Everybody's Kung-Foo Fighting....
At recess, he and his mates were "pretend fighting". This involves doing slo-mo karate kicks and punches which don't actually make contact as each other. A little girl wandered past their group and Kaelan threw a kick at her without actually letting her know that it was a game.
She ducked and then decked him one - and the fight was on.
Luckily, they were "saved by the bell" and had to return to class.
Then, at lunch time, the girl's big brother paid Kaelan a visit and a more serious fight began. Eventually the vice principal managed to pull them apart.
After a while the vice principal got the story out of them and the two boys who were really good friends said sorry. Apparently there was a very cute "If we'd known it was only pretend, we would never of hit each other ..." type apology.
Joanne still got a call at home about it but this was good. It meant that she was ready for Kaelan to burst into tears when she picked him up after school.
An Unrewarding Experience
As it turned out, the day wasn't over. At Kaelan's school, they award points for good behavior. Naturally, it takes Kaelan a long time to earn enough points to get anything. He'd been saving his points for the whole year and eventually he got enough to get the lowest prize... a lollipop.
It made his day to finally get it.
Unfortunately, he started eating it immediately after school, while he was waiting to be picked up. A teacher saw him and told him to put it away or get rid of it. Obviously anyone who's ever sucked a lollipop knows that there's no way to put these things away neatly once they're wet - and there's no way he was going to throw it away... ...so instead, he just tried to suck on it more discreetly.
It didn't work. (BTW: The teacher on the line had no idea that this was a prize he'd worked towards all year).
The teacher came over and grabbed the lollipop off him and threw it in the bin. Not willing to see his prize stolen, Kaelan tried to get it out of the bin only to be told that it was now "rubbish" and that he wasn't allowed to get it.
So...
Then he got his schoolbag and threw that in the bin too. The teacher told him to get it but he told her that it was "rubbish" and he wasn't allowed to get it out of the bin.
I think they were a little shocked.
When Joanne drove up, the teacher handed Kaelan's bag to her, plus the lollipop. She tried to tell Joanne her personal sob story but Joey just replied that "he's had a really bad day and he's probably a bit over it".
The Aftermath
It took Kaelan most of the night to calm down enough to tell us exactly what happened. We told him to "go and apologise to the teacher tomorrow" because she didn't know that the lollipop was special.
After a bit of explaining, Kaelan finally understood her point of view. In the meantime, I think that the yard duty teacher talked to Kaelan's teacher and found out about his terrible day. Kaelan did remember to apologise and his room teacher told him that the yard teacher was in tears.
We haven't yet figured out if she was in tears over the incident or over the apology but we hope it's the latter.
12 comments:
Hmmm. That all sounds pretty familar. I'm sorry to hear that Kaelan had such a bad day. There really should be more understanding of his needs at school. I wonder what can be done to make sure all of the staff (and the children) are aware and accepting of this.
ouch! Sorry he had such a downer to his hard earned high :(
I remember many incidents like this and much, much worse with my oldest son (also an Aspie) - I am completely grateful that we have pulled our youngest out of school - at home he is loved and accepted and interacted with love and respect & lots of conversations about what folks mean and how others might view things and different ways of interacting :)
My 7 year old, who also has been diagnosed with AS, had too, a couple of terrible days at school. Sadly, were I live (outside the US) school was not so cooperative with special needs of AS kids, and the whole situation made me realize we needed to take radical decisions, and we finally decided, following recommendations of the therapist and neurologist, to take him off school. Your post helps me to feel like there is someone else in the world going through were i'm going through. Thank you.
I feel terrible when things like this happen, and it's all because of a giant misunderstanding. :-(
I'm here from Hartley's site. That sounds like such a bad day. My son, who also has SPD (and autism) has great difficulty in situations like this because he either can't or won't explain his viewpoint to the teacher, which makes it hard for others to know what is really going on. I can see the teacher's point of view, but also your son's.
Hi, we had a hellish time when my son was younger, it does get easier you guys, my son is now 14, he is much calmer and easier to handle, he had a massive run in with a teacher at High school recently but he handled it beautifully, I could tell there was somethging wrong as he was quite agitated but he was able to recount quite a bit of the event, which is a massive achievement for him as he used to freak out at just recalling a stressful situation. Once out of primary education he got better and better. Some things he'll always struggle with but other things he'll get on with and for the rest well, that's what we're for. Great site and you go Kaelan!
These situations are very sad and unfair to Kaelen. Unless this was Kaelen's first day at that school the staff should be much more aware and accomodating of his needs. Asking a simple question like "Where did you get your sucker?" or even his classroom teacher taking the two minute walk with him outside so that the teachers on duty were aware that he had received his sucker as a reward could have easily solved the sucker situation. I think it is a little ridiculous that it takes him a year to earn one too, that reward system is certainly in need of a revamp. Wow he cannot be that ill behaved. I haven't met a child yet who is.
so wait, when you're waiting to be picked up you can't eat candy? really?
My AS son had a bad day today...total meltdown in his special needs class (which he attends 50%). But the lollipop story rings a bell...
Last year, he had a teacher that gave prizes (you get to get a prize from the "treasure box" if you get 50 stars). For weeks, he was so excited because he was getting close (it took him forever to get 47 stars). When I asked him how his day was on Friday (he should have had a few stars by this time), he said it was ok. Then I asked him if he got any stars, he didn't want to talk about it. When I asked further, it turns out that he had a bad day and was being silly. The teacher ripped up the star-score card and that was the end of his treasure hoping days.
Wow VanOnTheGo,
IMHO, a meltdown after such an event is totally justified.
I remember once buying something at a store which had a rewards card scheme. They told me how many points I had on my card and I said "hang on, I had more than that..." They THEN told me that their store expires points after a year.
I left it for a few seconds then sweetly asked if I could borrow their scissors. They gave them to me and I cut their card into little pieces and then asked if they had a bin.
They said "hey! what about your other points? You had points on that card you know..."
I said that it didn't matter because I wasn't going to be shopping at anyplace that cheats like that - and I asked for my money back on the item I'd just bought too.
Since then I refuse to have anything to do with any rewards cards.
It spoilt it for me.
Why would we fool ourselves into thinking that our children would behave differently?
Did the school give him a replacement lollipop?
Nope... no replacement lollipop - but we did buy one ourselves.
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