“Shelf? Where’s the shelf in this room?”
She pointed to the play kitchen.
“Why would your pencil be on that?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s an odd place. I’m guessing Thorin knew you were testing him. He doesn’t like that. Maybe give him a two-step request of something you actually want. I would make it real. Also “shelf” is a funny word.”
“What’s so funny about it?”
“Well, I don’t know if Thorin has ever heard that word.”
She crossed her arms tight over her chest. I could see the conversation was frustrating for her, but I found her assessments stagey.
The disagreements with the staff didn’t stop with the speech therapist. During an IEP meeting, a recommendation was made that “Thorin will reduce the number of antagonizing behaviors to no more than once per day with no more than one teacher prompt for five days in a row.” I was surprised.
“Antagonizing? What behaviors are those?”
“Well, he taps kids on the shoulder over and over again and also nudges them in the ribs with his elbow,” the teacher said.
Without thinking, I said, “Oh, I know where he learned that!”
“Where?”
I knew my answer wasn’t going to go over well.
“From me. He and I do that to each other to be funny.”
Ward audibly groaned, garnering laughs from the group.
“The other kids don’t think it’s funny.”
“No, of course not. I’ll just tell him to stop. I’ll explain it.”
“There are other things, too.”
“Like what?” The frustration in my voice was clear.
“It might change from day to day.”
Against our better judgment, we allowed the goal to be added. An IEP meeting can elicit all kinds of emotions and confusion. Sitting with nine professionals, who are recommending what is best for Thorin, becomes exhausting, and confusion over what is fact and what is opinion becomes blurred. It wasn’t until later I realized the goal—to reduce antagonizing behaviors—seemed contradictory to their positive philosophy. Wouldn’t the goal have been to maximize positive interactions?
The most dramatic difference in perspective came from Thorin. At dinner one night, Thorin’s eyes welled up, then tears fell down his face.
“Hey, what happened?” Ward asked, concerned.
“No,” as he continued silently crying.
“Are you sick?” I reached out toward him.
“No!”
Ward went to put his arms around Thorin.
“Hey, come here,” he said gently.
Thorin pulled away.
“No! Top!”
I slowly leaned in and asked, “Okay, okay, Sweetheart, did something happen?”
Thorin signed the words “scared baby.”
In a soft voice Ward asked, “Who’s the scared baby, Thorin?”
“Me.”
I shook my head. “Thorin, you aren’t a baby.”
“Yes, am!”
“Thorin, what do you mean?” asked Ward.
“Kool.”
“At school?”
Thorin nodded his head.
“Did someone make you scared?” Ward asked.
“No! Me!”
“You’re a scared baby at school?” I asked.
He nodded yes.
“Oh, that’s not good,” I said.
“Done now.”
“Okay, we’ll talk more later,” Ward offered.
“No more.”
“Alright. Thanks for telling us,” he told him.
“Yes. Good. Top.”
Thorin got up and left the room.
After he went to bed, Ward and I marveled at what Thorin was able to tell us. We agreed we should meet with the school staff together. I talked to Louise the next day about setting up a meeting. The meeting would take place before school the following day.
I was the first to speak at the meeting.
“A couple nights ago, Thorin told us he feels like a scared baby at school. No one here did anything he just feels . . .” My voice trailed off; this was harder than I thought it would be.
I turned to Ward, and he jumped in.
“We don’t think he feels like that all the time.”
Why were Ward and I being so protective of their feelings instead of just describing what transpired with Thorin? Maybe they did contribute to him feeling like a scared baby.
Louise spoke up, “Thorin is always so happy! He struts around with confidence.”
Yeah he’s always so happy unless he is doing something antagonizing, I thought.
Ms. Deadpan, the teacher from Thorin’s new classroom, said very deliberately, “How exactly how did he tell you that?”
I sensed a direct challenge, but was she questioning our credibility or Thorin’s ability to communicate? I wished I had asked her that, but instead I said, “He started crying at dinner so we tried teasing out what happened. . . .”
Ward interjected, “He signed ‘scared baby.’ I asked him to explain and he said ‘kool.’”
“That’s it?” Ms. Deadpan responded.
“Well,” I said, “I asked if he felt like a scared baby at school. He said yes.”
“It sounds like you fed him that idea,” she countered.
Ward and I looked at each other. The discussion became about the validity of our story. In their defensiveness, they were forgetting the quarterly report we had received from them the week before, stating “His peers struggle to understand Thorin and have difficulty understanding and interpreting the additional modes of communication that Thorin utilizes. Also children in play tend to move from one thing to the next rather quickly and have often moved on to the next topic while Thorin is commenting.” The report also noted Thorin played alone 50 percent of the time.
Thorin feeling like a scared baby didn’t seemed far-fetched to us. Under those circumstances who wouldn’t feel like a scared baby? We started to wonder when did those “antagonizing behaviors” occur? Was it when the others moved on from him as he was trying to communicate? Was it being alone more often than not? Could the IEP goals have been for the staff to intervene and allow Thorin to finish his thought? So many wonderful things had happened for Thorin at the school, but the concerning things were tipping the balance. It was discouraging.
Thorin would start kindergarten in less than a year. Ward and I were concerned he would not be prepared for public school. I shared our concerns privately with Louise.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about. Thorin will be eligible for a self-contained classroom,” Louise commented.
In essence, the self-contained classroom would be like the Rainbow Room without a cutesy name.
“Louise, we want Thorin to be in an inclusive classroom, not self-contained.”
She looked surprised, “We wouldn’t recommend that.”
“Research shows that kids in inclusive settings do better academically and socially.”
“You can actually wait on
