Reply to 6 year old arrested at school. Florida, of course.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]New poster, here's my two cents.

When DS was 6 in Kindergarten, he had a brain anomaly that caused a significant change in his behavior. it took two months to be diagnosed, and lucky for us was treated and is in full remission.

For the two months between his  overnight change in behavior and diagnosis, he had very serious behavior problems - anxiety, physical responses to fear stimulus, random outburst, obstinacy and defiance, etc.  At home, we were having to regularly pin him down and restrain him.  At school, they evacuated the classroom multiple times, brought in multiple staffers to guard the doors of the class to prevent flight, and on one occasion me and the special ed teacher had to do the "two person physically drag him out of the class to a safe space" thing.

My kid is white - the school gave him and us the huge benefit of the doubt.  He was suspended multiple times, but did not escalate to resource officer or other serious consequences.

Before a physical issue was found in his brain, we and his doctors were pouring over the DSM trying to figure out what was going on.  Age-5 onset autism?  ODD?  anxiety?  bipolar?  BPD?  I spent a lot of time reading about these disorders.  You know what I found out?

- Mental disorders impact a HUGE portion of society. ADHD is easily 5-10% of kids. ASD is 2-5% now.  Anxiety impacts a ton of kids. While there is overlap between those conditions, together they easily account for 10-13% of kids. Then add in the rarer ones like ODD, bipolar, BPD, etc. 
- It is not abnormal for any of these disorders to come with physical violent/tantrum symptoms in kids.  
- Kindergarten is the first time many kids have been put in environments that have the potential to really escalate these responses.  ADHD and autism kids are highly responsive to sensory stimulus.  Anxiety is obviously going to be a big problem for kids starting school.  Etc.  Families may have unknowingly put in place systems that have mitigated their kids' challenges at home, and kindergarten is really going to put them on display for the first time.  No surprise, it takes a LONG time to get these issues sorted out once K starts, and that means a long time of challenges on full display in the classroom.  
- While most kids don't have physical behavior problems in early elementary, the above disorders mean that it is not abnormal to see these responses.  I was horrified by what was happening with my son (and extremely proactive in getting to the bottom of it), but the school assured me it wasn't the worst they would see that month, and they deal with physical stuff pretty frequently.  That said, administration were pretty "martyr-like" about DS's physical behavior, and recorded everything in his file as "violent" "hitting" "assault" etc.  His teacher and I became good friends, and she confided that what they would mark down as "attacked teacher" was pretty minor physical stuff that they see all the time.  The school, as caring as they were, addressed everything the same - if son had a freak out and climbed under the table and knocked over his chair, they evacuated the classroom and brought 4 teachers in to stand at the doors with their arms crossed, and then one teacher would try and corner him to dial down his behavior.  You can imagine that this is going to escalate the panicked out of control behavior quickly.   
- Per several developmental pediatricians, young elementary age kids do not physically misbehave just to be brats.  They do so because they genuinely don't have the tools to deal with what has bene thrown at them.  You can have more philosophical conversations about bad behavior in later elementary school. But at age 6, a kid doesn't have physical outbursts because of "bad parenting".  
[/quote]

EXCELLENT post, extremely perceptive.  Right down to the school admin being as inflammatory as possible in their written comments and having no clue about desescalation  -- obviously CYA to justify use of force.

The only thing I would add is that there are extremely well-researched and EFFECTIVE ways to intervene to reduce aggressive behavior and provide additional supports - but all too often, the school takes a punitive approach (even with my 3 year old!) and sits on their hands and waits for everything to fall apart, instead of engaging with these resources.  After dealing with my kid's behavioral issues, that is still the single thing that gets me the most: how the school completely failed to engage evidence-based resources to solve a known and common issue.

Anyway, glad your son is better!  We got interventions for our son at 3 and a strong IEP, and now at 6, he behaves (almost) perfectly. But I have no doubt that if we were black with fewer resources, we could be in the exact same position as this 6 year old girl and her Grandma.  
[/quote]

I'm not real clear on how the average 1st grade teacher- or 10 of them-  are qualified to handle undiagnosed/untreated medical conditions.  I am truly not trying to be rude here but if my kid is having some sort of a medical crisis I take them to the doctor or call 911...I don't call their teacher.

I guess I don't understand the logic in doing that.

[/quote]

I'm the original PP you're responding to.  No one is "calling their teacher" about their kids' medical crises.  We did call the doctor during that period. Probably an average of 8 doctor/therapist appointments a week.  Even with perfectly good insurance, we spent around $40,000 over the span of 3 months trying to diagnose what was happening.  Now think about poor black kid in Orlando whose parents have neither the time, money or capacity to get to that end point in 3 months.

We would keep our son home for a day from school; then it happened the very next day.  So we'd keep him home 2 days from school; then 5 days.  Again, lucky me being rich enough and stably employed - that i just "worked" from home a ton (you can guess how much work was taking place during this period).  I still can't believe i didn't get fired.

Like i said, putting these kids in school settings will really escalate a lot of problems for a lot of kids with mental disorders. DS would be fine for 3 days at home. So we'd send him back to school.  We couldn't just keep him home in perpetuity when we had no educational resources in place for homeschooling.  Same with all these kids.  Maybe they're 98% perfectly well behaved at home.  And the parents are in fact trying to do everything they can (within their $$, time and educational limits) to get a diagnosis.  But if you don't have money and time, or you have a pretty run of the mill issue like ADHD comorbid with anxiety, it is easily going to take a year to navigate the process with diagnosis/approriate medication/school supports.

DUring the year, parents are sitting with their fingers up their butts.  They are generally horrified this is happening to them.  But they are literally doing everything they can do.

So their kid is doing badly in school, plus once a week has a behavioral issue, and once a month that behavioral issue is "violent" (note -- per my explanation above, the "violent" behavior is, at the K level, usually not dangerous or particularly violent, but could just mean the kid swatted at the teacher to get away).  Does the poor parent working as a housekeeper keep this kid home for a year while navigating the system and trying to get the diagnosis/treatment/school supports in place?  [/quote]

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