Your Child Is Not a Zoo Animal: Fighting for Dignity in Special Education

I share our experience with the public school system when Jacob returned after a previous traumatic incident, revealing the challenges, frustrations, and occasional victories during this difficult period.

• The school promised an "adulting program" for independent living skills but Jacob never got to participate
• Jacob needed three-to-one support instead of one-to-one, which the school couldn't provide
• We struggled with getting consistent communication about Jacob's daily activities and behaviors
• School staff disregarded Jacob's dietary restrictions
• Jacob's therapists worked on skills at home that the school claimed he couldn't perform
• The special education director's accusations
• We eventually had to move and shut down our business because Jacob required more support than we could balance with work
• Regular public schools often lack the capacity to properly support children with severe autism

If you find these episodes helpful, please consider sharing this podcast and supporting it by clicking the "buy me a coffee" link to help keep it free for those who need it. You can reach me at contact.parentingsevereautism@gmail.com.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Podcast Introduction
• 0:45 The Promised Adulting Program
• 3:14 Jacob's School Challenges
• 6:30 The Glass Enclosure Incident
• 10:26 Communication Struggles with School
• 17:35 Email Exchanges with Teachers
• 31:27 The Cookie Incident
• 37:37 Moving and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:18

Hello and welcome to the Parenting Severe Autism Podcast. I am your host, Shannon Chamberlin. I'm so happy that you're here with me today. I hope that the sound of this episode is good. I am using a new microphone cover and it's supposed to help cover all the outside noise from here at the house, but I'm not sure how it's going to turn out, so please bear with me if it's messed up and we'll work it out.

Speaker 1: 0:45

In this episode I want to kind of walk you through the first couple of months of Jacob's return to school. I'm going over notes from my memory, then I'm going to share with you a string of emails between the staff at the school and me, just to kind of give you a real - life idea of what happens at school with a kid like ours. So first I want to mention that they told us about this wonderful program that was kind of like an adulting program. I think they had to be 18 before they could go to this other like place. It was like a house or an apartment or something and they told us that all the kids like Jacob who reached the proper age get to get out of regular school and go to this playhouse type of situation where they learn to work together and do the chores, do the vacuuming and the cleaning and the dishes and how to make beds and just kind of live in this living situation during the day but then still come home at night. And it was really sounding good to help him get away from us and get out of school and get into something more realistic and more independent and see where he would really be if he could have the freedom to do that. And, of course, it was going to be completely supervised and this was a working program as we understood it. So the way that they presented it to us, we really felt that it was one of those things like oh wow, I really hope Jacob can be good enough in school and stay in school long enough to be able to get into this program. You know it just it seemed like they were dangling it in front of us and expecting us to comply with things just so he could stick around and get into this program. And with the history of us having to pull him out because he was so miserable after being abused, I kind of think that maybe this was them grasping at a straw to get us to keep him in school no matter what, because they knew it was important to us that he develop some skills. I kind of think they did us dirty on that. The spoiler is that he never got to go into that program. So there's that. So a couple of quick notes on the structure of our lives.

Speaker 1: 3:11

The therapy I was talking about after school. He got wise to it when I started making his snacks. You know he would always come home and get a snack and then therapy would start after his snack. Well, he kind of got wise to that pretty quickly and started drawing out the amount of time it took him to eat his food. He's really slick like that, just all of a sudden. Now it takes him an hour to eat a tiny meal. And then the therapists were kind of getting annoyed with me for feeding him. They finally asked me to stop giving him his snack or to make it smaller. He is so crafty so I had to stop giving him food because they weren't able to therapy him. It was just amazing the things that he can figure out and then do and he always adjusts like that. I wish I could remember more exact stories, but his dad and I were constantly battling. These things that you know, just shouldn't have happened, like he was doing things and we would do something to counter that or to stop him from doing whatever it was he was doing, and he would find a way to adapt and overcome, and constantly. And this thing with therapy and the snack thing is exactly a perfect example of that.

Speaker 1: 4:26

The school agreed to adopt the behavior report sheets that were supplied to me by this innovative counseling that I told you about. They didn't like the notebook, as you know, but they really liked this other check-in sheet that the counseling service provided for us. It had a range of smiley faces like unhappy to happy and everything in between, and for some reason the teachers really liked. That Kind of makes me wonder about the maturity of the teachers at this point. So they got to circle a box then write a description of why they chose that face. In my opinion it was actually more work for them, but you know, whatever that's what made them happy. So then they decided to use that instead of the notebook. I've got a couple of emails I'm going to share with you about stuff like this. It's really ridiculous. There were some adjustments made at the school.

Speaker 1: 5:22

He used to have a sensory bean pod. I tried to get one of those for home for him, but since he was, you know, 5'10 very quickly at a younger age, those are like $400 or something like that. It's really ridiculous. So I couldn't get that for him. But they had one at school. Then all of a sudden I go to the school one day and he's got a glass enclosure. I really didn't like it and they were very proud of it, but I felt like he was a zoo animal and he was on display. You know he has to be in the classroom with these other children. Then they build a glass enclosure around him in the classroom. I just really didn't agree with that. I felt like they were treating him like an animal. Why do all of this? Hey, that's great, thank you for making the effort, but I really didn't like it. You know, just in captivity, on display and put behind glass. You know disruptions both ways led to him being put behind glass and I absolutely hated that for him. I don't ever want to walk in and see my child being kept like a zoo animal. I don't even like going to the zoo because of the captivity and the sad conditions and I just really really did not agree with what was going on there and I never did understand exactly why they felt that was so necessary. I don't know. I don't know. What is that? Another thing I want to mention is I've got an email I'm going to share with you about lunch.

Speaker 1: 6:58

Once we started putting him back in school, we also sent his lunches from home. He was on that eat for your blood type diet. He was doing really well with that and of course, he's gluten free, sugar free and all that crap too, and most of the food that they had at the school was not able to be consumed by our son. So I every day would make him something fresh. He would either have homemade chicken soup or chicken salad or a salad with chicken, tried to mix it up and keep it interesting for him. But I know what he likes and I know what makes him act right, you know. So we would send the foods with him. They were supposed to use the containers that I sent with him as a cleaning exercise for him, for his little therapy that he otherwise was not going to get. We had already talked about it. They said they would do it, but instead they would send it home like really nasty in a bag of his personal items, like they would put it in a shopping bag and then put it open in the bag with his personal items like his pillow and his blanket and an extra change of clothes and stuff like that, and it's just flopping around in there Just had some really big issues with the whole experience at the school and I think that none of this stuff would have happened if they would have put him in a proper environment in the first place, which means not a mainstream classroom where the adults are spread so thin.

Speaker 1: 8:29

I mean, we came to realize I think I mentioned this before that he actually needs three-on-one, not one-on-one. He needs three-on-one to help him get through his day, but it depends on who they are and how they do it. And it was just impossible. They don't have enough paras, they don't have enough teachers, they don't have enough of anybody. For a child like mine, and especially if there are other children kind of like mine, I mean this is a real problem. Regular public school systems do not have the capacity to deal with children like these.

Speaker 1: 9:05

So that's why I am adamant about the Montessori type of schooling, just adapted a little bit more to the needs of each child, because that is more of an experience and an exploration way of learning, because, let's face it, my child is not going to Harvard. He is not going to work as a mechanic or anything like that at all. He needs to be able to learn at his pace and learn what interests him. That's the only I mean. He deserves to enjoy his life. He deserves to enjoy the process of learning, and the best way to do that is to just let him discover what interests him. I really think that all of us could benefit from that.

Speaker 1: 9:53

So I'm going to get into the first couple months of emails that went back and forth between me and these teachers, and I was sending every email to both the advocate that was helping us and the therapy service that was helping us. So everyone was included and everyone showed up at the IEPs. It wasn't just us. We finally had a team behind us, and as long as I was forwarding emails and messages and behaviors from the staff to these other people, we barely had to do any real fighting anymore as the parents. So it was really, really nice. After I read these emails, I want to share something cute with you. Of course, I've got two of them, and I might just keep one for next week, just in case I don't get another cute thing for a while. I don't get another cute thing for a while.

Speaker 1: 10:43

So Jacob returned to school in the fall of 2017. And this was in Wisconsin, the same school that he said hurt his ear when the teacher pulled on his ear that this is where he had to go back. During the setup of this IEP, that was requested. I referenced a message that I had sent to the special education director before Jacob started school. I mentioned that the special education director was saying that she didn't get it, so I said well, this is the email I sent to her on September 1st. Perhaps her email address has changed. I guess it's a little too late now to make a difference, but here it is. The lady's name was Donna... Hi, Donna, Since no meetings had been scheduled with me prior to the start of school, I wanted to send an info email to help everyone with Jacob for the first couple days of school before the IEP meeting. Jacob says he's very excited to start school, so that's great. Please let the teacher and the therapists know the following Jacob has been having a hard time handling transitions this summer.

Speaker 1: 11:47

You may notice him becoming progressively more agitated on the drive to school. The closer you get to school, he's been showing very bad behaviors for the first 45 minutes into any transition Screaming, crying, yelling, moaning, wailing, you name it. The more we try to calm him down, the worse it gets. If you try to baby him and comfort him, he'll do it even worse. Our best suggestion for this, if he is not able to be immediately calmed down by requesting him to calm down, is to ask him if he needs you to call his dad. This has always worked since he was young. If he is really bad the first day or two, you may consider just calling his dad for the first time, without even telling him, and then let them talk to each other on the phone. This will show Jacob that you mean business and you will do it at any time. His dad really calms him down on the phone and the reason he will straighten up seems to be that he just doesn't want his dad to be disappointed in his behavior. Here are some key phrases that we are currently using Do you need to talk to dad? Do you want me to call your dad? I'm going to call your dad. Calm is good. Calm is better. Happy is good. Happy is better. He must repeat these like a mantra.

Speaker 1: 13:03

Also, jacob has taken to feigning headaches when confronted with something he doesn't want to deal with. As a precaution, I had him checked out at the hospital. There is no medical reason for him to have headaches, so he is only trying to play sick to avoid the activity or situation Mainly therapies, tasks and music. At this point, the parent advocate that we are working with has found that simply telling him we're all done with headaches has been working. Jacob also is telling everyone I love you all day long, like a knee jerk. Obviously, this is inappropriate and we let him know all the time. Rather than trying to explain like versus love, etc. We prefer to tell him stop it All done. Anything more than that just goes right over his head and he will not stop. Lastly, jacob will need to build up mental stamina in order to get through full days successfully. He may require more frequent breaks initially. You'll have to use your expertise to figure that out. He will take advantage of you if he thinks you're just trying to make him happy.

Speaker 1: 14:12

I included a letter in Jacob's registration papers addressing his food requirements etc. I am attaching a copy for your review. Jacob will be bringing his lunch daily. This email will be copied to the parent advocate. Jacob's dad's phone number is listed below. For all other communications, please use my phone number also below. So that's what I sent before he even went back to school. I thought that was a pretty decent thing to do.

Speaker 1: 14:38

The first email I have is I emailed his teacher saying that Jacob seems very obsessed with letting me know that he was yelling at his teachers today. He can't tell me anything else about his day except that he was yelling at his teachers. Do you know if something like this happened and the teacher says, hi, nothing of that sort happened today. He seemed to have a great day. We went to the store and he was amazing no repetition and very helpful. Not sure where that is coming from, so that was kind of telling me that maybe he wanted to yell at the teacher. This never developed into anything else after that.

Speaker 1: 15:22

But the next one is a little bit disturbing to me because of the way that I, I, um, I complained about this in an earlier episode about how his half sister likes putting words in his mouth and telling him to say things and how I really, really don't like that. So this is kind of like that. This one disturbed me because they weren't listening to him. He didn't have a lot of words anyway. He had already lost his vocabulary of whatever it was 100 words or 150 words, maybe. Anything that came out of his mouth I consider to be gold at this point. So it started out with this message from me: Hey, I just wanted to give you a heads up. We've noticed that the behavior you described from Thursday basically happens every full moon. I double-checked the calendar and, sure enough, Thursday was the full moon. The next one is November 4th, I believe, and you should just expect him to be off, emotional, needy, strange and unable to function very well on these days. And the teacher writes back: Okay, that's good to know. I just felt really bad for him. I spent a lot of time with him today and he seemed very happy. We had some nice conversations about his dog Buddy. It was a really good day. He also played the game Farkle with a couple of kids and had a great time. He also played the game Farkle with a couple of kids and had a great time.

Speaker 1: 16:49

So I replied, I know sometimes it's hard to understand his speech. He named his dog Doggy, not Buddy, and she says, oh, he said Doggy was his name. I just didn't think that was his name. I thought that he must be saying Buddy, good to know, thanks. So I don't know, maybe I was just overreacting, but I'm still pissed off when I read that. I'm very fucking pissed off about that because he said it and she says, oh, that can't be his name. Well, why not? Why not? Why are you going to rename his dog now? Now, my kid's confused because you have decided that the dog's name is Buddy in the same conversation that he's trying to tell you the dog's name is Doggy, and I don't know. It just really irritated the hell out of me. So then I got a message from the art teacher that she wanted to know if it was okay to enter one of Jacob's art pieces in an art contest at the public library. The contest is about making art with books, and Jacob was in the art room the other day and colored some pages of a book and she mounted them on black paper and then he colored around those too and she felt it was a very nice abstract art piece. So I thought that was really sweet.

Speaker 1: 18:06

Jacob did not always get art class because of the transition period and the noise. I think it was right next to the music class and they tried to get him into the music. He didn't really like it. His dad and I introduced him to the timpanis and we thought that he would like that. But you know, I guess it's just. It's just not a good environment for him. So art and music, we felt would be very nice for him to participate in, but the way it was laid out at the school, plus the transition timing, never really worked out. So for him to be in the art class and create something was pretty cool. It's interesting because there was one time well, there were several times where the school would send home art that he quote unquote made, but it was way too good.

Speaker 1: 18:57

I knew that my kid did not make this art. There was one that was nothing but little dots in different colors from a marker and it was the perfect picture of our yard and our house and our fire pit and our driveway and everything. It was perfect, it was absolutely perfect. It was so beautiful and I wish that he had made that. I know that he has a great pictographic memory, if that's what you want, if that's what you call it, but damn it. I know he didn't make that. I thought it was nice though for him for them to include an actual piece of his art and call it art, when he actually drew on a book I don't know it was. It was kind of cool.

Speaker 1: 19:37

I then wanted to let them know, and I never did hear back from the school on this. But there was a book that we acquired over the summer of that year called Read Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young. I sent that over to the teacher and told them we acquired this book over the summer and Jacob really enjoys reading this book more than any other book I've seen or heard him read. He seems to really understand some of the stories and he reads aloud very enthusiastically. Usually when he reads it's very monotone and it all runs together and it doesn't sound like he's absorbing it. He knows how to read and make the sounds of the letters fit together and work, but it doesn't mean that he's actually absorbing what he's reading. But in that particular book, read Aloud Rhymes for the Very Young, it seemed like he actually was absorbing the story, understanding the story. I think he liked the artwork as well. Maybe that'll help someone out there.

Speaker 1: 20:39

And then here's the thing about the lunches. I first asked this is still in October of 2017, does the cafeteria have soup bowls? I would like to send some soup, but I don't have any bowls that I could send. She says no, they do not. I figured it out, you know, got him a thermos with the cup on it and also sent a big Tupperware bowl just in case, because I don't know, you know, and they sent it home sloppy, wet, leaking in his bag with things that he is supposed to cuddle up with and sleep with. So I was a little pissed off and I emailed and said okay, I know that there are multiple sinks throughout the building and I see no reason for Jacob to be bringing home these extremely dirty dishes from his lunch. I didn't say anything before. Apparently, it's happened in the past. I didn't say anything before because they were small snack dishes, but this was an open bowl that had chicken soup in it and, considering the fact that you have him learning living skills on a daily basis, he should definitely be bringing home clean dishes. And she says I am sorry that his soup dish came back dirty. We will make sure that he is rising his dishes after he eats, as far as being able to wash them on a daily basis would be a goal to work towards. Currently, he is only able to dry the dishes with multiple prompts. We will work on his independence in washing and hopefully this is a skill he will be able to obtain in the near future.

Speaker 1: 22:08

Now, something they may not have known is that the therapists that were coming to the house were always working on him being able to rinse his snack plate. It was just a little plate, you know. He was definitely able to fool the teachers at the school because the therapists were working on that with him every day. So I don't, I don't know, but it was really stupid. I think that was really stupid of them to do and very disrespectful to his belongings. There was something about hand washing, but I can't access it anymore. I think it was pictures of him washing his hands and I still can't get him to wash his hands properly. He's 24. So I don't know what that was about.

Speaker 1: 22:47

Okay, so then they send one. The teacher says hi. I want to let you know that Jacob was scratching his face a bit. After he was asked to walk in the hallway quietly. I stopped the behavior and he complied. He is taking a break now. I replied please let him see you writing it in the notebook. And then there was one where I asked the special education director to send a copy of his IEP and then I sent that to both the parent advocate and the therapist that was coming to the house and told them to please note the third page, 2a and 2C family engagement, handling concerns with sleep patterns and notebook for daily communications. We feel that these are being disregarded blatantly, and that was just in preparation for a new IEP meeting that was being called. And then there's a really long string of like 15 emails where I started it with hi.

Speaker 1: 23:47

We would really appreciate having daily updates in Jacob's notebook, at least concerning his demeanor and behaviors for each day. It has always helped him. He's always been proud to bring home a good report and unhappy to bring home a report that he behaved badly. It also helps us to understand him better at home. We also feel that it would be nice to know what he's involved with each day. We understand that you are busy, but we'd still like to know what's going on at school with our special needs child, Just to try to remind her that you know he may be in a mainstream classroom, but he is not a mainstream kid and we need these updates. So she says I understand your concerns and I will try and write in it when I can. Today and most of the week he has been very off Today and most of the week he has been very off. So this was on a Thursday that she said this and this is why you know I hadn't gotten reports for the whole week. This is why this whole thing started, she says, and if he seems to be getting upset, he has been expressing that he is tired and falls asleep during his break before lunch.

Speaker 1: 25:07

He has been working on add and subtracting money, learning the quantity of numbers by building them with base 10 blocks. He has been counting money and beginning to learn how to make change by figuring out how many pennies in a nickel dime and quarter. We work on budgeting by determining if you have enough money for a given item. I've never seen him do that in real life. He doesn't seem to give a shit about money, so that's my note. He has been working on reading with a social skills curriculum. I have noticed he does not attend to all of the visual information and will make guesses on words based on how they visually look, so he makes errors with words that look similar. He is able to identify two out of three emotions after reading a passage. He also reads books that he picks from the library, works on Raz Kids and uses MobiMax as reading intervention tools. He worked on laundry skills shredding silverware, rolling, washing his own dishes and sorting.

Speaker 1: 26:11

Gloria asked him to put on his hat and gloves and he refused to put on his hat. I want to remind you that our winters there were sustained temperatures of 26 below zero. That was not the wind chill, that was the temperature in the winter. So this was in the beginning of November, so it wasn't quite that cold yet. But with our child it's habit that we're trying to form. We want him to put on his hat because when it counts he will be doing it already.

Speaker 1: 26:43

Anyway, I replied to her. Your first paragraph is a perfect example of something important enough to tell us about immediately. We don't want Jacob harming himself, and this is something that should cause an immediate phone call to his father, as explained in our first letter submitted to the school. Also, you may not be aware, but I know that the special education director is aware that last year he was having sleep trouble. So, again, the info about him being so tired that he falls asleep daily before lunch is info that we need to know, capital letters. As far as his hat, he is a child and does not decide whether he wears it. He may need help putting it on because it is a face mask being used as a hat to cover his ears. As I explained before, he has a weaker immune system. He also has Raynaud's and he must be kept warm.

Speaker 1: 27:33

If we cannot count on the adults at school to take care of our son while he is there, we need to be informed of this because it's unacceptable and we will have to seek alternatives. Our child is unable to communicate effectively with anyone on a regular basis. We should have as much open communication between us as possible, because it's in Jacob's best interest. It's extremely hard to know what's eating him or to figure out why he's behaving a certain way, etc. When he spends most of the day away from home under someone else's care. If you don't personally have the time to immediately inform us of these things that we know are extremely important, we ask that you find someone else who can we appreciate the work that you have lined up for him. It's just that academics is only half the battle, thank you. And then the special education director steps in and says I believe we need to meet, either informally or for an IEP, to address and resolve some of the issues that have been brought to my attention. The school district is dedicated to providing Jacob with an education in a stimulating environment with appropriate care.

Speaker 1: 28:45

While several of your concerns are understandable, many incidents of accusatory language have also been noted when communicating with school this year. Please be aware that we are, and should, be very limited in our response to Jacob's refusals. We need to meet and develop a plan to address these issues. Please respond with available dates. So I just want to say that I have already shared with you all of the emails that have gone back and forth, and this particular email from this particular woman started a huge, huge fight, because I don't know of any incidents of accusatory language, many incidents of accusatory language when communicating with school. That year it had only been actually less than a month, because this is done on November 9th. So I've already shared with you everything that I said and I don't think the language is accusatory.

Speaker 1: 29:46

I think it's concerned, I think it's valid, but we ended up going to an IEP and I demanded to know which emails they were talking about that were accusatory, and they refused to tell me anything at all. I thought that was really cute. So the teacher responds and says Okay, I will be in touch with any further issues and let you know when he is tired I will most likely email instead of writing in the notebook. Please know that the scratching occurred yesterday once. It was not hard enough to leave a mark and it was stopped right away. We are doing our best to help him. Please let me know times and dates you can meet in person. I said I will let you know once the advocate lets me know her availability. I know you're trying to help. We feel that we're missing out on a cooperative effort if adults at school don't inform adults at home of what's going on. There's nothing accusatory here, just facts.

Speaker 1: 30:40

And then I found a string of emails that I am the one organizing between the teacher and the special education director. I'm the go-between what about this day at this time? And then one would say, no, I can't do that one. And then I'd say another day in time. And then the teacher would say, yeah, I can do it, but I don't know about the other lady. So then I email the other lady. Hey, the teacher said this day in time is good, are you available and which building are we going? And then I mean just back and forth and for some reason I became the one that was arranging all of this stuff. I didn't even like I don't even remember that, but that was kind of messed up. Okay, so here's some stuff just to let you know some of the activities, something about a break.

Speaker 1: 31:23

And came back once he stopped the movies, which I believe he was just scripting movies. He added money with three prompts, took a sensory break, then washed his hands, still needed prompts to scrub before he rinses, which is still what's going on to this day. All other steps are independent. Read chapter of the river to him. While he was on break, worked on identifying personal information, stocking toothbrushes. He was sorting the kids and the adults, the soft, medium and firm. And that's where the that's what it was, where the shop class made him a little caddy or something in order to help him stock and sort toothbrushes. And for lunch he ate his soup and washed his dishes out. He washed the lunch tables with one of his aides and had a sensory break with a rocking chair and Christmas music. He worked on grocery store flyers, needed some prompts to keep going. I don't know what that is. Independent reading and then a break with snow. They have that. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but it's some kind of weird concoction they make and it's like a slime, but it's a snow slime or something. Now here's one of my favorites to finish out the 2017 part of school.

Speaker 1: 32:37

I don't know if any of you are familiar with people being gluten-free for health reasons. Some people are so sensitive that they cannot even touch items that have gluten in them and they have to use separate cookware. They can't even cook their gluten-free food in any cookware that's ever touched gluten food. So this string of emails here is actually very irresponsible on the school's part. It's also really freaking rude.

Speaker 1: 33:08

The teacher emails me on December 22nd, just a few days after his birthday. Hi, jacob frosted cookies in his general education classroom. They do not fit his food requirements. Do you want us to send them home, have him eat one or just give them to someone else? So I said somebody else can have them, and good luck with that, because now I mean, how does your kid act. Have you ever had your kid with severe autism work with a piece of food and then tell them they can't eat it, especially a fucking cookie, come on man. So she says, okay, we just told him that they needed to dry and we couldn't eat them. I will give him a couple crackers instead.

Speaker 1: 33:55

And then I just forwarded all of that to the therapists and the advocate and I just said what a jerky thing to do to this kid. What a jerky thing to do to this kid. Why would you do that to my kid? I mean now see, this is something I deal with all the time and it really pisses me off. People come over here and they bring food and then instantly I have to go and superhero my way through the rest of my day because now I don't want my kid to feel left out. I've had relatives come over and then leave the house and go get ice cream cakes from Dairy Queen. My kid can't eat that shit. So what do I have to do while they're gone getting their ice cream cake? I got to figure something out real quick. I have to make something amazing so that my kid doesn't feel left out, and it's really something when they already have his list of things that he cannot deal with. And then they they get him all the way up to the line and then they're like, oh thanks, sorry, you don't get any. I mean, what the fuck? That really irritates me. So, anyway, that is the first two months of emails. That goes from October 3rd to December 22nd of 2017.

Speaker 1: 35:05

During that time, I was fighting with the school in person in the stupid IEP meetings, asking them to show me the evidence of the several instances of accusatory language that made it seem that the special ed director herself had to tell me about myself, and they never were able to produce anything and they refused to produce any proof. And the teacher wouldn't even look at me. The special ed director only wanted to sidestep and talk about getting my kid on drugs. So that was the next battle. We still were holding our ground that we didn't want him on pharmaceuticals until he was more developed. That's a decision that some parents in our position make.

Speaker 1: 35:55

That was where we were at, and she kept deciding to tell us that you know, have you thought about medicine for him? And we would tell her our position. And she said one time well, you know, sometimes it's not the first time that you try it, and it's not the first medicine that you try, but you have to go through a whole different range of medicines until you find a perfect cocktail that really works. I mean, look at me, and she had rheumatoid arthritis really bad in her hands and she's like I'm on five different medicines and without them I wouldn't be able to be here today and I was just like what you have is an autoimmune condition and what you need to do is address your diet and your gut. Don't tell me that drugs are saving your life, and I should take that to heart for my own kid. The fuck's wrong with you. Anyway, in my next episode I will wrap up with the rest of the emails from the time that we were there.

Speaker 1: 36:59

We had to move. We had to shut our business down. The thing is that Jacob was so out of hand and hard to deal with that it was affecting our business. Our business was suffering anyway because the products that we sold were becoming available on the internet and the company was not protecting us the way that they said they were. Every time they saw a product, they were supposed to remove it and buy it or whatever, but they weren't doing that and we were struggling in that respect, but also the amount of time Jacob was taking from me. It had just snowballed into, you know, because I was working on the phone with clients and setting up new clients and stuff, and setting up new clients and stuff, and setting appointments for the near future and out, and the less time I was able to work on that, the more it affected our business in the long run, not necessarily the short run. I mean, I could see it happening and I was trying to keep up, but the psychological damage I endured was so bad I was unable to do my job and I was unable to put the hours in because of the hours he ended up needing from me. It was just a terrible, terrible situation.

Speaker 1: 38:15

Wisconsin was by far the best environment for him because of the list and the therapies and everything that was working in his favor, and after these emails, we ended up having to leave. We left in April of 2018, and we had to come here and things got really, really fucked up after that. So, a couple episodes from now, I'm going to start giving you that type of information of what he went through, what we all went through when we moved here, but in my next episode I'll share with you the rest of our experience with the school in Wisconsin. That was the only thing that wasn't good was the school itself. Everything else was great.

Speaker 1: 38:55

I want to share something with you. There's a cute little story. I have, my spouse, picked up a couple obsidian rocks from this little place down the road that we go to. We take Jacob there for massages and we buy incense and stuff like that. So these rocks are called snowflake obsidian and they're a little bit different, energetically, than regular obsidian. So if you're into that, you know you'll understand what I'm saying. But my spouse carries his rock with him all the time. I keep mine near my bed.

Speaker 1: 39:23

He was driving Jacob to day camp the other day and he gave it to Jacob and was trying to just educate him and keep him engaged and do all the great things that he does as his dad. So he explained to Jacob, as Jacob was holding the rock, what it was during the ride to camp. He says this is snowflake obsidian. Was during the ride to camp. He says this is snowflake obsidian. It's made by a volcano that gets instantly cooled off by the ocean and you know, blah, blah, blah. He told him all about this rock. Later on he was telling me that Jacob held on to this rock all day. When he was putting Jacob down for a nap after camp, he noticed that Jacob still had the rock in his hand. Now this camp day was a day when he went to the local water park and all this stuff. You know, that's why we send him to camp. He held on to that rock all day through all of those activities and my spouse had, I guess, written it off. He was like, well, I'll probably never see that rock again, because he didn't realize that Jacob kept it until he had already dropped him off at camp and gotten home. He's putting Jacob down for a nap and he sees it in his hand. And he was like, oh wow, you still have that rock. And he started asking him questions and he said how is this rock made? Where does it come from? At first Jacob was like, uh, you know, and then his dad said from a volcano and then Jacob said ocean. So he remembered the story. It was really neat. You know he doesn't have all the words, but he kept it all day and he remembered the story and I thought that was really cool.

Speaker 1: 40:55

Also in my next episode. I want to tell you about an accusation that came about my child from the school, so we'll get into that in the next one and I'm hoping that this stuff will help you prepare for future years in school, depending on the age of your kiddo right now and, you know, just give you some insight, maybe some hope about things like that adulting class that was supposed to happen. You know they are supposed to have stuff like that for our kids. My kid never got to do anything cool like that. They didn't let him finish school, but I just I'm hoping that this gets your wheels turning, helps you understand some of the stuff that might happen while your kid is in school. Some of it's good, some of it's not so great, but these are some of the activities that are actually planned for our kids when they're in the special education classroom and some of the things that happen when they're forced into the mainstream classroom.

Speaker 1: 41:55

Thank you so much for listening. If any of these episodes spark something in you, make you happy, make you cry or anything like that, please consider sharing my episode, sharing the information about my podcast. You can always support the podcast and help it stay free for those who need it by clicking the buy me a coffee link, and you can also find some of my affiliate links for products that work for our family at the end of all my episodes. And, of course, if you have any input, I would love to hear from you and you can reach me at contactparentingsevereautism at gmailcom. Hang in there, you're a superhero.