Nonverbal child left lying on school floor for 2 hours after shattering his femur, family says
Nonverbal child left lying on school floor for 2 hours after shattering his femur, family says
A nonverbal child with autism in Texas was left lying on the floor for hours, crying in pain after a slip and fall at school.
This is sooooooo fucked up
Also a sobering reminder that this society may not be the best place to bring new children into. I would be beyond irate if that had been my child.
ಠ_ಠ
this is Texas brand cruelty
real men thrive on pain
In a statement to KTRK, Fort Bend Independent School District said: “Staff members involved in this incident are no longer employed by the district. We remain committed to creating a safe and secure learning environment for every student.”
Obviously they failed at creating anything remotely 'safe and secure'.
I mean a few simple rules should suffice, like "if a child falls and shatters their leg, staff should immediately call the parents and the ambulance".
In any non-trivially sized organization there will be some people who are "bad". You can't expect any organization to perfectly filter them out since you don't know what people will do in all situations. Even having "rules" doesn't mean they will be followed.
The district fired them - which is the correct and appropriate thing to do.
staff should immediately call [...] the ambulance
Won't somebody think of the parents who will have to foot the bill? /s
Okay I'm not defending the teacher here except for the child's right to be recognized and have their needs tended to. This also isn't about "good" and "bad" teachers, but the education system. This is anecdotal, so take it for what it's worth.
My wife, S, is an intervention specialist which is a teacher in a special ed classroom. I think she is a very good teacher, and after years in a underfunded inner city school, she now works in a very large well funded elementary school in a nice area with very involved and stable parents, by and large.
She has a student, L who is non verbal, most of her kids are and she has the most difficult special-ed classroom in her school. She works on a team with two other intervention specialists, one of which, B, was L's teacher for two years previous. L has a muscular disability.
It's S's first year at this school so she is just starting to know the kids. What she is discovering is that these "very low" non verbal children, have basically received no prior schooling on subjects. Their learning plans have each of them marked very low, with the most basic goals. And granted, behavior is usually an issue with these kids who can't communicate. They can lash out suddenly and scratch or bite a teacher or aide, drawing blood more often than not. So behavior will eat up a ton of bandwidth for any teacher. It took my wife months to get her kids to sit with her and do any work whatsoever. But once they started to do work for her so she could test their ability, she discovers that they are all quite advanced in various areas, despite basically never being taught. Kids with educational goals of being able to count to 5 can do multiplication and division for 2 and 3 digit numbers, ahead of their grade; kids who seem to have no concept of reading or conceptual language can spell and construct sentences or answer questions about a story, if it is shown to them in a way that they will interact with.
Back to L, he is another case just like this. Very difficult to work with at first, refused to be taught, lashes out violently when he gets frustrated, but now that he is used to her he will sit and work and also demonstrates advanced ability in multiple subjects.
However the last to years his previous teacher and the head of their team, B, by all accounts from teacher and aides did nothing with him for 2 years. He was basically laid on a mat in a closet, and ignored, everyday for 2 years. My wife says that for the most part he gets around in her class pretty darn well, so even the assumption that he's mostly immobile was wrong.
Special ed teachers spend most of their time some weeks filling out complicated ed plans that are a state requirement, but frankly no one ever checks or even seems to know how to fill these things out. Everyone is just winging it. Bureaucracy is a stand in for education and the needs of the child. Imo my wife is an exceptional teacher who has time and time again achieved breakthroughs with some of her most difficult students. The lead on her team, with over a decade of experience in this job couldn't even see past their own assumptions about the child, and never stopped to question them, and so the poor kid was neglected, uninjured thank God, for 2 years.
So if a pretty good teacher at a good school can fuck up that badly, how dangerous would it be for a inexperienced or disengaged teacher? To me this isn't a problem that comes down to individual teachers but of the American education system as a whole, and it's priorities. Spoiler alert, politics matter more than children.
Interesting read. Thanks for sharing. If you don't mind me asking, does your wife experience burnout and if so, what kinds of strategies do you all employ to manage that burnout?
Well there are good days and bad days. When she started here she wasn't able to get into her room to set it up until the 11th hour, so she started the year on her backfoot. She takes good care of her self, much better than me tbh, so I think that helps. She's very tough and competent, and she has a sort of gentle frankness that I think help smooth out rough interpersonal issues that drive so much burn out, just because she like can't stand to let things fester between people. Also our relationship is very strong and open and honest, and we share everything including housework. We take vacations, and alto she likes to plan vacations so it can be a nice mental getaway for her. Luckily I have a decent job too so we can do that. My kids are older and we only have them part time so she doesn't have to full time mom, even though she's a great step mom and very involved.
For anyone wondering, this is what those staff ignored for two hours (WARNING: this may well trigger you, it sure as fuck ruined my day): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx4in4UpdWE
This video is 43 seconds long. You hear that sound out of a little kid's leg, followed by the screaming for two hours, and don't immediately call the ambulance, you're not a reasonable adult. You're an inhuman monster. Anyone saying "well maybe they thought he was just acting out" is ignoring the basic facts of the case so they can be contrary on the Internet.
So let me get this straight:
You think the staff heard something like this, and therefore knew that there was a severe injury, but just ignored it for some reason? Maybe they hated the child or something?
Even though they would most definitely get in deep trouble for ignoring what is actually a life threatening injury after anyone found out?
Dude, you don’t know people. Or you’re being contrarian just to be stubborn.
Think of everyone that drives past an accident that just happened, or people leaving elderly to suffer bedsores in care homes, or any number of cases of neglect that happen daily. Now couple that with someone who is maybe a difficult person to deal with and you bet your ass their problems are going to be last on the list to be concerned with. There are facilities that have poor care knowing they could be sued or face legal issues, but it happens anyway.
If they innocently thought the kid was just acting out and it turns out he broke his femur — than the staff should all have their femurs broken as a learning exercise so they don't make that mistake again.
if this happened to my kids i would be writing a manifesto
Make sure you thank the feds in the opening statement so it's entirely believable
We still riding this train where we think they got the wrong dude?
I've got a pen you'd be welcome to borrow.
This is staff not knowing the individual kid, and their unique behaviors very well. So they just follow standard protocols. This one is called Planned Ignoring. It's effective when someone is looking for a reaction from staff. But if you don't know the kid well enough, you'll miss the subtle and individual signs that something real is going on. Learning those signs can only come with experiance with this individual kid.
That’s complete horseshit. Staff would have absolutely known he was nonverbal. The kid was crying for two hours. There’s nothing fucking subtle about any of this.
I have a non verbal child. There is no fucking protocol that says to leave a kid on the ground for two hours crying. What are you smoking?
Having a non verbal child does not make you an expert in protocols.
Here's actually an article on how it may not be an effective strategy for autistic children:
https://learnplaythrive.com/rethinking-planned-ignoring-for-kids-on-the-spectrum/
This may be a suprise to a parent of a single non-verbal child. They aren't all the same. Each has their own personality, behaviors, and subtle ways of communicating. Knowing they're non-verbal tells you almost nothing about who they are. Some autistic kids will absolutely cry for hours over seemingly minor things. Giving them the time to get themselves under controll again is the appropriate thing to do, for those kids.
Planned ignoring is used for problematic behavior. If a child cries, the first thing you have to assess is if they are hurt. Crying when you are hurt is NOT problematic behavior.
Ignoring a crying child without a simple health check that would have found a broken bone is willfully negligent at best and definitely not standard protocol.
While I agree, we also don't know the history with this kid. It's POSSIBLE that rolling on the floor screaming is a daily occurrence with him. We don't actually know how severe his autism is.
The school district fired them immediately. So they were paraprofessionals is my guess. I don't know if ignorance is really the explanation though, this was in a classroom, unless they were all subing I don't know how they'd not know the kid in the middle of the school year.
please never work in the school system.
I can't tell you the number of children i see who lie on the floor crying without a broken leg. These students can be very very difficult and their school plan is usually ignore the negative behaviors and feed the appropriate behaviors. People think autism is the quirky introvert and don't understand the range of it. Not defending staff - they should have checked on him - but they were likely paras who were doing what they were trained to do. Also, who 'shatters' their femur from a fall? Something's not right with this article.
So you literally defend the staff for not checking on him by saying that ignoring a child wailing in agony for 2 hrs and 15 minutes is the normal process for autism in schools, then you defend them some more by saying "somethings not right" that someone broke a bone from a fall?
Fuck entirely off.
That's why you should always nudge the child a couple times with your foot to see if anything changes (pitch or volume of screaming, more or less tears, an extra joint in a limb where it didn't have one before).
/s
me seeing the url: SWVA NOOOO
after clicking the link: i'm mostly wondering why on here the url someone shared is local SWVA coverage of something that happened in Texas
Why didn't he say anything?
Oof. Too early
This isn't as black and white as it seems. People have pointed out that kids with special needs are different, and sometimes letting them cry it out us appropriate. But others have correctly pointed out, it is only appropriate when you have extremely high confidence about the nature of the crying. What all this points to is improperly trained staff. And probably not enough staff. These types of kids need consistent staff who get to know them well enough to tell the difference between hurt and disregulated. And this overall is a super hard job. Burnout is going to be common. I have yet to see a school have enough budget to provide staff for kids like this and handle burnout. It is extremely expensive for sure. So while the staff deserve a share of the blame, mainly for taking a job they aren't suited for, our not quitting when they were burned out... we can also understand that in this society, people have to work. So we can't expect people to quit when they can no longer do the job. The responsibility for getting them out of there has to fall on the employer. And they clearly had no process or methodology for doing that. So a large part of the blame goes to the employer. But their hands are similarly tied as they have been required by law to do something they are not funded to do. So the greatest blame goes to the government that put all of them in an impossible position.