Reply to Making an ADHD kid apologize to the teacher and whole class after a meltdown

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]People are assuming they know the size and severity of this outburst and being very minimizing in their language (it was ripped paper, so what, so she shouted, no big deal, this doesn't sound traumatizing, etc.). The truth is we don't know what happened or how big or severe it was. My child has had outbursts where he might get frustrated with a project and destroy his own project -- scribble all over his sheet, throw it in the trash, get kind of loud with his frustration. Nothing directed at other kids and not something I'd expect to be more than a conversation with the teacher, especially as part of an ongoing focus on managing frustration, his perfectionism, etc.

But he's also had outbursts that have scared and stressed ME out and I'm his mother. Shouting and yelling, ranting, throwing things around. Even if just a paper and maybe a pencil or something, the extent of these outbursts can be very stressful for our family and absolutely impact other kids (and adults). They can go on for more than a minute or so and make everyone feel very tense and drained even though they are not technically violent. It is hard to be around someone expelling a lot of negative emotion.

It is impossible to know from OP's description where the behavior falls on this spectrum. One thing we know is that it has happened several times in the last few weeks. If this is a repeat behavior that might be escalating, I do think grounding the discussion of the behavior in how it might be impacting classmates is a reasonable idea. It's important to be understanding and forgiving of every child's moments of struggle. But if a student is repeatedly disrupting certain activities in a way that could stress other kids or make them just not want to engage in that activity again, that may require more than just an apology to the teacher.

My question for OP is: how is this teacher usually? Do you trust her, does she communicate well, does she seem to care about your kid and the other kids? And so on. If a teacher I liked and felt good about did this apologizing thing and my child said it was fine, I'd let it go. If it was a teacher I'd had issues with in the past, if my child was upset or appeared to feel "shamed and blamed" or if there were issues with communication about expectations and how the IEP was being implemented, I'd say something about it.

I think the instinct to say "This was no big deal, the teacher should never have done this" is not great. I think it might reflect individual PP's past negative experiences with teachers who didn't get it (we've all had them) but it's not grounded in what we actually know about this situation. I don't think we can assume the outburst was minimal and not disruptive and that the teacher was out of line. There's a broad range here.[/quote]

NP. 
I don't know whether the outburst was big or small or even if the child shredded other classmates' projects to bits. But it doesn't matter for the question at hand.

Public shaming is a completely outrageous reaction by this teacher who needs retraining. If there was direct harm to particular students the teacher could suggest the child work with their parents to write apology notes privately or apologize in person to each of them in private but it is not appropriate or helpful to have a child publicly hung out to dry by an adult the way OP is describing.

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