It’s always nice to be appreciated. And ghod knows I get enough of it here.
My hat off to you, Master Wang-Ka.
As someone who learned late how to deal with completely-normal people, and is still learning, the idea that you would choose a career that deals with these scary unpredictable people, a completely-different and far more difficult task, just boggles my mind.
But hey, that’s why we’re all different. Some of us sing, some of us write computer manuals… and some of us handle the Floating Horrors.
Incidentally, when I opened this thread, I had just read the IR Goggle thread, and I thought this one was going to be about some relative of the Gelatinous Cube…
Master Wang Ka, thanks for posting this. You’re a good person with a good heart.
My youngest (4.5 years old) is very mildly autistic (has been mainstreamed in private school the whole time, the last year or so with a shadow aide). The early intervention (ABA at home & school) has actually worked miracles and we expect him to have no aide (not even a blind shadow) within a year.
But I know, having seen our district’s spec ed offerings, that most kids aren’t like mine. It can be a nightmare, and a lot of those parents get divorced because they can’t handle it.
But some parents make me sick, with the denial, the blaming of the school, whatever. Every minute that they screw around is vital time that their child can never get back- it’s crucial.
Ack- incomplete thought. The early years (filled with appropriate intervention, of course) are vital to a child and every moment wasted on denial or whatever can never be regained. Trying behavioral intervention at 7 or 10 or 12 is not the same as at 3.
Very interesting and educational thread. Kudos.
Oh, ghod, yes. Make me want to tattoo it on a thousand foreheads, why don’t you?
I prefer a meat mallet or a small sledgehammer- they really drive the point home…
Like this?
Welcome back.
All I know is that there was this girl in my fifth grade homeroom who lasted 80% percent of the school year before being dragged out kicking and screaming.
She was disruptive every single day, and one day, in gym class, she stole my watch (we had to take them off and put them on the counter), stuffed it down her crotch, and lied lied lied until a female teacher reached down and retrieved it. I was a geek back then, so I had spent a substantial portion of several week’s allowance on the mack daddy Casio calculator watch (circa 1981).
This girl sucked on markers, coloring her teeth green, blue, purple, etc…
She had this weird tick where her eyeballs went back and forth, maybe 10 times per second, and she sometimes tried to compensate by moving head back and forth.
When she was finally sent to “SEDOL” (I think that’s the acronym, I’m sure it started with “Special Education”…) our teacher, (my favorite teacher ever, Mr. Pergander), took out a whole class to explain problem children and why we shouldn’t hate her.
My point is that that crazy developmently disabled girl certainly cost me some education.