Meltdown At School

Today I received an email from Connor's teacher saying that he was having a rough day and did something happen at home?

At home? No, but school has been stressing him out, did she not realize this? No? I could have sworn it had come up at some point in the last two months. Oh, well, Surprise!

So I went to the school and asked to speak to him. I knew he was on the verge of a meltdown. He came to the office with the Special Ed teacher, his eyes wide and vacant. He wouldn't speak. I tried taking him out of the office and finally got him to talk a bit. Then the tears began to roll down his cheeks.

Eventually, I was able to get some information from him, enough that we went back to the office to chat with the Sped teacher. We went to the conference room. Connor paced around the large wooden table, eventually settling into the chair at the head of the table. Finally, a weak smile. We were getting somewhere.

"Connor, what's wrong?" "I don't want to be here."
"Connor, why did you throw your binder across the room?" "I was frustrated."
"Connor, why were you frustrated?" "I don't know."
"Connor, what happened that made you frustrated?" "She's mad at me."
"Who is mad at you?" "My teacher."
"Why is she mad at you?" "I don't know."
"Why do you think she is mad at you?" "She raised her voice."

Digging up this much information took half an hour. Eventually, Connor opened up about his fear of being suspended again, being bored in class, trying to read when the whole class was talking, etc. His sped teacher explained they were working on higher-end activities for him to keep him from being as bored. I asked why this was not done already (Guess what? It's in his IEP that he should be getting it.) and she said because they had not realized Connor was this frustrated about it. So it takes my son throwing things and screaming and crying before we realize he really might need some help? I warned them yesterday that he was struggling to keep his composure, but I guess they thought I was joking. I know, I know, why does anything surprise me with this?

We also discussed Connor's stimming, and the Functional Behavioral Assessment person is assisting them with a more effective goal checklist and reward system. Hopefully that means her assessment will be on target. And, I managed to get her to agree to find a more appropriate way for him to vent frustration before it gets to the level it did today. We will see.

Finally, we convinced him that we had plans in place to help with boredom and frustration. Connor stopped crying and I managed to get a small laugh out of him. (He said he can't go back to class. I told him "can't" is a bad word. He said, "I can not go back to class.) At this point, I knew we had him back. After a little more resistance, we finally got him to return to class (an hour later).

As I was leaving, the principal had the nerve to ask me if he was feeling better. I had my littlest kid with me as she was sick from school today which may have just saved me from telling the principal where she could stick her phony compassion.

When we got home, I received a call from the judge who will be mediating our case. Everything that is discussed in mediation is confidential, so I may not get to share juicy details. Hopefully we can resolve this here, and we do have an advocate going to assist us. Otherwise, it's off to court we go.

Right now, though, I just hope Connor's day got better.