What an idiot I am! I don't know one week from another.
I have just driven 90 kilometres to an afternoon rehearsal that will take place on the same day next week. And the concert is next Friday, not this Friday!
So then I drove 90 kilometres back again. Still the sun was shining...
I was with my autist students this morning.
As I come to know the staff working there, and they have more confidence in me, I start to see that they have only left me alone with the students who are the easiest to deal with.
At the meeting room, where I collect my teams, there is a boy that everyone tries not to leave unsupervised with the others. He has a smile on his face most of the time, and it is with a simple enjoyment that he bullies the other students if given the slightest opportunity. I tell myself that it is not his fault any more than the problems that the others have are their fault.
There is a girl who will head-but the other students, or bite them, if she can. Neither of these two has any speech. Two weeks ago the girl heard the harmonium through the wall and was fascinated. She came to hear it and terrified the boy with red hair. He froze, unable to cope and before I could blink the girl rushed over and hit him expertly on the forehead with her own head.
I removed her quickly from the room and the boy with the red hair relaxed again.
Afterwards, I heard a carer say "defend yourself!" to him, but they did not say how, (or , to be fair, perhaps I did not hear the rest.)
When I see him in the meeting room he always seems to be a target for the other two.
Last week, the boy with the red hair was forbidden music again as a punishment. He had behaved badly in the cooking class just before, and he had pinched the carer leaving a big bruise.
I wondered to myself if he was learning to defend himself and hadn't quite got it right...
I no longer have any simple certainties about crime and punishment and responsibility, that were so comforting in my youth....
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1 week ago
13 comments:
Ouch, you must be too busy these days when it's hard to know what week you are in!
What a sad tale of these children...
Ow.
No, justice is not as simple as some would have it. It twists erratically at times.
Awww! My poor little red haired boy. I suppose "defend yourself" needs to be defined for him in a way he understands. I hate it when he misses music class.
marja-leena in some ways it is lovely to be so busy, but I miss doing the rounds of my blog friends.
zhoen, since I have worked here I have had to rethink a lot of my attitudes...especially when it comes to choices people make about the way they behave. Perhaps we have less choice than we would like to think.
Dingo, you will be relieved to hear that he was allowed music this week.He gets so excited that he hits himself on the chair and bites his arm. I suppose these strong sensations distract his mind from the frustration of waiting for his turn. We have discussed the fact that waiting for something good should be a pleasure, especially when you know for certain that it will happen...
Hope the concert goes well today!
frank that is the problem
...it is not this friday...it is next friday! better that way round...sigh
I came to your blog from Dick Jones. I read this post with interest. I will certainly be back.
It can be frustrating I suppose to see people apparently doing the things and adopting the attitudes that invite more abuse, but the 'defend yourself' line does sound a little like blaming the victim. Also perhaps a recipe for escalating violence!
I remember being slightly shocked but also finding it quite refreshing in a primary school playground when a reception class kid came up and said another boy had hit him, and the young and very down-to-earth classroom helper said 'Well go and hit him back then!'
Of course defending oneself might just mean putting your arms up and getting out the way, but it sounds like the nutter is pretty quick...
Poor kids.
lucy ,the rules are not clear are they? When does defence become aggression? Some governments seem to have trouble with this concept too!
I once had a long conversation with a friend of mine about the old adage--"an eye for an eye," and it went on for some time, leading me to believe that these things are always more complicated than they appear to be on the surface.
Mike you cant punish someone who doesnt understand what they are doing is wrong, can you? But if the bullies knew there would be retaliation perhaps they would be more restrained...I'm not sure that teaching the boy with the red hair to bite back is such a great idea though.
When the boy who bullies meets the girl who head buts there is a strange kind of mutual respect and they circle each other warily...so perhaps the boy with red hair needs to learn to look as though he might bite if pushed too far!
When I first came here to work, the section manager told me that one of the principal reasons for a school like this was to prevent the bullying that these children would suffer if in a school in the wider community.
As you point out, Rosie, the punishment issue is pretty much an irrelevancy with kids who are unable to grasp the concepts whereby they're structured. Presumably, as with children at a pre-moral consciousness age, the simple withdrawal of pleasures and conveniences will work, to a degree, on a pragmatic level. For many young people with Asperger's, of course, much interpretation of behavioural codes is pragmatic anyway - a learned process whereby facial expression, gesture and, ultimately, body language will come to be recognised as requiring a particular response. How much more difficult with kids whose sphere of operations is so far removed from the norm.
Lord girl, you've got guts.
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