Thanks neverdem for the Asperger's Syndrome topic.
Posted on 05/28/2008 8:30:04 AM PDT by mware
Hundreds of parents of autistic children are signing an online petition to get Florida teacher Wendy Portillo fired for her alleged tactics toward a 5-year-old boy that mirror the reality show “Survivor.”
Morningside Elementary School in Port St. Lucie, Fla., recently alerted Melissa Barton that her son, Alex, suffers from a high-functioning form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome, WPEC News reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Some people should not be parents.
As my dad would say, “Suck it up son!”
Both sides in the wrong with this—if he is supposedly “high functioning”, he’s not going to be disrupting the entire class by eating his homework (?!) and having only *1* single friend in the entire school—teacher should have gone about this a different way.
Parents aren’t helping by enabling him with all the ‘poor widdle me’ stuff, IMO. That is, as a former teacher who has has Asperger’s kids in my classes before, I’m just sayin’.
If a child of mine had such a condition I hardly think I would need a school to alert me to it. This just seems odd.
It is a disgrace that this kind of thing would happen in a classroom. This is a case of open mocking and ridicule. That's not education.
Yes, I know the child was disruptive. I have coached children's teams in this age group with such children. I cannot fathom asking my other kids to vote on whether to keep a disruptive child on the team. This seemed to encourage public ridicule of the child instead of being the firm, consistent adult in the group.
Yes, I know the child was disruptive. I have coached children's teams in this age group with such children. I cannot fathom asking my other kids to vote on whether to keep a disruptive child on the team. This seemed to encourage public ridicule of the child instead of being the firm, consistent adult in the group.
And, no, this does not "toughen the kid up," this is bullying, enabled by the teacher. If this teacher were a guy, I would suggest jumping him in the yard.
Kid shouldn’t have been in the class in the first place. This movement to put disabled kids in to classrooms because they deserve a “fair” (love them liberal buzzwords) chance to be “normal” is grossly unfair to the rest of the children who are there to learn. Not be distracted by paper-eating.
If there’s a kid that has “special needs” then those needs ain’t being served by shoving them into a normal classroom.
Yea the teacher’s move was dumb but it sounds like an overall no-win situation either which way.
I wonder what the "criteria" are?
Asperger's Syndrome is sometimes not caught until college (a friend of mine was diagnosed with Asperger's the year after he graduated). This form of autism often is confused with just awkward social skills.
“I wonder what the “criteria” are?”
Usually it’s whether or not prosecution can get the DA re-elected
This kid was kindergarten. It takes time to see how kids perform in a school setting, get the testing done, the diagnosis, and the plan for accommodation. Schools fight tooth and nail to keep kids from having to get advanced services because it costs the school districts more than they get in federal and state aid. It can be very tough to get needed services.
In any case, it is not up to the students in the class to determine who goes or who stays and how it is done. It usually isn’t up to the teacher, either, if we are talking about permanent removal. Where I live, the decision is made by a team that includes counselors, teachers, the parents, and medical specialists.
This teacher sounds burned out and at wits end - or has few skills in handling children. She needs to be out of the classroom. I can’t imagine any situation where her action would be approproate.
Thanks. I did not know that.
Thanks for you post.
The ray of hope in this situation is that at least now there is a diagnosis at all. Even up to five years ago, most teachers had never heard of AS, and these children were bullied and humiliated constantly. Until they learn various coping strategies, these kids are pure “bully magnets” because they misread social cues, and laugh when they should not, or think that humiliation is friendly banter and so on. It's a rough rough road for them, but they are also God's children, and have a lot to offer.
AS people are the original “out of the box” thinkers. Newton, Einstein and many others are now thought (based on their social life stories) to have had the syndrome.
I saw a documentary on this, and it quoted a well-known lady with AS, she had a neat way of putting it. Neurotypical people sat around the fire for thousands of years with the sharpened-end spear. The caveman with AS was the one who thought, “Hey, what if I attached a really sharp piece of stone to the end?”
IOW, folks with AS might come across as strange, they might appear to be rude at times due to their almost total lack of understanding of social cues or nuance, but when it comes to original thinking, and a really incredible ability to focus on a specialized subject and advance the knowledge, they are hard to beat. The stereoypicial "nutty professor" who gets lost walking home while dreaming up his next amazing invetion....he often has AS. He is a real person.
Employers: these folks might not be your first choice for front-office person to person work, but if you can find a niche for them where they can push a unique project to another level....they are your man. (Most are men, about ten to one.)
Bump to above.
bttt
I know of a third grade teacher who decided to have the class vote on a punishment for a disruptive child. She had run out of ideas and decided to sic the class on him. I thought that was totally inappropriate. Having the entire kindergarten class gang up on a child is even worse.
Thanks for the information, Travis.
It looks like the school did a good job diagnosing the problem. The teacher, obviously, didn’t do a good job handling it.
Thanks for that post Travis. It seems like the biggest bully in that classroom was the teacher.
I can’t speak for this child, but autism is the new childhood disease du jour. There was a time when you never heard of this disorder, and now it seems that almost everyone has a child with autism. I’m not sure if I really even know what it is. And it seems that the majority of children diagnosed with it are from families that are already on some sort of welfare, and receive disability payments from the government, just as mothers of children with Attention Deficit Disorder do.
My suspicions are raised when I hear about a child with autism, and granted they may have some sort of behavioral problem, but it may be their home life, or environmental factors. I wonder how many children are being diagnosed with this disorder just so their parents can receive disability benefits. It just seems to be the same group of people who always have children with the latest disorder.
In the AS area, Newton had no personal friends, and did his best work in long tears, where he self-isolated for days and weeks at a time.
After the child was voted out of the classroom, the teacher asked him how he felt and he said, "sad"
Then she asks him where he was going to go, and he told her, "I guess I will go to the office."
Her brilliant reply to an autistic child was to tell him, "They don't want you there either."
This woman shouldn't be near a child.
I know, and I said as much that the teacher’s plan here was dumb. My gf works in a public school (not a teacher, an IT geek) and she tells me that at least once, sometimes 2-3 times a week there’s a special needs kid who has to be taken out of the classroom cause he’s screaming at the top of his lungs, literally. So not only does his class have to take time to calm back down and get back into a learning mode, but so does every other classroom that they half-drag him past.
Having had special needs children in my classrooms over the years, this anecdote is NOTHING with some of the stuff I’ve had to deal with!! I could tell you stories that would make your hair curl, seriously. Unfortunately, due to the mainstreaming (or whatever it’s called nowadays) laws, etc., the teachers don’t have a lot of leeway in how to deal with some of these out of control kids, so in a very VERY small way I can understand why this teacher lost it—I don’t condone her actions though, just understand what might have driven her to make these bad choices in the first place.
You are totally wrong about autism happening to people on low income. That is all in your head and has no facts to the matter. I can not believe you would even state that. It seems like somebody under educated would say that. You should educate yourself before making statements that are so off the charts. Aspergers happens accross all class levels and that’s it.
While the words were poorly-chosen, I think what that user was getting at is the over-diagnosis of children and medical “problems”. Nowadays a kid who might talk too much or goof around with friends instead of paying attention gets slapped with an ADD diagnosis and drugged up.
Back in my day those sorts of things were solved by a call from the teacher to the parents, and then said child preferring to stand rather than sit for the next day or so.
No. The writer’s main point was that parents of children with ADHD or Autism are poor and just have their children labeled to get disability payments. I asked for some kind of link to show that this is true. None have been provided.
Here are some facts that appeared in other news sources on this story.
1. The mother has been trying to get a diagnosis for her child because his behavior is so off the norm.
2. She has a preliminary diagnosis of Asperger's, which is formulated through behavioral testing and meeting certain criteria. It isn't a definite diagnosis, there is no blood test.
3. The school has recognized the need for an Individual Education Plan and started that process.
4. We don't know one way or another why the child is still in that class. It might be the parent wanting the kid mainstreamed, but it may be the school wanting to keep him in that setting as well. We don't know.
Here are some opinions of mine.
1. Because the school had already recognized the need for an IEP they are going to be in deep kimchi if the family takes them to court over this. Legally, doing this to a child with a "disability" would be no different than having a vote because of the color of a kid's skin, or strange religious dress.
2. If I was a school administrator I would feel obligated to protect the district as best I could by throwing the teacher under the bus, no matter what the rest of her record was like.
3. The development of a plan to educate this child was in work. Unfortunately, process in place to work this out between the parents and the school has been derailed by a fully informed (present at the IEP meeting), yet ignorant teacher.
This kid may be a behavioral nightmare, but piling that much ridicule on a five year old is very shocking.
I don’t know how my words were poorly chosen. I was speaking from opinion and observations on my part. You can either choose to agree or disagree. I’ll be happy to discuss it with anyone who wishes to in an intelligent manner. I will not respond to the other poster or anyone else who can only get personal and rude without any intelligent thought.
It is a fact that if your child is diagnosed with autism, you are eligible for disability payments from the government, just like children with ADD. This can lead to abuse of the system.
I guess this has never happened before, so why should any reasonable person conclude that this would happen with this situation? /s
It sounds like I must have hit a nerve. It seems like everywhere I turn, either at work or reading different stories in the newspaper or on TV, there is a child with autism nowadays. You can’t say it isn’t happening, because it is. The minute the government gets involved and hands out disability payments, the situation gets worse. A child with any sort of behavioral problem is either diagnosed with ADD or autism. That’s not to say that there aren’t any legitimate cases of either. But when free money is handed out, what do you think is going to happen? Has it never happened before?
I appreciate your child’s service to the country.
However, I can’t help but want to see your statistics to back up your claims, also. Or are you just going on what you think?
I know lots of people with kids with special needs, and none of them want their kid to be different, just so they can get extra benefits.
I never once said that I wasn’t speaking from my own opinions and observations. Where can one find statistics to support abuse of the system and fraud? Ten years ago, how often did you hear of autistic children? It was a rare condition, one that was hardly ever mentioned or in the news. Now, every time I turn around, it seems that you never NOT hear about a family with an autistic, sometimes 2, child or children.
When free government is handed out, how hard is it to find a doctor who knows the system and will diagnose a child with a disorder that can’t be disproven by blood tests or any other form of testing. This happens all the time. Just watch the evening news and see how many times doctors are being arrested for Medicare and Medicaid fraud. Maybe it doesn’t happen in your community, but it happens in mine.
Most decent people that put their children first will not want their children to be labeled as different. But there are others who will use their children if it means taking advantage of the system to get free money.
I don’t know how many are legitimate and how many aren’t, but my suspicions are aroused when everywhere I turn, someone has not just one autistic child, but 2 or 3 and I know they are receiving govt. aid for those children, in addition to all kinds of other govt. benefits. IN MY OPINION, it is an abuse of the system in play here.
For those who want me to provide statistics, where are the statistics proving otherwise?
One of the reasons that an autistic child could not get help as recently as 10 years ago is because there are no blood tests given. In that regard, I am glad that autistic kids are now being diagnosed and recognized. Back then, we would just stick them in a SPED classroom and be done with them. Or, they were left to be teased in the classroom. I do think that lots of kids who are mildly autistic, or Aspergers are being recognized more where as before they were just quirky.
Speaking from personal experience, I actually think its very difficult (if you are a taxpayer making over the “Cap” to try to get services paid for...or SSI. In 1994, I was a single parent, in the position of needing hearing aids for my profoundly deaf daughter. Because I made too much money - about 100 over the cap at the time, I could not use the system...whereas the boy down the street would get sets of hearing aids paid for, even though his mother was irresponsible and allowed him to let them lay around.
The school system also wanted to label my daughter as PDD. I took her to a school specializing in deaf children with other situations going on, and a psychologist who coudln’t believe anybody thought she was PDD.
I agree that there are those that would use their children to get free money, but I don’t think there are really that many. Trying to get any services is a PITA.
I find myself now in the position of needing to apply for Medicaid for my child. She is 16 now. I have now lived in PA going on 4 years and their medical benefits are extremely generous. Regardless of income, you can get the state to pay for certain thngs. This is something we have not taken advantage of, but probably have to now as she gets older so she is in the system and should anything happen when my insurnace doen’st cover her, this will.
Again, though, I dont’ think its “many”. I think its “some”.
I think that there are a lot more than you may realize. You have a higher opinion of your fellow man than do I. I work in an area with many who abuse the system. It is hard for me to believe that the high number of my fellow co-workers all have autistic children.
There are high numbers of those who are abusing the system for food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs. Why would abuse of disability payments for children be any different?
I work with a group of parents whose children are all deaf, or deaf and multiply handicapped (deaf/blind) and my personal experience with them is that they do find it difficult to get services. If I was working in a place where my coworkers were abusing the system to get services, I would find another job. I would definitely not associate with those people. As a parent of a child who can benefit from services (but does not since I have private insurance), I already have her set up with Office of Vocational Rehab, for which the goal is to get her in college and working asap and NOT rely on SSI.
Sorry you are finding a lot of abuse of the system where you are. I did notice that in Southern California. Here in South Central PA, that’s not been my experience.
I’m 60 years old and nearing retirement. I’m not about to change jobs at this stage of my life. Besides, it wouldn’t matter. No matter where I would work in this area where I live, I would run into the same situation.
Thanks neverdem for the Asperger's Syndrome topic.
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