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this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2024
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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?
https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/family-resources-education/health-wellness-and-safety-resources/helping-hands/behavior-support-using-planned-ignoring-at-home
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/
First off, fuck you. I never said I was an expert. What I do possess is knowledge based through my own experiences with ABA therapy and programs through public schools. I also regularly speak with my son’s speech therapist, his behavioral health service therapists, his teachers at public schools and the fact that I’m around kids with all kinds of autism just by association. There are countless others.
Thank you for minimizing my comment by sharing some “web links”. I appreciate that you are an expert at web surfing.
Your sources say absolutely nothing about a child lying down crying for two hours and leaving them there.
Sorry if I hit a nerve.
Sounds an awful lot like expertise of every protocol in every school to me. It's not easy to know for sure that some random school in Virginia absolutely does not have any sort of planned ignoring protocol.
Yes, the articles deal with the abstract, they do not specifically lay out every instance of how planned ignoring actually plays out, or exactly how one should draw a line between planned ignoring and genuine neglect in a case like this.
There is no protocol that says to leave a child, nonverbal or otherwise, crying in pain for two hours. The length of time is extremely important context and takes it from "ooh what do I do" which is maybe the first fifteen minutes tops, to criminal neglect.
Yeah you only implied this person doesn't know how to take care of their own kids and that your armchair Internet experience is at least as valid as their lived experience 🙄
No, I did not imply this person does not know how to take care of their own child. I implied this person has no idea of what this specific school tells its staff regarding standard procedure, which I still stand by.
It blows my mind that you do not see how saying "expertise in every protocol in every school" strongly implies that this knowledge is necessary to voice an informed opinion on the matter. I don't need to know every protocol in existence everywhere to know you don't leave a kid to cry on the floor for two hours. It's the same as how I don't have a pilot's license, but if I see a plane in a tree, I know that someone fucked up. There is no defending this and I really don't understand why you're trying to.
See my most recent comment in the thread between me and that user for my reasoning.
I see it. And this:
So if you agree this crosses the line into neglect pretty clearly, what are you even trying to say about protocol?
From your latest reply to them:
I never said anything about malice, and how is that relevant anyway? If it were malicious I would hope the police would be involved. What I said was, this is criminal neglect, and there's no protocol in the world that calls to handle this situation this way.
If this had been at home instead of a facility, with the parents ignoring the crying child, CPS would take the kid and the parents might well face charges. Again, two hours. And may I point out, this is a broken femur. That kid wasn't whimpering. He was screaming himself hoarse.
I'm saying it was likely an error in judgement, a mistake that reflects far more than the mindset of the people actually at fault in it. This was not a home, it was a professional environment wherein people are expected to follow the instructions they were given, even when those instructions are at odds with common sense. Choosing to follow your own common sense over any training you have received can be a fireable offense, even if that training has been misinterpreted and misapplied, perhaps even by those that trained you.
What a load of wank. "Error in judgement"? What about their training, I thought they weren't supposed to use judgement? /s
Little child, broken femur, two hours; that's all we need to know. Come up with any hypothetical as to how this happened, and the answer is that it was the responsibility of staff and facility to have it in hand. They failed in that responsibility, staff and facility both. I'm only interested in the "why" and "how" in order to figure out how to prevent this happening again.
The hypothetical isn't hard, a culture where a guideline is given that children "acting out" isn't to be rewarded. In a case where a verbal child would be able to say "my leg hurts very badly", this child was unable to though, so a system that worked fine with previous children became unable to handle this particular circumstance. The only outward evidence that something is genuinely amiss becomes the crying. At what point then, does crying go from "potentially acting out" to "okay, this might be severe bodily damage"?
15 minutes? 30? An hour? This is where the misapplication of training comes in, and where a judgement call did become necessary, as I doubt any specific timetables were actually provided. Two hours is clearly too long, I think we can all agree on that. But staff at schools are usually undersupplied and understaffed, they are under stress and there are other duties that demand their time. This environment can lead to gross errors.
The "why" and "how" is exactly what I'm on as well, since the beginning. It's going to be more complicated than any sort of simple "wow, those people are really fucked up".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx4in4UpdWE
This is the sound of a femur breaking. This video is 43 seconds. They ignored this for two hours.
No culture normalises ignoring this and when it happens children die and the parents or guardians are held accountable.
I'm done with this nonsense. That video made me feel sick, fuck you for arguing so strenuously in favour of understanding for the staff that just let this kid lay there like this. Really, fuck you. You ruined my whole morning with your inhuman bullshit.
We don't know how the femur broke, I suspect it was likely a collision with something, otherwise it would have been noticed. You think the staff were knowingly neglecting a broken femur for the lulz or something, despite how very, very badly that would obviously end for them? I doubt it.
Sorry for upsetting you, but life isn't simple. We don't gain much from simply trying to identify some sort of bad guys and then blindly raging against them.
The teachers were fired. They obviously broke protocol. Can’t just fire teachers without cause.
It sounds like you have no experience dealing with autistic kids or the multiple resources and staff you deal with regarding it. You keep referring to online articles as if they are related to school protocols for some reason. I don’t know why you do this, but here we are.
Well, I think it's fairly obvious this passed the line between protocol and neglect, it's also horrible optics for that specific school.
You're right that I do not have an autistic child, but arguing using sources instead of personal anecdote is pretty common, and generally a good thing, not a bad thing.
I apologize for being short with you. I see these types of mistreatment towards kids on the spectrum often enough and it never stops triggering. When people send me online resource links to “educate” me as if I haven’t read hundreds of articles and resources already, it makes me a bit crabby.
No problem, I understand. I just have this sinking feeling that the school staff were probably trying to follow poor, outdated training principles that did not apply to their actual situation, instead of acting with outright malice, and ended up making an unforgivable mistake due to the errors of the system they were within. We really need to fund our schools better.
did you just say someone who has a child with autism...doesn't know their child? you ok?
If you know one child with autism, you know one child with autism. Like all individuals, they are incredibly varied and the range of things they will do to gain or avoid attention is vast.
Okay. Find me a human being who won't scream for hours when you snap their femur.
The femur is the thickest and largest bone in the body. When it snaps, everyone around you knows. Every breath a scream.
Now, please defend ignoring a child screaming at the top of their lungs with every breath for two hours by saying something more about personalities and wanting attention.
I visit classrooms where children frequently scream with every breath for long periods of time. I also see children who plop to the floor many many times per day without "shattering a femur". We don't know if these behaviors were common for this child. We don't know if the staff knew the child well enough to know if these were common behaviors for him. There is more to this story than the article presents and the use of the word shattered feels like clickbait language to me.
ETA- Special ed is almost always understaffed. In Texas right now we have a governor who is attacking public education by withholding funding in an attempt to get his school voucher bill passed. We are seeing a big increase in students with high needs at a time when everyone is underfunded. It's creating an incredibly stressful environment and we are losing teachers and paraprofessionals daily. We have many classes being run on a shoestring staff with substitute help when we can get it. It sucks. It sucks to see your co-workers emotionally and physically abused. It sucks to see great teachers leave because they can't take it anymore. It sucks to see kids who need more and to know that their chance of getting a trained qualified special ed teacher this year is slim. It sucks every single fucking day.
Nobody, child or otherwise, can scream for two hours straight comfortably. If a child is crying for that long unabated, there's a bloody reason. Yes, you see children plop to the floor without breaking a femur all the time, and the sound of a femur breaking is absent in those times.
I know that education is underfunded, special education especially so. Probably more than doubly. I know that good people are ground down and out by the system when all they wanted to do was help kids learn. And I have also witnessed childcare staff more interested in their nails than the welfare of the children they're supposedly responsible for.
Look, I'm not as emotional about this coming back after a few days and I might have just blocked that other guy because I couldn't deal with the frustration on top of the nausea I was fighting at the time. I understand where you're coming from. You're fighty because you're defending the good people you've seen beaten up and down by the terrible system we have in place, and I'm fighty because I'm defending little me who was frequently ignored for hours by my alleged guardians because I couldn't communicate what was wrong and they - what, didn't know how to troubleshoot? Call the doctor? 🤷♀️
So I understand why so many are coming to the defense of the staff, but I vehemently disagree. Those staff were still responsible for the welfare of all those children, this little boy included, and they failed him. But I want to be clear: I don't believe in executing your generals just 'cause they lose a battle. Holding someone accountable doesn't mean pillorying them in the public square. There is one defense, which doesn't absolve them of anything but it is a defense: taking from it how to stop it from happening again. I have a lot more sympathy for people who care to learn from their mistakes.
Anyway, I appreciate you taking the time to read this. I am very good friends with a lot of teachers, and they all stress about not being able to provide help to one of their students needing it. But not one of them would leave a child crying on the floor for two hours without having checked for injuries or called for help, long before that time was up.
Thank you for your reply. You're right- I'm defensive because i see how my co-workers struggle. And I'm irritated that people think every kid sits in a desk and learns to read, without acknowledging the kids with an education plan that's different from that. I get it. When i was young those kids didn't attend school, but now they do and most of us are just trying to do the best we can for them.
No, I did not say that.
You came damn close to it at least.
No, not really. This persons expertise in autism, their child, etc has no bearing whatsoever in how that one specific school treats its students. These are two completely separate topics, and that person's child has zero bearing on the discussion, since they are not a student at the Virginia school.
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.
What is your reference point? Do you have multiple non verbal autistic children or are you referring to online articles?
I’m around many autistic kids just through association and am fully aware that not every autistic kid is the same. Kind of an asinine assumption you’ve made there.
Are you suggesting that this kid possibly lies down and cries in pain for two hours often enough for staff to ignore the child? I find that interesting considering that when the school called the parents they asked whether an ambulance should be called.
I spent a decade as direct care staff, working with -I don't even know how many kids. At least a couple hundred.
And yes kids do that. It takes time with a specific kid to recognize the difference between them having a tantrum, a meltdown, or a legitimate emergency.
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