’ out of the components above, that you have yourself quite a handful, don’cha think?

But that’s okay. That’s what I do. That’s what I’m for. Give me your precious, and I’ll do the best I can with him.

…which brings us to the Floating Nightmare.

You see… most people don’t like to yank their kids out of schools. Most rational folks, anyway. Many of us even turn down opportunities because it would mean uprooting the family and going somewhere new and uncertain, and we want the kids to finish school in one place, right?

But the parents you’ll find on Column B ain’t like that.

The parents of Column B, now, they’ve had their little darling for a while now, and they’ve been to their share of IEP meetings. They know their rights. They know how the system works. They’ve learned something of human psychology themselves, by now.

And if School A does not make them happy… or insists on payment for the computers their child smashed… or wants to press charges… or finally finds grounds to expel the little fuck…

…well, there’s always School B. We just need to move into the district. Or rent an apartment there. Or send him to live with Granny, there. Or perhaps just rent a post office box there, if we think we can get away with it. And then we can start all over again, fresh, with a new school!

And it starts all over again in a new school. Depending on the parents and the kid, though, the situation itself does not change, and soon reaches the same critical mass it did at the last school.

And the parents again pull up stakes, and drift to yet another school district. Their child has become a Floating Nightmare, a hideous horror who drops into your classroom out of nowhere, screws your world up beyond recognition, and is then plucked away, randomly, without regard to rhyme or reason, and taken elsewhere, to plague your counterpart at some other school district.

My old mentor told me about Floating Nightmares. He said that the Special Ed personnel at every campus within fifty miles generally kept in touch about such things. Some parents even ran them through regular moving cycles, which meant that a particular Floating Nightmare could *come back * every third or fourth year.

I didn’t believe him at the time. What kind of sane parent would put his kid in a new school twice a year, for years on end? Excepting military, who often don’t have a choice, and who have programs to deal with this.

I should have known better. I worked psychiatric for more than a decade. Not all parents are sane. That’s how their kids got that way, quite often.

But it’s okay. The weekend is here. And on Monday, when the child arrives in my classroom for his first day at the new school, I will be there to ease his transitions, to help him along, to teach him what I can, and to keep the other children safe from his wrath.

That’s who I am. That’s what I do.

As I pulled out of the parking lot, I saw Mommy berate her little dancing fool, as she dragged him towards their car. Seeing that defused a lot of my burning feelings; maybe the kid made a bad call, but as long as parents are willing to step in and take responsibility, there’s hope.

But I hope I’m there when he tries that dancing stunt behind the car of a particularly put-upon postal worker who just had the day from Hell.

Perhaps, if my own day hasn’t been too rough, I’ll have the energy and swiftness to save the little monster…

[Equipoise]

You are lucky. Some parents would have given you the finger for daring to want to put your car where their precious child is when the child doesn’t happen to be done with where he wants to be.

You are a good human, realistic and understandable thoughts of some children aside. Thank you for what you do.

[Master_Wang-Ka]

@Equipoise

You are lucky. Some parents would have given you the finger for daring to want to put your car where their precious child is when the child doesn’t happen to be done with where he wants to be.

You are a good human, realistic and understandable thoughts of some children aside. Thank you for what you do.

Thank you. And you are, of course, quite correct in your observations.

I put up with a lot of that at work, too. Or, as one of my bosses put it, “Every day at three-thirty, we have to send them home to the people who screwed them up in the first place.”

[InternetLegend]

So there’s a name for them! My daughter’s third-grade classroom had two of these little monsters in it. When I met the mother of the one and the therapeutic foster mother of the other, I understood some of where the kids came from, but that didn’t help my kid or the other 25 kids who were manageable and ready to learn get a decent education that year.

My daughter’s in eighth grade now, and I believe she’s finally overcome all the handicaps she got from being in a barely controlled madhouse instead of a classroom that year.

[Master_Wang-Ka]

@InternetLegend

So there’s a name for them!

Not quite. The phrase “floating nightmare” refers specifically to a child so out-of-control that his parents routinely move him from school to school for one reason or another.

Any school district is quite capable of producing its own homegrown nightmares as well. And many, due to policy or law, depending on where they are, have no choice but to put them in the same classroom with ordinary non-special-needs kids, where the berserker promptly attempts to derail any actual education taking place.

Actually, I find that bitching about it here helps, quite a bit. Makes me feel more like I can actually go back in there and try to teach the little monsters…

[Rhubarb]

I salute you sir. You are truly a better man than I, at least in this respect.

A few years ago, I had the experience of sitting in on a staff budget meeting at a school district. I was doing some re-programming of the school district’s energy management system and the server for the system was located in the board room. BTW, this was a relatively small, mostly rural school district.

Most of the meeting was pretty mundane - cost of new chairs in teacher’s lounge, projected costs of roof repairs, receipts from soda machines, higher than budgeted cost of erasers and chalk, yadda, yadda, yadda.

But when the Special Needs principal’s turn came to speak, the topics were - cost to repair X number of doors, windows and walls; cost of medical treatment for the teachers due to bites, bruises and other injuries; report from legal firm on status of rape case brought by parents of one student against another student - saying their daughter was not mentallly capable of giving consent - and the counter rape charge being brought by the other student’s parents against the first because witnesses report that she initiated the act; other various and sundry costs mostly associated with dealing with the little darlings.

She always called the children “little darlings”, but it was clear from tone and context that she meant something quite different. The parents of the “little darlings” were simply referred to as “cretinous, subhuman, hell-spawned, meth-cooking crackheads”. Or something like that - I paraphrase.

The fact that you deal with this not only willingly, but with an apparent good humor - well, it earns MY respect. Thank you sir. If I wore a hat, I would doff it in your direction.

[Ivan-Osokin]

<unlurk>

Master Wang Ka - welcome back/home.

If you don’t mind a question - what are your feelings on your friend’s quote about returning the kids to the people that “screwed them up in the first place?” A good friend of mine used to work what would seem to be a similar job and has previosly said something very similar to me.

I really have nothing else to add here other than stating that I’ve loved your threads in the past and that I salute you for the work you’ve been doing. Per the above mentioned friend - it is both simultaneously very satisfying and taxing. This seems sorta shallow and unimportant in light of that, but I’m glad to see you posting again.

</unlurk>

[Tracy_Lord]

My mother teaches special ed/needs elementary school, and I hear stories like yours all the time at home. (Well, fortunately not all the time.) Thanks for everything you do. It really is appreciated.

[Vlad_Igor]

On behalf of my ADHD/Aspergers son, thank you for your patience, willingness and perseverence. By the grace of God, he’s starting 6th grade in a week in a school where the staff is willing to work with us and him so that actually learns something constructive.

Vlad/Igor

[Master_Wang-Ka]

@Ivan-Osokin

If you don’t mind a question - what are your feelings on your friend’s quote about returning the kids to the people that “screwed them up in the first place?” A good friend of mine used to work what would seem to be a similar job and has previosly said something very similar to me.

It’s kind of like working fast food, Ivan. You can have a hundred fine, upstanding customers who pay their bill and take their food, but the one you REMEMBER is the one who pitched a fit because you don’t serve beer or his credit card was declined or something you couldn’t help or fix and wasn’t your fault anyway, you know?

Asperger’s Syndrome, for example. This can sometimes lead to behavior problems that the average teacher just isn’t equipped to deal with in the regular classroom. This leaves the parent a variety of options. These are only three of those options:

1. The parents become extremely savvy about Asperger’s and behaviorist theory, and can work with the teacher, the shrink, and the administrators VERY effectively in such a way as to create a behavior mod program for the child which will eventually result in the child being able to attend mainstream classes with success!

2. The parents are in denial about their child’s “problem” and insist that the child be dealt with in the mainstream classroom.

3. The parents are aware of the problem, but rather than become involved in the solution, insist that the school deal with it, and refuse to implement any techniques or solutions in the home.

You can, naturally, see where parents #2 and #3 would be harder to work with than parents #1.

A better example, perhaps, would be a kid I worked with last year. We’ll call him Bob. His parents transferred him in from another school, and I anticipated a Floating Nightmare. He was not. His sole behavior problem lay in that he did not want to finish his assignments, and that he wanted to bargain for rewards – “If I do my work for the first half of the day, would you buy me a soda for lunch?”

This aroused my suspicion. Plainly, this kid had been working for rewards in the past, and was savvy about it. HE suggested rewards before I even got around to it. I gave him some rope, so to speak, and worked with him for two months, and noted that he did not seem to have ANY behavior problems, although when I asked him about it, he spoke at length about tearing up classrooms, attacking people, and generally tearing up jack.

Eventually, we held a meeting on him. No one who worked with him had noted any behavior problems at all. He was polite, civilized, and aside from his hinting about rewards, he was a pretty personable kid.

So we discontinued him and put him in some mainstream classes.

His parents FREAKED, and insisted on an emergency meeting to put him back in self-contained. Their rationale: he couldn’t handle mainstream. It would cause Bob to have migraines, which would eventually cause him to go berserk and tear up the house. This had always happened in the past, and they were prepared to stand on Bob’s right to his own private teacher.

Probably the crowning moment was when Mom howled about the work little Bob could not do because of his headaches. They got quite snitty when I pulled out work samples, good ones, that Bob had done for me; apparently, Orange Crush taken internally prevents migraines.

We politely declined. They threatened to sue. We said “Go ahead.” The evidence at hand suggested that he had no disabilities that we could find.

In mainstream classes, Bob put his head down, did no work, and refused to acknowledge his teachers or classmates. His grades plummeted. We wound up having another meeting when the parents returned with a note from a doctor, declaring that Bob was indeed mentally ill and required private tutoring at the school’s expense. While the issue was argued out, they gave him back to me, where he proceeded to act rather peculiar, but was more or less compliant, and began hinting about rewards again.

A week later, he was gone; his parents had moved to another, nearby school district, and had begun the process all over again.

My professional opinion: the kid was manipulating his parents in order to be placed in special ed classes, where the work was easier and grownups would give you rewards and treats for doing less work than you’d have to do in a mainstream class anyway. He had his parents trained pretty well, too. Then again, ghod knows what kind of craziness he was doing to them at home.

Meanwhile, he was recieving a wildly substandard education, particularly considering he changed schools at least twice a year.

This is just one example. I could go on about others. Especially fun are the physical abuse/sexual abuse cases, particularly when the kid goes back to the people who abused him due to lack of evidence. Oh, yes, you see some very interesting behavior when that happens.

This is not all inclusive. I deal with hordes of perfectly ordinary parents all the time, parents as good and fit as any I could name, parents who bend over backwards to see to it that their child has as good an education as he can get, and who work with us to maximize the kid’s potential.

But the turds do tend to stick out in one’s memory. It’s only natural. Hence, “every day at three thirty, we get to send them back to the people who screwed them up in the first place.” What my boss meant was “don’t take yourself too seriously, and don’t overinvest yourself in what we’re doing; fight your battles as best you can, and take pride in what victories you can drag from the jaws of the inevitable.”

It wasn’t a bad sentiment. Some kids are downright Sisyphean in their ability to forget what you taught them yesterday…

[Lissa]

@Master Wang-Ka

2. The parents are in denial about their child’s “problem” and insist that the child be dealt with in the mainstream classroom.

God, this is cruel. I only saw this from the student side when I was in public school, but I think even as a kid I could have told you this was a Bad Idea. Kids can smell “weakness” a mile away.

There was a boy in our class who was a little slow and had discipline problems. I never knew at the time why he was put in the “normal” classes, but now as I read these posts, I can guess. The poor kid suffered the torments of the damned. The other kids were delighted to have a “stupid and crazy” punching bag and would slyly torment him into going into an uncontrollable rage.

[Master_Wang-Ka]

Ultimately, mainstreaming is the goal for every child.

But some of 'em ain’t ready for it.

[SnakesCatLady]

@Master Wang-Ka

Ultimately, mainstreaming is the goal for every child.

But some of 'em ain’t ready for it.

I understand why parents want their children mainstreamed. I also understand why the parents of the other children are sometimes against it.

When Mr. SCL was in the Reserves, he was sent to teach a CPR class to a high school ROTC class. There were about 25 students in the class. His report: 15 students were interested in the subject and eager to learn. 7 students didn’t really give a shit one way or the other, but didn’t cause any trouble. 1 student didn’t want to learn anything and totally ignored him. 2 students didn’t want to learn anything and actively went out of their way to prevent anyone else from learning anything - to the point of simulating sex with the resusitation (sp?) doll.

Master Wang-Ka - you have my utmost respect and my thanks. I don’t have children, but most of my friends do, and I appreciate what you are doing to make the world they will live in as adults a bit of a better place.

[FlyingRamenMonster]

Ha. I think I was one of those. I moved a lot and went to 7 different primary schools and screamed at everyone and scared everyone - according to old classmates, anyway. I don’t remember acting particularly out of line. I’m pretty sure the only thing that kept me from getting suspended/expelled was my overdeveloped fear of authority, which restricted my “disruptive behaviour” to screaming a lot.

Anyway, from 4th grade to the end of primary school I had a series of teachers who, instead of being THE ENEMY like in previous grades, somehow managed to look past my obnoxious turd-like behaviour and help me become a decent human being. I’m pretty grateful for this. It was also nice to have someone on my side when none of my peers were. So thank you for what you’re doing, Wang-Ka. Your Floating Nightmares will remember you. Maybe. Or maybe they’ll key your car.

[Master_Wang-Ka]

@FlyingRamenMonster

Ha. I think I was one of those. I moved a lot and went to 7 different primary schools and screamed at everyone and scared everyone - according to old classmates, anyway. I don’t remember acting particularly out of line. I’m pretty sure the only thing that kept me from getting suspended/expelled was my overdeveloped fear of authority, which restricted my “disruptive behaviour” to screaming a lot.

Perhaps, but it seems doubtful. If you had any fear of authority at all, you just don’t qualify. That is, unless you were hyperactive and had the impulse control of a rabid ferret on crack.

A true Floating Nightmare is not simply a badly behaved child who moves around a lot. A true Floating Nightmare is an extremely badly behaved child whose parents pull him in and out of schools for reasons directly related to his behavior, and/or their desires or expectations for same.

*“I’m so embarrassed. I can’t look these people in the face any more. Let’s move little Charlie to another school.”

*“These so-called teachers don’t know what they’re doing. Let’s move little Charlie to another school.”

*“Those rotten administrators have suspended Charlie for the third time in a month. Let’s move little Charlie to another school.”

*“We’ve lost our lawsuit to force the school into doing what we want. Let’s move little Charlie to another school.”

*“These administrators won’t put Charlie in special classes! LmlCtas.”

*“Little Charlie is unhappy at this school, because (insert reason here; reason may be real, imagined, or exaggerated). LmlCtas.”

*“These administrators insist on putting Charlie in those special classes, thus denying him proper socialization! LmlCtas.”

*Make up your own and insert here.

It occurs to me that my use of language may be offensive to some, particularly those with special needs kids of their own. I apologize if I have offended anyone; this thread originated last night when I got home from the store, and desperately needed to blow off a little steam. Us Sped teachers are human too, you know. And we tend to fall into three broad categories:

(a) the teachers who routinely refer to their charges as “monsters,” “nightmares,” and “tards,” while simultaneously bending over backwards to give 'em the best care and education possible.

(b) the teachers who use nothing but standardized jargon and psych/ed terms to refer to their charges while simultaneously bending over backwards to give 'em the best care and education possible.

(c) the damn Political Correctness freaks who wig out when you use the phrase “mentally retarded child” (“because the CHILD comes before the MENTALLY RETARDED part, you insensitive swine!”) while simultaneously bending over backwards to give 'em the best care and education possible.

Some of us are pains in the butt, but we’re all pretty good at what we do. If you ain’t dedicated, you do NOT last long in this biz.

[Master_Wang-Ka]

Oh, yeah – an episode of the sadly defunct *Boston Public * TV show springs to mind, in which a family enrolls their paraplegic son in the school. This causes problems, because the school has no elevator, and no funds immediately at hand with which to install one.

A variety of stopgap measures are put in place to get the boy up and down stairs while administrators frantically try to figure out a solution.

Three days after enrolling the boy, the family files suit against the school. They knew the school couldn’t simply pull the money out of nowhere, and they didn’t expect them to; the only reason they enrolled him was because the law says that if the school cannot meet a student’s needs, they get to pay to send the student to a private school that CAN meet the student’s needs.

This is true in many places. It is true in Texas. And I have known parents like this. The parents in the TV episode were not portrayed as bad people – they simply wanted a decent education for their son, but could not afford a private academy, and cooked up a scheme with their lawyer to get the state to pay for it. Unfortunately, rather than coming from tax funds, the money would have been taken directly away from the school… thus hurting the other students attending this particular school.

In the TV show, the situation was settled amicably. In RL, often, not so much. I can think of one family who moves their Floating Nightmare around solely for the reason that they once won a lawsuit against a school that screwed up with their precious baby – a rather substantial judgment – and now they move the little monster from school to school, waiting for another one to foul up so they can pounce…

[StarvingButStrong]

Something just occured to me – I’ve heard plenty of stories about how disruptive/expensive special needs children can be, also complaints that they suck up disproportionate amounts of the teacher’s time at the expense of ‘regular’ children.

But I’ve never heard any similar complaint about High School or even Junior High School children. So, what is happening?

Is the integration of Special Needs children indeed working so well that they ‘fit in’ by the time they’ve reached Junior High age and thus we don’t hear complaints?

Or…is the answer more negative? By that age those students have dropped out of school completely, or moved on to special schools?

Anyone know?

[Master_Wang-Ka]

There are a variety of reasons.

1. Sometimes, we win. Sometimes, a kid successfully defeats his demons, and is able to handle classes with his peers, is able to successfully socialize, and the game ends. He’s a kid. Yowza.

2. Sometimes we lose. By the time a child is in high school, he’s probably grown pretty big… as in big enough to harm an adult, either on purpose or due to lack of impulse control. This leads to other possibilities:

(a) The parents put the kid in treatment, and the institution in question takes over his education.

(b) The kid (or sometimes his parents) oversteps, and the child is taken into custody by the state, either by way of CPS or law enforcement, and the institution in question takes over his education.

© The kid simply decides that he is not going back to school, and no one can make him. Usually, this results in the parents getting fined into oblivion, and/or the arrest of the child. Sometimes, however, the kid simply falls through the cracks; runs away from home, or simply successfully dodges his parents and the cops until he turns eighteen… and becomes someone else’s problem.

These are the most common scenarios.

[duffer]

First, welcome back! Many of us were afraid we’d never hear from you again. But given your job, I guess it was a matter of time.

What has to be most frustrating to teachers that actually coose your career because they give a shit are the parents that just insist the Johnny can do no wrong. Anything they do out of the ordinary is somehow your fault.

There is no way I could ever keep an even keel in that environment. And for it I salute you as a rare and welcomed presence in that environment.

[kaylasdad99]

Let me join with the others in welcoming you back. I hope that you’ll be able to find the time to post here once the school year starts up again, if only for the safety-valve it provides.