When I was 16, the special ed staff tried to get rid of my hand gestures, which were deemed "inappropriate". Some of it was stimming, but a lot of it was when I was trying to find words and construct sentences, and I used a lot of hand gestures.
Well, the hand gestures haven't gone away, though it did get me to be provided with an Alphasmart to assist my communication. Never did get around to "extinguishing" these gestures, though at the time, I was pretty clueless as to what the director of special services wanted me to change, so I was just oblivious until a year later it clicked what they'd anticipated, but by then it was off the IEP goals.
However, while they stopped trying to get rid of the gestures by my senior year, the director of special services did talk to me once after a meltdown, saying a long sentence that ended with "less rock and more talk - and we'd all agree that that's in your best interests" (the room had a couple special ed teachers and me). They all nodded, but I said "no" when she was halfway through the next sentence, and typed something, expressing why rocking is important for me, and basically how I got through high school.
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"There are things you need not know of, though you live and die in vain,
There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain"
--G. K. Chesterton, The Aristocrat
18 Jul 2008, 12:25 pm
