Shut Up about What you Saw or We Will Send You Home

"The students have a degree of mental retardation and may exhibit judgment problems, Cobbe said."

Read complete article here.

I want to address the issue of the girl student. We now know she was telling the truth, and according to one source she "witnessed something".

The term "behavior is a form of communication" is a bane of those who care for special education kids. Parents intuitively somehow learn to sense when things are wrong. Some teachers do also. They try to interpret behaviors as best they can.

The kids, and I am speaking in wide generalities here, by definition have difficulty with processing information in and generating information out. For those who cannot adequately verbally communicate, it shows in their behavior. It is our fault that we cannot understand what they are trying to communicate. Not their's. They are dealing with the cards they were dealt.

I was once told by a teacher that my son, who is profoundly deaf and visually impaired (legally blind), could "hear more than he lets on". The profoundness of the hidden meaning to that statement will stay with me forever. While my son "senses" things that, according to medical diagnostics he should not be able to, for the teacher to conceptualize that he purposely conceals his ability to hear boggles my mind. It is basically saying that he not only can hear, but he has the ability to purposefully hide it for his gain.

I often hear statements that kids with disabilities are "excused" because of their disability. I want to stand on the highest mountain and yell "it is not an excuse, but it is a reason"! I don't want my kid to act like he sometimes does. He has to be trained differently.

In my case we are talking physical attributes that are more easily identified. In the above case, try having this same discussion about kids who have "judgement problems" and specific learning disabilities that are cognitive. One can easily do medical diagnostics on the eyes and ears. Try doing that with a thought process. Yet the concept is the same. Because there is a wire lose in the way they process, they have to be trained differently. Hence, "special education". It is a reason, not an excuse.

Now to my point. I don't know what the girl saw. But just for the sake of the argument, suppose your child, who is at the same developmental level of the above child, witnessed something that was disturbing. How would your child convey it? What if your child did not have all of the words to describe what they saw? And if you told them to shut up about it, how would they work it out in their mind?