Everybody in the class wanted their picture taken and placed into the program. More squeals ensued after each corresponding name was entered and listened to. As I was packing up, Ferrell came over to me.
“So that’s Thorin’s iPad?”
“Yes.”
“Only his, right? He uses it whenever he wants?”
“Yes.”
“Do you use it?”
“No.”
“I can’t touch my mom’s Kindle. Wow. Thorin is so lucky.”
Two months later Thorin was accused of biting again. A small group of children were left alone for a couple minutes. When Ms. Charles came back, two boys said that Thorin had bitten them. She didn’t give me their names but she did call their parents to let them know what happened.
“He doesn’t have front teeth.”
“There were no marks.”
When we got home from school, I asked Thorin if we could use the iPad to talk about what happened. He said yes.
“Ms. Charles said you bit someone. Did you?”
“Yesith,” he said.
I made a button in the program for Thorin that read “I bite people when I feel ___” and asked Thorin to pick an emotion to fill in the blank. He picked “afraid” and “sick.”
He motioned he was hit in the face. Because the students’ photos were in his program, he was able to identify who hit him: Isaiah and Christopher. He also pointed to a girl named Felicia who made a funny face at him, showing a lot of teeth. I believed him.
I emailed what I had discovered to Ms. Charles and asked if this scenario sounded plausible. She wrote back, confirming that the incident did involve those two boys and that Felicia did make funny faces.
I knew Christopher was in the recreation program with Thorin, so I started hanging around at the end of the day before I took Thorin home. A few days into my stakeout, I saw Christopher come up behind Thorin, who was standing on a platform about two feet off the ground. Had I known what he was capable of, I would have yelled to try to stop what happened next: Christopher looked around then shoved Thorin off the platform. Thorin face-planted and immediately started crying. I was shocked by Christopher’s audacity and ran over to help Thorin.
I turned to Christopher and said, “I saw that!”
“It was an accident!”
“No, it was not. I want you to listen to me very carefully. Don’t ever do anything like that again. Do you read me, Christopher?”
He looked like he was going to cry but held it together. It almost made me feel bad for threating a six-year-old.
I reported what happened to the staff. At first Christopher lied, then he thought better of it after he looked at me. Even at his age, he could discern the look that said, “Don’t mess with me.”
“I did it! I pushed him.”
When I told Ward that night he said, “Kari! He’s six!”
“So is Thorin. I’m a mother, Baby.”
In light of my recent observations, I made more time in my schedule for shadowing Thorin before and after school. The first morning yielded tons of distressing information. Everything was fine until the morning bell rang for the kids to file into school; I witnessed nine children—in almost as many minutes—force their unsolicited help onto Thorin. He would shake his head or say no, but they didn’t pay attention.
One kid scooped up Thorin’s backpack and grabbed Thorin’s arm to shove it in the strap. I intervened and said, “Hey, you, stop!”
The next one grabbed Thorin’s hand to pull him toward the door. I took his hand off Thorin saying, “Don’t touch him!”
All the way inside the building, I ran interference. A kid flew in front of me and tried to drag Thorin up the stairs, so I yelled, “Okay, I do not like that! Let go now!”
Eventually, I was able to usher Thorin to the classroom without any interruption. But once there, a boy tried to pull off Thorin’s backpack, and I admonished him. “What are you doing? Move away, now!”
A girl started yelling, “He has to line up outside the door,” then she pushed him in line. I got between them.
“You aren’t in line, Bossy! Hey, I’m talking to you!” I said facing the girl.
Then, I turned around and found a boy holding either side of Thorin’s face saying, “Do you understand?”
I peeled the boy’s hands from Thorin’s face.
“Don’t touch him!” I said, close to tears. I felt totally discombobulated.
As quickly as it started, it was over as soon as they filed into the classroom. Thorin casually waved goodbye. Walking away, I realized I had witnessed his daily routine.
At dinner that night, Ward and I talked to Thorin about the other students.
“I saw how you’re treated at school. How you feel about that?” I asked.
Thorin slammed his fork down on the table. He made jabbing and smashing gestures and said, “Mad!” He quickly amended it, “Hulk mad!”
I felt like a complete asshole for not knowing the degree to which he was managed by other children.
Ward asked, “When the kids get excited to see you, how do you feel?”
“Mad! Not baby!”
“It makes you feel like a baby, Thorin?” I asked.
“Yes! Thorin not baby!”
“That’s right, Thorin. You aren’t a baby,” Ward replied.
“Hey, can you and I do another presentation together to tell your class how you feel?”
“Yay!”
There were only a couple weeks left of kindergarten, but we had to do something. Ward and I found it difficult to understand how this had been allowed to happen; however, it was a window into Thorin’s behavior issues. He was controlling his actions much more than his peers, and I knew I didn’t have the strength and restraint he demonstrated. The next day, I informed Ms. Charles we were doing another presentation. She was again enthusiastic.
In preparation, Thorin and I discussed what buttons to create in Proloquo2Go. He had several recommendations: “Wait”; “Ask
