Daughter's teacher making me crazy !

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For those of you who don't know about my daughter, I'll give you a brief intro...........She'll be 9 at the end of November, and was dxed with ADHD last year (although we are still of the mind that she has Aspergers). Daughter is socially immature, has meltdowns, poor fine motor skills, is clumsy, and is prone to taking what people say to her literally.

Daughter has been having increasing problems at school this year, and I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere with her teacher.
Here's the latest: After watching a movie with her class yesterday, Daughter was told to answer 2 questions about the movie. Daughter told the teacher that she didn't understand the questions, and she was told to just try to figure them out. And so began meltdown #1 for the day. Daughter cried and cried & somewhere during her crying jag, the para tells her that she can't go to lunch until she calms down. Daughter cries even harder because she only hears: you can't go to lunch until you finish your work.....Teacher then takes Daughter into hall to "calm her down"..Teacher proceeds to try to talk to Daughter about what's bothering her. Daughter just keeps crying..................Daughter finally settles down & then has to go the dreaded Math class. Daughter spent most of math class climbing on her desk, and licking herself like a cat.
These are behaviors that we don't see at home on a regular basis~ generally only when her schedule gets interrupted...I've tried to explain to her teacher that daughter doesn't do well with last minute changes to her schedule, and that she takes peoples words literally ( at a party last week, daughter was upset & the mom told her to go to the bathroom & wash her hands and face............daughter spent 30 minutes in the bathroom washing her hands and face, oblivious to the fact that she was supposed to be calming down.............when daughter finally emerged calm from the bathroom, she learned she had missed one of the party events & so the crying started all over again).............

I just don't feel like I'm getting anywhere...........We have a 504 meeting for Daughter next week. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Yes....BY LAW....in the U.S.A the schools must accomodate a child who has a diagnoses. PERIOD, if they don't they are out of compliance. Here's what you do...demand an I.E.P Individual Education Plan. they have to do this. Also get a behaorial specialist involved to help her teacher help her. She definately needs Special Ed Support. that dosn't mean she has to go into the class, it just means the resources are there is she needs them.GET THEM, GET THEM GET THEM. And don't let the schools say..."Oh come and get her she needs a break," Unless they are going to suspend her don't pick her up...Why??? Because they will always do this, letting her slip through the cracks. 10 suspensions means they have to help her, that forces them to because the district will make them. But rather than going that route you can go to the district now and speak to student support services, explain what is happening and get help. The above info I gave you came in handy when i worked in a group home. We had one child who was not allowed to stay in school all day...then we found out this was illegal. Your child has a right to be educated and the schools must educate her or you have grounds for a law suit. There is a book "Special Education Rights and Responsibilies" find out where you can get one is your area, Sacramento Ca is where we get ours. And some schools really hate that when parents research the educational rights of their children. Why, because the more you know, the more you can force the schools to comply. Also F.Y.I sometimes a special ed class isn't a bad thing, we had a child who went to special ed, then regular ed, then the gifted program....so cool. Just depends on the teacher and aides.

So the teacher doesn't explain the work so she can understand it and then they punish her for being upset?

good lord.

You want to know what I hate?! When the teachers say,

And here's what drives me crazy..."You don't want to label your child do you?" Yet they will label her "bad".

Helpful advice;
Make clear that your daughter being provoked into shutdown and then punished for it is unacceptable.

Remind the teacher that ignoring your suggestions makes her work harder. That you want to keep things running smoothly. You may need to use Legalese and use words like "access to education" and "discrimination" when describing your daughter being threatened and pulled out of class.
You may also ask why crying is a punishable offense and is the para trained in diagnosing/labeling such offenses.

I don't know if the times of these events are being recorded but that would help establish a pattern of your daughter's more vulnerable times. There may be some other trigger besides the assignment. Though I'm guessing that those movie questions were open-ended or opinion-based and if she's Aspie, she'll need help.


I would like to offer hope for the 504 meeting but as my son is fully enrolled in a special ed class and not getting its services (as written in the IEP), a "label" isn't a guarantee of anything.

thanks for the replies....i'm just so terribly frustrated with the whole thing.......i teach in a special ed setting, so you think that they'd perhaps listen to me & take my advice....apparently not.
i've asked repeatedly if anyone is keeping track of antecedents to her behavior, and get no response. i asked what attempts were made to help daughter with movie questions~ ie; rephrasing the question, asking what she didn't understand about the question....no response from teacher.........i asked if anyone had noticed what set daughter off in math, or did the behavior seemingly come out of nowhere....no response from teacher.
i don't even know where to begin at the 504 meeting.
the questions, btw, were 2 part questions like: What does it mean to be a brother's keeper ? and how did Keegan act like a brother's keeper ?
oh, and also....there's no schedule posted in her classroom anywhere ! AAAAAAAAAAA

Well, those are definitely open-ended questions that will be hard for her.
Getting teachers to write down schedules is like pulling teeth. I swear. We have to fight over it all the time.

i think i've made a fairly comprehensive agenda for the 504 meeting.....just hope that they'll actually listen and follow through on what they say they'll do ( not something they've proven the ability to do in the past)

had daughter's meeting with school today. heartbreaking to hear that other kids are asking to not sit with her....that no one plays with her at recess....that daughter has no clue that her behaviors might be off-putting............the special ed teacher came in and actually had some insight into daughter~ that it's easy to forget that daughter doesn't always understand things ( due to her high IQ, it's easy to think she "gets" everything)
the school nurse must have asked me 3 times whether daughter was on the spectrum~ we're setting up now to have daughter eval'ed by a different psych.....will see how that goes.

Boy I can empathize with you. It all sounds too familiar. My daughter was first diagnosed with ADHD and OCD tendencies before the PDD/NOS and then Asperger's dx.

The best thing we did was have her evaluated at the Yale Child Study Program in New Haven Ct. I see you live in New England, so it should be convenient for you. It takes almost a year to get an appointment, so do it now. They are covered by some insurance, so check. They'll give you ton of paperwork to fill out. It's is all a lot of work, and they interview the child for a few days, but at least you'll get a correct dx. I can tell already she has a spectrum disorder, and once you have that, the school can't treat her in a one size fits all way, especially when she gets an IEP.

Good luck and in the meantime, talk to the principal, not the teachers. She or he will be more interested in avoiding the wrath of an dissatisfied parent, and find educational info on high functioning autism and/or asperger's, and give it to all school personnel. Make a nuisance of yourself..it's the only way. Been there.

As a 9 year old, I would also have got very frustrated with such an open-ended question and would have been scared of making the "wrong" answer. Even at 15, I can remember begging a teacher to tell me what a question meant and she wouldn't. I guessed at the answer and got it wrong because of going off on entirely the wrong track. Yet English was my best subject at the time and I was fine at doing essays where imagination was needed.

This reminds me of something that happened to me in 3rd grade. I was told I couldn't go home until I finished some assignment I found to be overwhelming. I had what I guess you would've called a meltdown. It was trumatic enough that I still remember it to this day. Can you imagine, a teacher telling someone in 3rd grade you won't be able to go home?

we've been on the waiting list for Yale for awhile now....it's very hard being in this position....wanting her to be dx-ed Aspie, and yet wanting the dx to be "only ADHD". I'm finding everything to be increasingly difficult to deal with. It's like a puzzle that you think you've figured out, but then you look at the answers and realize that you've gotten everything totally wrong~ and you can't figure out why your answers are wrong.
daughter goes for a med/psych eval on Dec 6....i fluctuate between wanting her to have another full psych eval & not wanting her to have another one......just having to explain all of daughter's "stuff" and getting the blank stares from the professionals is overwhelming to think about. no one seems to "get" my daughter..........heck, i don't even understand why she acts the way she does sometimes ~ i mean, why is it that she sometimes interacts with others as if she were a cat~and then other times she is herself ?

Violet yoshi, my husband is full of those stories. It's appalling what adults do to children.

I really feel your frustration and how you just want answers. If you can just try to understand that sometimes even normies act inexplicably. The answer may not even be apparent to the person who said or did something "odd."

When my aspie daughter was under 10, whenever she found herself in a threatening or unpleasant situation, she would crouch down and get under the desk or corner, and growl and hiss like a lion. I was mortified at this when she did it in public or the psych's office. She also did it during testing. She wasn't very verbal, and I was concerned she didn't see the border between reality and make-believe.

Well, many years later we were remembering some of the "odd" things she used to do or say, and she articulated in a very "matter of fact," way, "I hated how that doctor would ask me questions and then write in his little pad....he was just waiting for me to look crazy...so
I growled...I wasn't going to answer his questions....he was a jerk.
I growled so I could block out his questions and tricks."

To this day she is a master of avoidance. She still uses unusual tricks, but she usually just plays mute and deadpans complete unawareness. But I've learned when she wants to pay attention, she doesn't miss a thing. But if it bores her, and many of the things we find fun, she thinks are just plain stupid.

As she get older, you'll see she has been absorbing everything she needs. I think we normies depend on facial expression and body language to read each other. Our Aspies are void of that, so it's a lot harder for us to figure how they are feeling or what they are thinking. In time you'll figure her out. The funny thing is she'll know more about you than you will about her. It's frustrating for parents, but our kids think it's a riot...and they do have great senses of humor.

Daughter was right. She didn't understand the terms in which teacher put the questions. Daughter should be in special ed. Not the kind for ret*d kids. The kind for really smart kids. All you can do is comfort her. She was obviously furious. I don't blame her. There are ways to put academic questions and ways to put them. Remember, she will grow up to be 20, and beyond, and what you do now (not to make you feel guilty in any way) will determine what kind of a 20-year-old she is. There is a lot of "layering" a teacher has to get through to reach an AS or ADHD kid. Most aren't willing to try. But there is someone living in that small person, and maybe she's just average, and maybe she's the next Marie Curie. Are you (and more importantly the school) willing to take the chance that she's not the next great artist or great scientist? And if she's not, she still has a right to be happy with herself.

I grew up with that crap. Don't remember how I got through it, but I did. Just grit your teeth and support your kid. She has no one else to support her.

Good luck.

Btdt