Giving the District a Decision, What Would You Do?

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yeah, well, I address our feelings about tantrums (my son's) in my original thread. I have never said that he should have carte blanche to hurt anyone. Again, that's part of our complaint against the school, that their expectations were so weird. They wanted to punish him as an NT but never had a care plan, never thought to develop a method to prevent his tantrums or teach him not to hurt.

You don't know who is autistic and who isn't. That's an ugly lesson I have learned after having so many people glare at me and my son. He looks normal. Now he talks like he's NT, but he is years behind in social skills and has sensory issues. Having people angry at him doesn't quiet him. But I will say that now, for the past year or so, his public behavior is tons better and often better than NTs. I can't take him to the mall, though. Last time we did that, he had a tantrum, then a meltdown and people thought my husband was kidnapping him. (it happened in CA too)

oh my, KimJ... i wish i had answers for you. too often, school systems will try to tell you that they can handle your situation because it's cheaper to say that instead of saying " you need a specialized school/teacher/program...." keep fighting the system.

I think most people will understand in shops if they are told the reason the child is acting the way they are is because they are autistic. Sadly, some people won't understand no matter what you do but at least some will.

Part of the trouble is a general loss of patience due to the fast pace of modern life. We tend to get very impatient at anything that we see as obstructing us from doing what we want to do or that makes things different to what they usually are.

It's not just autistics having trouble coping, it's people in general, but with autism all the usual issues are amplified.

I've had meltdowns on the plane because of kids having tantrums near me. The noise and the excess emotion is something I just find very distressing. The airline now has a note on their files that I have autism and should be sat nearer the front of the plane to avoid any recurrences.

I was put off a plane about 11 months ago as I was crying but by the time they did it, I was starting to calm down as they had put me in a front seat far away from any noisy kids. It is scary losing control and going from calm to hysterical within seconds. I couldn't put on headphones as we hadn't taken off.

i can't imagine how scary it is to have that sense of lack of control

This is going somewhat off topic, but I had a really bad experience on a plane once. I was alone with my 2 kids, coming home from California where my family lives. We had spent two weeks there, going to Disneyland twice, Universal Studios, Knotts Berry Farm, etc...

My then 3 year old daughter had trouble with her asthma the whole time due to mold problems at my sisters and dust mites at my brothers house. She barely slept the entire 2 weeks. My then 6 year old son, who has Aspergers, had swung a plastic container filled with bubbles, (meant to be worn as a necklace), around in circles and managed to scratch the cornea of his eye with it and had to wear an eye patch for weeks.

Anyway, we got on the plane and sat for 2 hours on the runway due to some technical problem. My daughter started crying and I couldn't settle her down. I think she thought that we were going on another ride and she wasn't very fond of the idea. She screamed for hours on the plane. My son sat with his hands over his ears for about an hour before he lost it and had a total melt down. I was so overwhelmed. I hadn't slept much because my daughter hadn't slept, and I was close to having my own meltdown when someone told me that I "should get those children off the plane!". We were in the air at the time. I finally started crying and the poor flight attendant didn't know what to do with us.

That was probably the longest 5 hours of my life.

When we got off the plane I remember thinking that if my husband wasn't there to meet me at the gate, I would divorce him. He wasn't. He ended up being almost an hour late because he had arrived when the plane was due and since it had been delayed, he went back home and guessed at when it might actually arrive. He was totally unsympathetic when I told him about my flight. We are now divorced. (Not really from this incident, but from many, many more issues that were probably due to his own Asperger traits. I didn't know about Aspergers at the time and just thought that he was the most uncaring person on the face of the earth. He was absolutely no help in raising an unidentified Asperger child and had no sympathy for my struggles.)

Sorry to go so off topic. The airplane comment just brought back a strong memory. They do grow up and life does become a little bit easier. My son is now 14. Meltdowns are not our main concern at this point although they do still occur occasionally.

Sandy

That would have been horrible. It's always worse when the flight is delayed too. I feel a bit agitated even reading about this situation as it would have been like hell.