Well, I went from feeling like maybe this was all manageable to wondering if curling up in a fetal position and pretending the world doesn't exist is a viable solution.
I got a call from the school today that ended up being a 40 minute conference call between the special ed principal, the special ed chair, my son and me. It seems that my son broke off a small piece of a magnesium strip in science while it was being passed around the class. He hadn't heard the instructions that the strip contained highly flammable material and bent it - and the instructions were not written anywhere for him to be aware of it. He passed along the piece that hadn't fallen on the floor. When the teacher got the strip, he went ballistic because it had been broken and wanted to know who had taken the piece that was missing. (This is like a tiny litmus strip for science experiments.) My son didn't raise his hand because, as he told the principal and the police officer who were called to the class, "He asked who took it, and I didn't take it. I didn't have it. I didn't know he was asking who broke it."
The teacher and administration held the class until they were all tardy trying to "break someone" into telling what happened. When one of the kids said they thought my son broke it, and he was asked, he said, yes, it broke. The piece was on the floor. They accused my son of lying to cover up not getting into trouble until it got all the kids in trouble, which upset my son who began defending himself and verbally questioning the veracity of the statements being made by the teacher and the administrators.
Their solution was to move my son to a new teacher. I refused and said that my son should not have to make a new adjustment into a new class over this and that the teacher in question needed to simply make some small adjustments and that they would do fine. I told the principals that my child was VERY literal and that he wasn't trying to lie, and that he owned responsibility when he realized what was being asked.
It took a good forty minutes to calm things down - including letting them know that if they tried to move him without my permission, I would ask for a meeting with the principal, my spouse and a lawyer. This caused them, of course, to back off and decide that maybe things didn't need such a knee-jerk reaction. When I said that the only way I'd consider moving him was if it was to gifted classes, they backed off on moving him.
And, not too surprising, he called later from the nurse's office wanting to come home due to a stomach ache and head ache. I'd have one, too. He decided to stick it out once we talked it through, and he realized the physical symptoms he was feeling were from anxiety and stress and not actually getting ill. I feel so sorry for him.
... and I thought this year was off to such a good start.
For those of you with literal kids who do not see teachers as authority figures in the sense that they'll challenge the version of a teacher's description of events or perception of events, how do you deal with it? My kid was right in everything he said, but he was also disrespectful and out of line. I have no idea how to help this one advocate for himself without crossing the line.
