Bad Behavior, in School and in the Spotlight

Three things ticking me off just now:

According to an item on the Special Olympics site, director Guy Ritchie was quoted in an Esquire interview as saying of his ex-wife Madonna: "I love her, but she's retarded too." This in response to Madonna's comment last year from a concert stage that Ritchie is "emotionally retarded." As the Special Olympics item states: "A year after Madonna's uttering of the R-word toward Ritchie, we've gone exactly nowhere as a society despite the efforts around the Tropic Thunder protests, the Spread the Word to End the Word campaign and so forth." If you'd like to tell the former Mr. Madonna that the R-word is not acceptable, that same page on the Special Olympics site has addresses and suggestions on what to say.

A teacher in Florida was found guilty of child abuse for spiking a can of soda with hot sauce so as to teach a painful lesson to an autistic student who kept drinking from the one on her desk. She faced five years in prison, but according to a Disability Scoop report, got two years of probation and community service instead. She's now saying that it wasn't a behavior modification exercise at all -- that she just enjoys Tabasco sauce in her drink, and puts it in all the time. Now, I'm not saying that she necessarily deserved five years in prison, and it appears that she's lost her job over this. What gets my goat about this story is ... if you have trouble with a kid in your special-education classroom drinking from the can of soda on your desk, why not just remove the can of soda from your desk? Is the teacher's need to have constant access to a favorite beverage paramount here? This is a classic example of how easy it is to eliminate a problem before it starts by just not putting a can of soda on your darn desk! And if soda's that compelling for the kid, use it as a reward. My son's teacher was having a problem with my son grabbing his keys off his desk; he's now using them as a reward for my son to get his work done, and it's very effective. Not rocket science, this.

Speaking of school behavior, I'm also feeling unpleasantly hot over a discussion going on over at the Parenting Special Needs forum right now. It started as a discussion of bullying and has mutated into a consideration of how much responsibility parents have for their children's behavior at school. I've found that most of my son's misbehavior at school is specifically related to school situations that are not under my control, and of which I am often not well-informed. The idea that giving a kid with autism or FASD or ADHD a good talking to about behaving in school will cause them to not react in predictably disruptive ways to predictably disruptive events drives me nuts. It's the hot spot in the middle of my hot button when it comes to behavior support in school. If it steams you, too, stop by the forum and make your case -- and provide some help to a parent whose children's tantruming at school has thus far resisted the best efforts of home and school to figure it out. Maybe you've found a solution in a similar situation?

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