the booger thing was kinda……educational for everyone. Our principal tended to sink back into punishment-dominance-control techniques. Not surprising, as this has been the working model for many years.

She was/is very open to new stuff, and would adjust herself accordingly. but when it came to crunch time, she was every bit as human as the rest of us.

As a parent, when the school calls, the principal meets you at the front door saying, “I’ve been teaching 25 years, and never seen anything like I’ve just seen,” then you know you’ve entered uncharted territory!

Recovery rooms must be well thought out, their use clearly defined. They are simply tools. When used correctly, they can be helpful tools. Used in the wrong way by untrained folks, well, injury is likely. Parental involvement is crucial!

It’s a real blessing to have been part of this process in our community. now that the school has deciphered the mind-set of our traumatized children, they’re using similar techniques across the building. This in turn significantly reduces the use of the aforementioned recovery rooms.

Additionally, it’s now spreading to our (large) church. Things are shifting for our culture, slowly, slowly……not looking forward to the junior high transition! Our families are pretty much carving the path for the families who follow. Sadly, with the drug, sex and alcohol culture, there are many, many children coming.

My middle son has a number of disorders, and the middle school elected to use a broom closet as a time out area for him. There is a god, the very high strung vice principal who was so sure of what to do with him (usually the worng idea) got to deal with him doing his best ODD every day. They wanted to get nasty about damage to the cleaning equipment, I got involved and we had a discussion about really dumb decision making, and how one should empty out the closet before putting the child in. When we got on to the dangerous cleaning supplies in the closet, they abruptly decided not to use it any more.

Sue, I love the bogger story. Restraint is rarely cost free. John

in Oklahoma they had padded room that did not lock

we actually do have class evacuation drills and use it when one kid goes off, but she can never be left alone….

they do things differently other places

they could get by without it

Even tho we had been in the school for many years before Max enrolled in Kindergarten, it was not until his second grade year we became aware they even had a recovery room. It’s a room just like any other classroom, but about 12′X12,one is completely empty, the other has some therapeutic tools, like a bean bag, sand tray, fish tank, stuff like that. Our boy was always in the empty one, due to a tendency to self-injure, as well as pitch objects at others and spew cuss words.

When our child had an incident, the teacher would call the office for help, wait for the crisis team to arrive, evacuate the rest of the class. Once Max was removed to a safe location and the classroom set to rights, then the regular teacher returned with the rest of the students.

It seems to me a this is one treatment I would have to completely trust the judgment of the teachers in order to give them the OK.

I don’t have a special needs child, so I must admit the idea of using isolation is a little shocking to me. I understand that it is helpful when done correctly, and with the proper circumstance (not as a coercive tactic) but I have doubts about teachers receiving enough training to do this across the board.

Like the other commenter, the fact that children are removed from homes for improperly punishing them with small space isolation comes to my mind.

Sometimes when I arrived at the school, I would have to help locate Max, and use a two man transport method to get him to the recovery room. The procedure was written into his IEP, along with goals towards self-regulation.

There were many mistakes, and our dear principal was famous for losing her cool, Max did know how to yank her chain big time. Once he wiped a booger on her, another time he threw a bottle of water at her when he saw there were pops in the fridge too. This was after he had calmed down. (right) He did many other crazy things, the woman is a saint in my book.

The PE teacher is a great big lug of a fella, he was usually the best for calming Max, who has issues with women anyhow. The thing that helped the most was getting his meds right, the tweaking part took about 18 months.

Now he’s great, 4th grade teacher and this years have never seen the behaviors. The 3rd grade teacher was fabulous, really tuned in to our boy, helping him learn to feel safe and regulated. She kind of learned to “speak Max” and then helped the rest of the staff figure things out.

I did tons of coaching over the phone with her, some with last years gal, and a little this year. Max is aware of what a great school he has and is already sweating middle school – two years away!

Schools apparently still haven’t learned that they cannot treat children with a cookie cutter approach, and still expect success across the board.