Isn't My child special too?

Jun 13, 2001 - © Mary Pantazis

REGULAR KID IN THIS SCENARIO? How are the kids going to learn with the screaming going on? We got his screaming down to the point where he would only do it once in a while. The rest of the time he moaned. But even with only once in a while, many students were frightened by this boy. The mother told us that her son never slept and in order for her to sleep she had to lock his bedroom door.

I was always amazed by the screaming boy. It seemed that everyone in the school jumped through hoops for him. We had a vocational trainer come to see us about getting him a job. He was mainstreamed in all the top classes because the thought was that he screamed because he was actually gifted and needed educational stimulation. He was even allowed to take classes that had no spaces available. He would be put first on waiting lists. Even the teachers thought it was nuts, but the laws in special education told us that we had to do it. TONS of money was spent on him. The money that was spent to mainstream this child could have sent at least three regular kids to college for four years. In fact, one year that the screaming boy came to school he was allowed to take a mainstream college course and his aide took him to the class off campus once a day. I cannot imagine how students who had paid tuition money felt when the screaming boy came into their class and took the course for nothing and disrupted the entire place just because he was coded. He wasn't even old enough to be in college.

We all talk about the downward spiral of the behavior of children in our schools. Has anyone ever considered that we are teaching our children that they get rewarded when they are bad? Look at what a small child sees when a child who is coded with behavioral issues comes to school. Those children do not have to follow the rules. They have their own rules in their IEP. I have seen IEP's that give the child the right to be rude to the teacher. If the child is feeling stressed in the classroom sometimes it is written right into the IEP that the child can get up and take a walk to his counsellor. Other kids cannot leave the

The copyright of the article Isn't My child special too? in Special Education is owned by Mary Pantazis. Permission to republish Isn't My child special too? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Go To Page: 1 2 3 4 5

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic