Terrorism? Really??? Or "Get Out of Our School!"

If this wasn't so over the top ridiculous, it might be funny.

A 14 year old Georgia boy has been charged with a felony (making terrorist threats) for a small (about 1 inch high) set of stick figures he drew on a paper in class. The stick figures depict one figure (labeled "me") shooting another stick figure (labeled with his teacher's name).

There is no question that his drawing the picture was both inappropriate and wrong. There is also no question in my mind that the school's response is so wildly disproportionate as to make me question why they would do such a thing. There has been no allegation of the boy attacking his teacher, bringing a weapon to class, or even of having formed a definite plan as to how he would accomplish the task in his drawing. There has been no mention of the school consulting with anyone else (the boy's doctor, their own psychologists, the police) to evaluate the situation as to how likely it was for the boy to be able to carry out his threat, much less evaluate the seriousness of the situation.

Many people threaten to kill their spouses every day. They very seldom get arrested, much less charged with making "terrorist threats".

So why would a school do such a thing?

My guess (and it is a guess, as there's been no statement I've seen from the school) is that this charter school where the boy is enrolled wants to dump this "problem student" from their school, and that they are using this as a convenient excuse. Many charter schools don't want to spend the time and money it takes to properly educate children with special needs.

This could end up as a case of "zero tolerance" gone wild, but I suspect that, in the end, the school will come up with some "compromise" that will entail dropping or lessening the charge, as long as the boy withdraws from the school (or accepts another placement they have suggested).

Walking While Black and Autistic

The phrase "Driving While Black" is one that is familiar to every African-American in the U.S., and refers to the practice of African Americans (especially young black males) being singled out by the police for "special treatment" when they are driving. Otherwise known as racial profiling, through either upbringing or isolated experiences many police officers come to unfairly believe that the majority of blacks must be up to no good, and thus deserve to be singled out for closer scrutiny, and assumed to be hostile until proven otherwise.

Steven Eugene Washington, a 27 year old black man who reportedly had never had a run in with the law, was shot dead while walking to a friend's house the other night in Los Angeles. When he was reportedly approached for "acting suspiciously", he reportedly

"...did not comply with their investigative demands and appeared to be reaching into his waistband. Fearing he was reaching for a weapon each officer fired once. One bullet struck Washington in the head."

While the LAPD gives its officers a one hour course in dealing with autistic individuals, the department could not say whether the officers who shot Washington had taken the course.

My ten year old bi-racial son had a large birthfather. He will be a big man. This scenario is one of my greatest fears.

I ache for the Washington family tonight, and long for a world where more than one hour is spent training first responders.

Temple Grandin BBC Documentary

Lately many people have been commenting on the HBO Temple Grandin movie that was just released. I watched the movie this last week with my family. Overall, I would say that it was pretty good. I don't expect Hollywood to get many things right, but I'd say they did a pretty fair job with this treatment. Claire Danes did a much better job than I expected. I feared before seeing it that she was much too "glamorous" for the role, but she did a good job of capturing the general tone, and playing things pretty straight.

Here's the trailer from the HBO movie:

Trailer

Buddy Boy told me several years ago that his mind was like "a video camera. I can just hit rewind, and see things over again." He had never heard of Temple Grandin at the time. After seeing the movie, he asked if I thought Temple could teach him to think in pictures. The HBO movie presented it as Temple thinking in black and white still pictures. I guess he saw this as fundamentally different from his thinking like there's a video recorder running in his head. I told him she probably couldn't teach him to think in pictures, as everyone pretty much thought the way they thought.

For those who have access to HBO in the states, I think it's definitely worth a watch if you have time. For those without HBO access, I'm sure it will be out on DVD soon.

Also, on a local list I'm on, someone sent me the links to a nice BBC documentary on Dr. Grandin on YouTube. You can see it here:

Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46ycu3JFRrA&feature=related

Part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-iy7GNsmm0&feature=related

Part 3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDWH_Sfnoc0&feature=related

Part 4:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epwa0zQ8jx8&feature=related

Part 5:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aidkSBsyDlA&feature=related

Murphy's Law

Anyone that has children is very familiar with Murphy's Law, commonly stated as "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong".

This morning, Buddy Boy started spinning around the kitchen, while holding his bowl of broccoli (yes, Liz gets both kids to eat vegetables and protein for breakfast).

So Buddy Boy is happily spinning away, saying (while broccoli is flying from the bowl) "Look, it's Centrifugal Force! It's one of Murphy's Laws."

Liz and I both got a big kick out of that.

In the same vein of humor, here is a Rhett and Link YouTube video entitled "The Perfect Bathroom Trip". We showed it to both of the kids today. Our grammar school nurse is planning on showing it to the kids in school.

The Nail That Sticks Up...

Will Be Hammered Down.

So goes an old Japanese saying, meant to illustrate (as well as inculcate) a sense of conformity among the Japanese people. Westerners (especially Americans) are supposed to place much more value on non-conformity and individuality.

But that idea only goes so far, and is noticably absent in the American public school system. When it comes to school kids, conformity is king. And if you step out of line, you will be hammered down, sometimes quite forcefully.

Nowhere is this more evident then when it comes to kids with disabilities, especially those on the autism spectrum. Often, kids on the spectrum have various sensory processing difficulties, and may also persevorate on certain things. When they run into difficulty, they can get emotionally "wound up" fairly quickly, and appear to be "acting out" and being volitionally bad. When given a little extra time and understanding, their behavior is most often a slight inconvenience to those around them, and at worst a slight nuisance. But when those around them insist on total conformity, and react by touching the person and physically restraining them, then the autistic person (like most people physically restrained for reasons they don't understand at the time would) react with a "fight or flight" type of syndrome and lash out at those restraining them.

Google the words "child autism arrested", and you quickly are faced with several stories over several years that seem to follow the same script: A child on the autism spectrum is placed in a regular classroom (often with a history of the family fighting for more support than what is being provided), said child "acts up" a bit (involving no or minor physical interaction with staff or other children), teacher reacts by physically restraining child, child "lashes out" (by kicking, pinching, biting), police are called, and child is arrested. There is often no behavioral plan in place to deal with the child's behavioral difficulties, and if there is a plan, it is often not followed. Children as young as 5 years old have been placed in handcuffs and arrested. Others who are slightly older are not only arrested, but sometimes thrown in psychiatric institutions or jail.

Such is the case with Zakh Price, age 11 (his picture's at the top), who was arrested and charged with a felony. Click Zakh's name to read Emily's excellent investigative piece into this latest travesty of justice. Another article detailing the facts can be found here. And Emily's follow up piece detailing some of the personal attacks made against Zakh and his grandmother can be found here.

This story rings all too true to me. My son is in fourth grade, and while the police have not been called on him (yet), the school district had threatened to do that in the past, when he was 5 years old. That period of time resulted in a short detour to a class for emotionally disturbed children, LOTS of meetings (with their lawyers, our advocates, and our lawyer), and a bunch of money payed out in legal and consulting fees. I was fortunate to be blessed with coworkers that allowed me flexible time off to go to all the meetings, as well as a job that pays well enough for us to afford the bills that came with this.

Zakh is lucky to have his grandmother, Carole Reynolds, who is a staunch advocate for him. Unfortunately, Carole is tapped out of the kind of money that legal representation requires, and she needs some help.

The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) has issued an action alert, which lists e-mail addresses and phone numbers you can call to register your concerns. A website set up to take donations for Zakh's legal bills has also been set up for him.

I admit that I don't usually donate to online causes. Not only are there so many of them, but it's often difficult to discern which are legitimate, and which are scams. ASAN is a legitimate organization (Its president, Ari Ne'eman, has been nominated to be on an advisory council to the President of the United States), and Emily is a top notch, ethical person who's truthfulness and judgement I totally trust.

So I'm asking you to do what I did. Go to the website, click on the "Chip In" button, and give what you can. Even if it's 1,5, 10, or 20 dollars, everything will help. And keep this family in your prayers.

Unfortunately this story is not unique. But it does seem to be much more common for school districts to try to get out of paying for proper supports for children with disabilities by dumping them into the legal system. Perhaps there is also an attempt to silence those who would have the temerity to ask for support that the system is not willing to provide. Perhaps such prosecutions are meant to silence those voices before they even speak up.

Let the people in Fort Smith, Arkansas know that treating an 11 year old with a disability this way is unacceptable. Support Carole Reynolds as she supports Zakh. Go to the website. Make that donation.

Now, before it's too late.

Sleep

photo credit-Jun's World
Creative Commons license


Sleep.

One of the most common, natural things there is. Most of us never think about it much at all, until we (or someone close to us) has problems related to it. There are a multitude of disorders that can affect our sleep. Insomnia, sleep apnea (central or obstructive), narcolepsy, sleep paralysis, sleep walking, night terrors, etc. You get the idea. Sleep disorders of one sort or the other seem to be a lot more common in those on the autism spectrum.

Buddy Boy has never seemed to require (or want) the same amount of sleep that most kids his age get. We've tried regular routines, music, melatonin, night lights, and various other meds to try to get him to sleep thru the night. We've gotten to the point where he'll go to bed at a predictable time (8:30-9:00 pm-not bad for an almost 10 year old), and usually sleeps until 6:00 am, though sometimes he's up at 2:00 or 4:00, and stays up for the day after that. We're fairly accustomed to his routine. That's not the problem.

Sweet Pea, his 7 1/2 year old sister, has been having sleep related problems since August. At first it was her getting up every night screaming. When we'd come into the room, she'd complain that her stomach was hurting. Mostly it was an epigastric centered pain, and only occurred at night. When she woke in the morning, she still complained of stomach pain, and her diet (which Liz had pretty full of good things-protein, vegetables, fruit), devolved to milk, cheerios, and cheese. Everything else hurt to eat (according to her).

At first I felt it was most likely related to anxiety regarding school starting up (Sweet Pea is a fairly high anxiety kind of kid) and hoped that by not paying too much attention to it it would go away. Well, Sweet Pea got into the swing of school, liked school, and it didn't go away. I took her to a pediatric GI doctor near the end of September, after starting her on some Prilosec (Sweet Pea had reflux pretty bad as an infant, and I thought it reasonable that perhaps it had recurred). The GI doctor agreed, and she is now on daily Prilosec. The stomach aches have "mostly" gone away (though not completely-when she was an infant putting her on Prilosec changed her in 48 hours from a miserable baby who cried every night for three months straight to a happy, smiling kid). Her diet, now that she's on the Prilosec, has once again normalized.

Sweet Pea continued to wake up most nights, sometimes screaming, sometimes coming in to wake us up. Most nights it's sometime between 1:00 and 3:00 am. Although it's somewhat disruptive to me, it's majorly disruptive to Liz, who often can't get back to sleep (internship was good training for me). For the last several weeks Liz has been sleeping downstairs in the family room, so as to try to get some sleep. She also has not been very happy. :(

Sweet Pea's pediatrician has prescribed a mild anti-anxiety agent, which has helped some, but not completely. Instead of 5-6 nights out of 7, we're down to 2-3 nights out of 7. Not even paying her 25 cents to not wake us has helped (Sweet Pea will make lots of money when she grows up-she is very focused on making money-to the point that I constantly remind her of all the other really important things out there that are more important).

We, being experts in sleep as much as anyone out there, have tried as many different things as we could think of. I'm not really looking for any new ideas, just venting a bit, I guess.

And dreaming of the day when both kids will sleep through the night.

Wow! The Trib Gets It Right

photo credit-Todd Baker
Creative Commons license


Almost exactly two years ago I wrote two posts regarding how the Chicago Tribune was allowing non-factual gibberish to be published under its masthead thru the online in house blog of Julie Deardorff, and how it was abdicating its journalistic responsibility. I was afraid at the time that this was to be indicative of what would pass for "investigative journalism" at mainstream, formerly powerhouse, papers (and other media outlets).

I am happy to say that I was wrong.

In May the Tribune published very good investigative pieces on Dr. Mark and David Geier, as well as a local Chicago quack by the name of Dr. Mayer Eisenstein.

Now this month there are two more articles on autism and quackery, detailing how risky therapies have little basis in science, and how legitimate researchers have seen their findings twisted by those who would fleece money from unsuspecting parents.

All of these recent articles are the product of reporters Trine Tsouderos and Patricia Callahan.

I must say that I am impressed with the quality and consistency of these articles. No false balancing of legitimate science with BS pseudoscience. No confusing association of two events with causation. Just a thorough investigation of the underlying science, and painstaking digging through all of the "scientific sounding" but totally bogus claims of those out there that would fleece desperate parents out of their time and money.

If these two reporters keep up such great work, we just might see the rise of mainstream newspapers again.