Probable Autistic student dragged to time out room

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Amanda Vaters's eight-year-old son, Hayden, has a preliminary diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder and possible attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Before her family moved to Nova Scotia last August, Hayden attended school in Ottawa, where staff helped keep him calm and focused through breathing techniques, noise-cancelling headphones and giving extra work to keep him busy when he finished his other assignments,

But a few months after he began classes at Tallahassee Community School in the Halifax area last fall, Vaters said she started getting phone calls from the school telling her Hayden was being disruptive during lessons.

Vaters said her son sometimes gets bored after finishing his work, so he distracts himself by doing things like playing with his cafeteria money or talking to other kids. The teacher asks him to quiet down, Vaters said, but sometimes that doesn't work.

"She said it would get to the point where he wouldn't keep it down, he'd be getting out of his seat, and next thing you know he's running around the classroom," Vaters said.

On June 2, the school called Vaters and asked her to pick up her son because he was being disruptive and had thrown a chair.

Vaters said she arrived at the school's office and was directed to the resource room where the principal was waiting. The behavioural specialist was there, too, "holding a door open a crack, peeking in."

"I walk up to the open door and I see just this tiny little room, white padded walls and him curled up in the corner on the floor, crying. They don't even have padding on the floor or anything to make it comfortable — nothing. It's just hard floor, padded walls," Vaters said.

"I walk in and as soon as I go to touch him, he automatically yelps and pushes me away because he doesn't realize it's me. So I just said, 'Hayden, bud, it's me, look up.' And he looked up and as soon as he saw it was me, he wrapped his arms and legs around me."

Vaters said after she took Hayden home, she looked up the government's policy on time-out rooms.

The province's guidelines state that they must:

be approved by the school board
be a minimum of 56 square feet
not be locked, latched or secured
be supervised at all times
not contain items or fixtures that may be harmful
have adequate light, ventilation and heat
be conducive to self-quieting behaviours and not overly stimulating
have an unbreakable observation window
Halifax Regional School Board spokesperson Doug Hadley said the room at Tallahassee Community School meets those criteria and was approved by the board's student services department.

The guidelines say the rooms are a "proactive strategy to support self-monitoring, student self-reflection and self-calming" and "should be educationally beneficial to the student."

Time out "should not be used as a punishment, to threaten students, to humiliate them or make them feel afraid," the guidelines state.

"He said, 'I told them to stop. They were hurting me. They were pulling on my arms and it hurt.'"

Vaters said she explained to staff that Hayden, like some people with autism, doesn't like people he doesn't know touching him.

However, Hayden told his mother the staff didn't listen to his pleas. He was put him in the room with the door closed and couldn't get out, said Vaters.

"I would like to think that we're evolving away from the use of time-out rooms and more on individualized planning for students that allow for choice," said Cynthia Carroll, executive director of Autism Nova Scotia.

She said there's a difference between time-out rooms, which are usually bare and "associated with more of a punitive approach," and sensory rooms, which generally have dim lighting, comfortable seating and options for self-soothing, which could include toys.


Cynthia Carroll, executive director of Autism Nova Scotia, says time-out rooms are "associated with more of a punitive approach." (Mark Crosby/CBC)

"It would be difficult to self-regulate in a room that you couldn't interact with anything, there was nothing there to help you decompress or there was nothing there to help reduce anxiety," she said.

"In fact, it could have the opposite effect, where their anxiety could spike."