Parents of schoolage kids, quick adviceFollow

Like she had a choice in the matter.

Sorry, Qoaz.

I vote for barbarism.

Anyone who says that violence never solves anything doesn't know where to land a good punch.

Almost-Amusing and almost-related story:

When I was in kindergarten, we had the school Christmas program where each grade sang for the assembled parents, grandparents, teachers and anyone else dumb or committed enough to show up. My school had about 100 kids per grade, elementary being broken up into 4 roughly equal classes. So the music teacher had to teach all these songs to separate classes, then merge the classes together for the show. Horrendous stuff, of course.

We kindergartners had something simple like jingle bells that we were supposed to scream (our idea of singing) at the top of our lungs while we were cutely arranged on these aluminum risers set up just for the occasion. I, being one of the shorter kids, was on the next to the top riser. The kid behind me was in another class, and turned out to be a real pain. He kept poking me in the back and then pushing the back of my head. Never really hard, but quite enough to be annoying. After the 3rd time I told him to quit and the second time I tried to complain to my exasperated teacher only to be told to be quiet and stand there, I had enough. I told him if he poked me one more time, I was going to kill him. Big threat from a kindergartner, probably the most common one heard between the monkey bars and the slide, but it worked.

That is, until the program started. About 3 pokes in, I snapped. I turned around and shoved him off (it was only about 3 feet, but that was plenty for our size) the riser, then jumped down and punched him a few times until the teacher managed to get there.

My dad, for some strange reason, never attended another school event until graduation. He reminded me not to get in any fights at that, even then.

The kid: we wound up being buddies about 2 years later. He's a parole officer down in the area where I grew up and we still keep in touch but he doesn't poke me in the back.

so meeting was rescheduled for Wed morning at 9:30 due to Bob knows what. At first I was miffed about it, however I think this gives my family an advantage. First off, my son will not be in school uintil then. Second, we will be having our meeting as school starts which means Im assuming our meeting will happen in or near the classroom to get a good look at the dynamics of the adult to child ratio and how it works. Thirdly, Mr. DSD usually works from home on Wed and he is going to be joining me at the meeting. I'm hoping having to face two upset parents as a front will make a bigger impact.

Wow progress. Three year olds are considered school-age now?

I'm thinking you're screwed here. If this was a private preschool, you'd have options, but since it's tied in to public education, there isn't much you can do about it. The best you can hope for is to get the adult minder for that child to actually do his job properly (which it appears is not being done now).

Welcome to your first experience with the disaster that is "special-needs" students in public school. By law (or federal funding requirements if you prefer), the public schools have to give these kids the exact same access to education that every other child gets. Due to the way budgets are done, this means that they are taught in the same class as every other kid. Even if it totally destroys the learning environment for the rest of the class. It's cheaper to stick an extra minder on the kid in a normal class setting then to duplicate the education in a separate environment. Also, they avoid comparisons of "separate but equal" treatment, and the inevitable backlash that would occur.

While it's possible that they could get better supervision to help with the situation, the only way to avoid it is to avoid public education. It doesn't get better either. My best friend is a High School teacher. Same deal. Special needs students eat up huge amounts of teacher time in our education system, and often cause disruptions as well. But we have to put them in the same classes as the rest of the students. Who thought that up? I don't know. But that's the way it's done...


I'm serious. Get out of public education. Join a local church parish and get your kid into a catholic school. You don't have to be super practicing. Just show up and fill out the forms to be a parish member, and you can get your kids into their school. It'll cost you more, but they have financial aid systems as well if needed. He'll get 10 times the education he'll ever get in a public school in this country, and the Catholic schools are actually pretty light on the religion (lots of non-catholics attend, so it's taught, but more like a "religion theory" approach).

If you don't like that, go with any other private school you can find and can afford. And hope to god that we eventually get school vouchers into law, so you can more easily afford it.

gbaji thats totally untrue of the public school system in its entirety. Not all schools throw learning disbabled children into a regular class room. There are many public schools out there who have outfitted their special needs children with special needs classrooms. My mother has been a special ed teacher for over 30 years in the public school system. For the past ten years she has specialized in preschool. The children she teaches range from autism to blind, deaf, mute, and emotionally disturbed. In her classroom they have language boards for children who dont speak, like the child that is antagonizing my son. Ive spoken with her about the situation my son is in and she is bewildered why a special needs child has been thrown into the mix of regualr school children, especially without a language board to help him more easily communicate his needs without resorting to hitting. She has also surmised that this childs personal aid is imcompetant and is not doing her job. She should be replaced by someone who can handle watching one child for a max of 2 hours 3 days a week, and ensure the child does not attack other students.

Public schools can not turn down learning disabled childrens education if they do not have a place set up for special needs kids. But not all public schools are like that, and unfortunately it is because there is not enough funding being sent towards the schools to properly outfit each and every public school ut there for each and every type of child that needs to be educated.


However, if there is physical hitting going on, I have no qualms about making it crystal clear that if the child has tried the schooling out and can not handle it, he should be taken out until he goes to the schools that can handle him, even if that means he misses out on preschool and has to wait for primary school. And if that doesnt happen, then I guess I'll have to find my son a safer school to learn at

Edited, Mon Oct 3 20:24:47 2005 by deadsidedemon

you'd like that, wouldn't you?

While I'm sure there are "many" that don't do that, most do. The problem isn't just money. It's about perception of the "right" to education for every student, and an assumption that a separate classroom will mean inferior instruction. How strong that aspect is will vary from state to state. Here in cockooville California, land of political correctness gone horribly awry, it apparently is some kind of crime against nature to imply that a special needs kid can't manage in the same classroom as the rest of the kids, so they work really hard to make that square peg fit in the round hole.

It may also be that wherever your mom teaches has had a public school preschool program for a long time (10 years at least, right?), so they're allowed to grandfather in their existing program. Publically run preschools are relatively new in most places though, and my understanding of the federal funding processes for them is that they can't put special needs students in different classrooms for exactly that fear that they'll not get as good of an education.

Heh. I'll admit that I'm jaded on this issue because of where I live. I would *never* send a child through public school in California. It's really that bad. Even in the "good" areas, it's still pretty crappy. And from what I know (second hand from multiple teachers I know) most of the reasons for that are the result of federal restrictions on funding money that tie up their hands when it comes to how they structure the environment for the kids.

If things are better in your area, maybe you can get better results. My understanding is that putting those special needs kids into regular classrooms is the direction things are going in public schools though, so good luck.




I'm going for incompetant aid as well. But then, that may only cover the kid while he's in the classroom. Is your son getting hit while physically in the classroom? Or out playing? I guess I can't understand how he'd be getting hit so much inside the actual classroom. Is the teacher seating them next to eachother? That would seem silly if you've already complained about it...



It's not just funding though. This could easily be an entire topic by itself. It's how the funds are used, and what kind of moronic rules some idiot dreamed up to make education "fair" that has far more to do with how good of an education environment is available. We spend more per-capita on education in this country then any of the other first world nations, yet we lag behind them. Honestly, most of the problems with our education system are so systematic and institutionalized that I'm not sure it *can* be fixed. And if it's not broken yet in your area, it probably will be in another 10 years...




Yeah. That's the dilemna though. While certainly this wont be the same everywhere, my experience has been that this kind of thing is not that unusual in the public school system as a whole. I'm just saying that this wont be the last time your son will have to deal with disruptive or problem students (for one reason or another, not trying to dis the deaf kid) and the power to deal with it wont be in your hands. Get used to it, because if your experience is typical, the next 12 years will bring more of the same.

Whaddya know, Gbaji is an expert on primary school special needs students, and the methods of fulfilling their educational needs.

I'm constantly amazed.

I was in almost all advanced classes in jr high and high school. There was one blind kid in some of my classes and one with MS or something where he couldn't move correctly but was still smart. The rest were in their own private room, until my senior year. A law was passed that they couldn't seperate like that, so my english, art and gym classes had several kids with down syndrome. I had to take english and art during summer school to graduate, because they slowed down the curiculum.

I'd go straight to the principle, give it one week, if its not fixed, go with the barbarism.

I'm a firm believer in tough love: parents, give your children the ballistic weapons they deserve.

Problem with a bully at school? Teach your child the fundimentals of what three bullets can do.

Teacher giving your child too much homework? Give your child a fragmentation grenade and he's guaranteed to never have homework for the rest of that school year.

Nothing says you love your enemy more than a bullet to the spleen.


If that all seems a little out of line, there's always mace or pepper spray. Fu[b][/b]cking autistic kid who pokes and hits your child every day at school won't see it coming.