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“What Tim eventually said….was that he didn’t want to go to school because he thought the school was trying to kill him.”
John Miller, a podiatrist in Allegany, N.Y, says this about his 12-year-old son, who has Asperger Syndrome, and who was, according to a July 15th New York Times article, held down prone on the floor by teachers (one time for 20 minutes) when he was “confrontational.” The NYT article discusses something that is too familiar to me—and to parents of special needs children—-and that is, one suspects, a bit more than shocking to many. Kids coming home with bruises on their wrists, arms, legs: That’s not supposed to happen in public school, and not at the hands of teachers.
Well, it does. In our previous school district, the basket hold was used so often on Charlie that —for years after he left the school district—-he used to pretend to restrain himself, as if he’d learned, that’s how to get attention. It’s not surprising that Charlie’s body freezes up and his anxiety and anger rise to the roof when even a small amount of physical force is applied to him now. NYT article states that “psychiatric facilities and nursing homes are generally far more accountable to report on such incidents than schools”—-we were not told that the basket hold would be used on Charlie. We were simply told that it had been.
Charlie was in a self-contained classroom for autistic children when all of that occurred; the NYT article reports that such physical restraints, and also time out rooms, are being used on children who are in mainstream classrooms, and that the use of such restraints is increasing:
In dozens of interviews, parents, special education experts and lawyers who work to protect disabled people said they now regularly heard of cases of abuse in public schools — up to one or two a week surface on some parent e-mail lists — much more often than a decade ago. “In all the years I went to school, I never, ever saw or heard of anything like the horrific stories about restraint that we see just about every day now,” said Alison Tepper Singer, executive vice president of Autism Speaks, a charity dedicated to curing the disorder.
The issue is politically sensitive at a time when schools have done a lot to accommodate students with special needs, and some have questioned whether mainstreaming has gone too far. “Some parent organizations, they’re so grateful to the schools that their kids have been mainstreamed that they don’t want to risk really pushing for change,” said Dee Alpert, an advocate in New York who reports on the issue in the online journal specialeducationmuckraker.com.
For teachers, who have many other responsibilities — not least, to teach — managing even one child with a disability can add a wild card to the day. “In a class of 30 to 35 children, there’s a huge question of how much safety or teaching a teacher can provide if he or she is being called on to calm or contain a student on a regular basis,” said Patti Ralabate, a special education expert at the National Education Association. “The teacher is responsible for the safety of all the children in the classroom.”
In my son’s case, restraints were used because he had become a danger to himself, due to frequent self-injurious behavior in the form of head-banging (this was when Charlie was 7-9 years old). I believe the use of these restraints was a serious mistake and did not only physical, but psychological harm, to my son, whose limited language means that he could not, like Tim Miller, tell us that he “thought the school was trying to kill him” (and I am suspecting that the thought may very well have occurred to Charlie). Jim and I, a private ABA consultant and a team of private therapists, and the teachers and aides in Charlie’s current school district, have spent the past two years trying to undo the effects of those restraints. I think we have been largely successful—Charlie would not be calling for school with a laugh on the weekend if he did not like it—-but the vestiges of the behavior, and the fight or flight response, remain in Charlie, and making sure that he feels safe, secure, and appreciated are the sine qua non around here.
The NYT article suggests that the use of restraints is increasing in public schools because there are more students with behavioral, psychiatric, and autism spectrum disorders in mainstream settings. This point strikes me as open for debate. Teachers need the right training about how to set up calming strategies in advance—before a crisis moment—-and they need ongoing support to help address behavioral issues in classrooms as soon as they arise, and not when the out of district consultant makes a weekly visit. But another reason that people have not heard about the use of restraints until now may be because it’s only recently that a child like my son would be able to be in a public school; in another generation, he would already have been shipped out of the district, and to something more like an institution than the school the little yellow school bus drives him too.
I never hesitate to bring up the subject of restraints and how they are not to be used on Charlie in IEP and other school meetings. He has a detailed Behavior Intervention Plan that articulates carefully thought out strategies to calm him, often by teaching him to better communicate his needs and by considering what sensory issues he might be having. Even if you think “they’ll never do that,” you never know, and hindsight teaches me, better to keep our children safe than feel painfully sorry later.
1261 days ago
[...] all the concern and criticism about the use of restraints in public schools on disabled students, sometimes it seems there’s no end to hearing about [...]
1293 days ago
[...] been reported that the use of restraints has increased in public schools. The October 24th New Britain Herald describes symptoms of [...]
Thanks for bringing up this often hush-hush topic. Our son, too, is suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the use of prone restraint WHILE in seclusion. He was being restrained as a punishment for his behavior. He was never in danger of hurting anyone – only disruptive. We are still in the healing process. I look forward to getting past the flight or fright response. Glad to hear Charlie is doing so well!
The presentations are there, but the first 2 times I goofed the links, and the 3rd time the link kept bouncing back to the blog, so let me try it as a straight link. If that doesn’t work, cut and paste the URL and it will take you to the page.
http://www.apbs.org/Archives/Conferences/fifthconference/pages/presentations.html
These are somewhat in outline, but it could give an idea of what, is being done by whom, where.
Hope some of the presentations get posted. Thanks—
Third times a charm?
(Sorry, probably need another cup of tea).
2008 Association for Positive Behavior Support (APBS) Conference Presentations and Materials
2008 Association for Positive Behavior Support (APBS) Conference Presentations and Materials
a href=”http://www.apbs.org/Archives/Conferences/fifthconference/pages/presentations.html”>2008 Association for Positive Behavior Support (APBS) Conference Presentations and Materials
Including,
Keynote Presentation
Positive Behavior Support: Roots, Ruts, and Recipes
Glen Dunlap, Ph.D., Research Professor, University of South Florida
D-6 A Comprehensive, State Level Approach to Supporting Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders
Amy Matthews and Kelly Dunlap, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI
D-6 Presentation
E-11 Developing a State Wide Credentialing System to Support Implementation Fidelity
Jennifer McFarland-Whisman, Marshall University, Huntington, WV; Charlotte Hays, West Virginia Autism Training Center, Huntington, WV; Frances Clark, West Virginia Department of Education, Charleston, WV; Carol Schall, Virginia Autism Resource Center, Midlothian, VA; Kristie Byrd, West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, Charleston, WV; Mark Clingan, West Virginia Center for Excellence in Disabilities, Morgantown, WV
E-11 Combined Session Presentation
E-11 West Virginia Demonstration Matrix
E-11 State-Wide Systems Change in Positive Behavioral Supports in Virginia
Carol Schall, The Virginia Autism Resource Center, Richmond, VA; Emily Helmboldt and Molly Dellinger-Wray, The Partnership for People with Disabilities at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
E-11 Virginia PBS Facilitator Information Flier
E-11 VA Proposed PBS Facilitator Requirements
F-7 Using Positive Behavior Supports to Promote Prosocial Behavior with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Janet Fisher, Eastern Michigan University, DeWit, MI
F-7 Presentation
H-13 A Comprehensive Teaching Model for Students with Autism & Developmental Disabilities in PBS
Tricia Polchowski and Louise Morris, Monroe #1 BOCES, East Rochester, NY
H-13 Presentation
SWK 111 Augmentative and Alternative Communication Supports for Problem Behavior in Individuals with Autism
Pat Mirenda, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
SWK 111 Presentation
1331 days ago
[...] reported in WRAL today, these were methods used to improperly restrain autistic children in the Wake County School District in North Carolina. This morning, Disability [...]
1353 days ago
[...] this year, the New York Times asked if physical restraints are being used more and more in public schools. One reason my husband and I became so insistent on [...]
1378 days ago
[...] lawyer, Daniel Mason, says that the strap—-a restraint—was for the child’s “‘own safety,’” and that the lights were [...]
@Amy C., thank you for the invitation—will be in contact—this topic means a lot to me.
Thanks to everyone—-I also remember feeling unsure about talking about restraints when it was happening. I felt that it a sign of how out of control things were becoming for us and Charlie, and about how we could not really handle what was going on.
I have been reading about post-traumatic stress disorder of late and I think my son went through that (and maybe still has repercussions) as a result of the restraints and the overall lack of training of some staff. It’s not just the physical bruises our kids get—-it’s the terrible memories, violations of the self by too much physical restraint/force.
1392 days ago
[...] Sadly, more than 10 years after this happened to us the problem seems to be growing instead of going away. Makes you want to shout, yell, scream, cry, throw your hands up in the air [...]
1393 days ago
[...] was the New York Times article about the increase in restraint usage for autistic students that Kristina Chew talked about. The comments were particularly enlightening and saddening to [...]
I am not the parent of a child with Autism but I am an advocate. The wholesale use of Rifton chairs to restrain very young children in Wisconsin happened in 2007. The issue has served a small benefit and that is the renewed interest in and legislative advocacy to pass a law to restricy or end seclusion and restraint practices. Chldren have died here too. I can only imagine the efforts and time that parents devote to their children who have Autism. While I can understand the desire to remove a child from a public school setting, for their own safety and sanity, this will never end the hurt and death experienced by children with every kind of disability. In order to do that parents must tell their stories to legislators in their states and in federal government. In Wisconsin we have been actively seeking written testimony from parents, who’s children have been hurt in restraint or seclusion, for the purpose of preparing to fight for a law to be passed. We have tried before but we have to keep going and never give up. Anyone in any public school in all but a couple of states can restrain, sit on, choke, hit, seclude in unlit rooms with locked doors and no furniture, drag and generally abuse kids and there is no law to stop it. Prison inmates have better protections. A nationwide movement to stop this now is our only real chance of ending these barbaric activities. The protection of adults and children with disabilities is a civil rights movement whose time has come.
I pulled our then five-year old daughter out of school in September after only 4 times of attending class after they restrained her in a chair w/ belts w/out my permission, and in violation of the state of Wisconsin’s guidelines for restraints. I was in the room when they did it!!! It was a suppossed “special” kindergarten for six special ed kids and 19 reg. ed kids, and they had two teachers and only one aid. The sp. ed. moms all told them they didn’t have enough staff, and they insisted they could handle it.
When I came early to check out the situation, I found the reg. ed kids coloring the special person of the day, and all the sp. ed. kids in a “resource” room that looked like a storage place (a teacher actually came in and got her lunch out of there while they were in the room!). My daughter was running wild in circles w/ a dog bone?! in her mouth, kids were tugging at computers, and there were wires everywhere. When I came in the room, the teacher half-heartedly took my daughter by the hand and said, “come on let’s read.” (there were NO activities of any kind on the tables).
When we went over to the reg. ed. room, the teacher was not ready for us, and the kids had to wait in the hallway!!! Then when we went back in, she took my daughter and another child w/ downs, and marched them over to the circle time, where she proceeded to strap them into Ripkin chairs. All the other kids sat on the floor! I was so sad for my daughter! I was angry and stunned and didn’t know what to do!
We are headed to mediation next Wednesday. I don’t have high hopes and am planning on homeschooling if we can’t come to agreement after so many IEPs.
This is a national issue. I have spoken w/ so many families who find the school unwilling and unable to meet the needs of their special needs children. Many parents end up giving up, homeschooling or moving. Shameful.
This is so scary to me. Reminds me to talk with the place M will be going to again about how they handle melt downs.
I worked for a child care center that told us to do holds where the child was face down. It was terrible. This was a place for special needs children. I am sure the parents had no clue their kids were being held down. Those experiences before we adopted M taught me valuable lessons of what not to do.
When M was at her most challenging behavioraly there were times where we had to hold her to protect her from hurting herself. But, at the same time she craved deep pressure and would have outbursts to be held that way. It was a never ending cycle that almost got out of control. It sounds like parents and teachers need to have more education on how to handle difficult situations with children.
Hi Kristina,
I’d like to invite you to our blog and group. You’ll see that it is so horrible systemic. Until we found each other, we all thought our situations were unique. Unfortunately, they are not.
Thanks for writing this great article!
Amy C.
Mom to an 8 year old with Asperger’s
Most of the ‘professionals’ really have no clue, do they?
I haven’t had specific restraints on me, nor have I been mistreated physically by school staff to the point of abuse, but I have been dragged out of classrooms in high school, numerous times. It is fortunate that these times wasn’t during meltdown, because otherwise I would’ve done actual damage to them, rather than just squirm out of their grip and push them away. Even just thinking of these experiences, mild by comparison, gives me the shivers. I honestly don’t know what goes through the mind of a school counselor who will drag a 5 foot 10 autistic student from one part of a room where I was distressed, but not harming anybody or impeding traffic, and getting me distraught to the point of a meltdown, which fortunately I was able to delay for the few seconds it took to get to her office, as when I am in meltdown mode, I lose awareness of the physical space around me. But, if things had been worse, I’d have likely been expelled. Amazing how fate can be decided in an instant.