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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]These threads make me so angry and rage cry. I've had a crap day and feel like slapping some of these posters.

My kid has some of these issues. The classroom has been cleared because of him. Do you know what we had to do in order to get him an appropriate placement where he is thriving? I'll tell you:

Thousands upon thousands of dollars of therapy, not including the amount of lost work/salary for me. I don't work anymore because it's too hard to manage.

At least 6 meetings with school a year, daily phone calls, IEP meetings, IEP revisions, FBAs/BIPs,  etc. private testing. Daily phone call complaints from incompetent teachers, psychologists who told me "you don't seem to care about your kid (she got fired)," and a whole host of garbage comments from other parents.

Advocate and lawyer to help us through the process. 
I had to have therapists who were baiting my child removed from the process after they admitted to baiting him to acting out.

More advocate and lawyer costs to get him into his correct placement, where he's thriving and doing very well.

And he's only in second grade. That's right, all of this and he's 7. This is a lifelong process for us. We'll do it again next year, and the year after, and the year after.

You know what I have to be able to do this: Time and Money. A lot of people don't have time and money to do these things. People can't quit their jobs to go to therapy. People can't pay lawyers and advocates to help them. We can and we're fortunate. I go to Special Ed group meetings near me and people are begging for help--they can't afford it, can't take time off, have trauma in their lives, etc.

Yes, some people ignore the problems until it's too late, or don't want their kid labeled, but I really believe that most people are doing the best they can, and, in some cases, they're relying on the school to help them through the process. You can't rely on them. You need need outside help and assistance and a lot of people can't afford that.

I don't want your kid to get his hand slammed in the door, or to have to evacuate the classroom. IT's not fair to any of the kids. But I also hate that this topic comes up once a week on this site and people don't seem to understand the other side of it. The lack of empathy for people on these threads is disgusting.

So I have an idea for you: Go use your voice to vote for candidates that support all aspects of public education, voice your concerns to your school board and principals, work for additional funding for schools, stop bitching about property taxes on your million dollar homes and then complain that we don't have enough aides for the SN kids. Stop thinking that parents aren't doing the best they can. Find some empathy for people who don't fit in the molds. Life is hard enough. 
[/quote]

Everyone - please read this post!
Elementary teacher here in a "good" school.
OP, in my experience most of the cases are like this. A child acts out and the parents of the child are going crazy trying to help the child and figure out what's wrong. They are begging the administration and the teachers for help. Usually the administration thinks whatever is happening will pass and leave it up to the teachers to handle. Some of my colleagues are terrific and will come up with behavior plans and strategies on their own. The rest will overreact or under-react, or lose their own shit and make things worse. We have a few younger teachers with anxiety and OCD type issues, and instead of ignoring small, unimportant behaviors like fidgeting they will pick and pick at a child who they know has emotional challenges until the child explodes.

Believe me that 99 percent of cases of young children who act like this can be managed by a good teacher with good strategies. Sometimes they need another hand temporarily. In 15 years of teaching, I have seen only a small number of kids who need a different environment. They exist but they are not common.

One thing the administration might try is to try to move a child to be with a different teacher. It does work in some cases. When it doesn't it could mean the child is too far gone emotionally and does not trust anyone at that point or it could mean the child needs a different school. It takes a long time to figure that out. I have taught kids who looked like they might need this but then the next year, with a different teacher and more time, it is clear they will succeed in general education.

It is horrible your child is going through this, OP, but I hope you will read through these threads to get the perspective from the other family and other teachers in the building.[/quote]

Yes, this can work in a "good" school (what does this even mean?)  because the other 99% of students don't need significant amounts of support themselves (I'm talking about gen ed kids with no special services who still need significant amounts of support for various reasons whether it's behavior, language, social skills etc). The issue is that not every school is a "good" school and the majority of students in the classroom need significant amounts of support and one teacher cannot provide that level of support to that many students. There's no option to just move a student to another class, because there's a student like him/her in *every* class and putting them together would be pure and utter chaos.  If a teacher has one student who needs significant amounts of support, what you stated can be manageable. But that's not what life is like in *many* other schools, so you're speaking from a place of privilege as if the rest of us have the same exact situation as you do. [/quote]

I didn't mean to do that. I completely agree with many PPs the way to help is with more money in the form of extra staff, training, guidance for teachers and for students with behavioral issues. I just wanted to emphasize the other perspective. Many people on this thread seem to blame the child or the parents without looking a teacher's own shortcomings and the general administrative dysfunction of many schools and school districts. They all need to provide more support and money for cases like this for the good of the child and the classmates.

OP's original post and many others are the top in trying to create a picture of a perfect teacher with a crazy child. It could be the teacher has a lot of problems. I've seen it. We had a young teacher out of school for only a few years who was really excited about working with young kids. She is organized and very nice to the parents and people thought she was sweet as pie. She really is but she was a mess when dealing with children with any behavioral issues she was a mess. She had one strategy which was publicly calling them out by making them change their classroom sign to "red" which denoted "poor" choices. It was no wonder to us that year after year she ended up with a (different) child that had angry meltdowns. Some, not all, of these kids did end up having special needs but miraculously they were fine when they were not with her. It took the administration 4 years and a lot of observations requested by different parents to wise up to this and she got additional training and had an extra adult helping her for many months one year. I think she's a bit better but [/quote]

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