Many who have read my diaries, or gotten to know me, know that my daughter has an autism spectrum disorder, Asperger's Syndrome, specifically. I am currently shooting my second feature documentary, "One In A Million" about her specifically, with my wife and I being anciliary roles, as parents who both have manic depression, and are trying to raise a daughter with an autism spectrum disorder. At any rate, there was an incident at her school yesterday that has caused us to pull her from it. Most parents who have children not on the spectrum would be able to talk to the principal, demanding changes and waiting for system to work, but when you're the parent of a child with an ASD you do not have luxury of doing so - it's a risk we cannot afford. What bums me out is she has been saying "I don't want to go to school", but cannot articulate why, due to her disorder - so we took her anyway, and saw nothing wrong. My wife's mother has over thirty years as a special ed teacher, and stayed for much longer than I have been able to, wonder if they just let their guard down, and this has been going on all the while. It makes me sick to no end. The body does not address our full beefs with the school, just the ones that called for us to take immediate action.
This is an copy of the email my wife sent to me, detailing what happened.
-Mom came in with Lucy to school to observe/volunteer
some time. Lucy's teacher sat, did not speak or
interact with the children except for punishment which
consisted of yelling at a girl when she overturned a
puzzle to do it again. He put her in time out and
held her down physically while she cried. Other than
yelling at the children, there was absolutely no
interaction. The kids were just sitting there. He
did not speak to Lucy or Mom when they entered the
classroom, nor did he speak to Mom the entire time she
was there.
-Mom also heard a teacher yelling at the kids from the
nursery room next door. This is a room for kids up to
eighteen months old.
Obviously there is no understanding of age-appropriate
behaviour and corresponding discipline if the teachers
are yelling at the children. There seems to be no
curriculum or organization of activities, from what
Mom observed (she was there 45 minutes).
Lucy has had strange behaviour over the last couple of
weeks. Aside from crying that she does not want to go
to school, she says "My teacher is mad at me", has
regressed in her toilet training, is hitting and
pushing at home, and has an overall regression in
behaviour. Whether this is due to modeled behaviour
or diet infractions I do not know, but it is clear
something is going on that is disturbing her.
I Will Update This....
In the meantime, the Vaccine case has opened my eyes to what my wife and I suspected, that Lucy's disorder was in fact, as we believed, caused by genetics, and subsequent exposure to Mercury as in the Flu Vaccine, as a possible causal factor as well. Of course, I wasn't planning on including this in my film, but how can I not now?