This past week, I had a horrible experience at the hands of educational staff at our daughter's school, who decided to take out the frustrations of their after Christmas "blues" on what they thought was the weakest link in the chain of educators and caregivers -yours truly.
And I am sad to say, it wasn't the first time this has happened to me, either. No, it happened a few years back at another school, when I unfortunately had to insist on a face-to-face meeting with the staff concerned, in the presence of the principal. Thankfully, justice prevailed and my sense of dignity was restored, as the principal, who wasn't involved in the process in the first place, had to agree with my point of view and firmly corrected the staff member in question and the experience was never repeated at that school. I would like to think it was because they learned not to tangle with me, but, sadly, I think it was because the next year's roster of educators and educational assistants were much less anal than the previous' years.
So let me inform you about what went down.
Let's start by saying that our daughter, whom I mentioned has Down Syndrome, needs full time assistance with self care and other issues, because of her global developmental delay. In those departments, she is pretty much text book. So she has the right to full-time educational assistants when she goes to school. The assistants help her with her special curriculum requirements and also with things like feeding, teeth brushing, bathroom chores and so forth. Nothing earth shattering about it really.
But here's where it gets a little trickier. When she gets a cold she isn't able to always monitor when she needs her nose wiped and because she also has greatly delayed speech, she doesn't articulate well things like feeling sick or being in pain. However, in the absence of her skills in that area, I have learned to monitor all of her serious illness symptoms and levels of discomfort and I know exactly when it is time to bring in a medical professional. Thankfully, because both my children are, I am very proud to say, well fed and cared for, they rarely get seriously ill and they miss very little school.
OK, so we have established this much.
So this week was one of those times when she was sniffling, had a runny nose and sounded and looked, actually, much worse than she really was. There was no lack of energy or enthusiasm, no fever - I check each morning and often throughout the day - and not even any refusal to eat food, which has proven to be one of the most reliable signs that something is afoot. So I sent her to school after dressing her up like Charlie Brown and packing a nutritious, hot lunch.
End of story. Or so I thought.
It's noon and I am sitting down to some reheated, leftover, homemade chicken soup. The phone rings and I answer. A young, female voice introduces herself as our daughter's school counselor. After the niceties, she goes on to say that she has been appointed to call me to inform me that our daughter's clothing has been too small for her on a regular basis.
"You're kidding me!" I said, not believing my own ears.
She repeated the complaint, adding that our daughter's pants have been making marks on her sides and even her shirts have been too small at times.
Then I realized this had a familiar ring to it. And instead of feeling like the little boy whose mother caught him at the cookie jar after school, I proceeded to inform her, plainly and firmly, that she was being incredibly innapropriate. I then asked her if our daughter were "normal" would we be having this conversation. There was a slight pause and then she had the gall - and in this case, lack of insight and wisdom - to answer with "yes".
I tell ya, my chin clanged as it hit the floor. Truly.
For the sake of my readers I will say that a few times BEFORE Christmas, my husband, who was getting our daughter our the door in a big hurry, accidentally put on a small pair of pants. I doubt it happened more than two or three times all autumn. I saw it when she returned from school and promptly aprised him of it, suggesting he put her clothing out the night before, when he got her ready for school.
Additionally, special needs children in our educational system here in P.E.I. have a communication book that goes home each day, to address day-to-day issues, such as change in schedules, or new tasks that have been mastered and even issues like those involving innapropriate dress. The persons involved in making this violating, undermining decision to call me this day, had every opportunity to dialogue with us during that time. I have a proven track record of being very approachable and have, thus far, communicated with decorum and humour.
That said, I was LIVID this day on the phone with this upstart of a woman who had the presumption to speak to me so insolently. I got to the point, exasperated as I was with her dogged determination to misunderstand our perspective and why and how it was so violating to have someone second guess one's parenting skills, without even having legitimate evidence to back oneself up in that department - Jeepers - I told her this conversation was over because I wanted to prevent myself from saying something that I would regret and then I hung up.
Two minutes later, after I had cooled down a wee bit, I called the school principal, to whom I rehearsed the contents of my earlier phone call, citing the impropriety of it to him. He, amazingly, defended his staff member. It took some pretty fast talking, legitimately so, to make a case for us in the face of what went down. Perhaps realizing he was dealing with someone with self confidence who wasn't ready to prostate herself before him, he finally conceded it wasn't right that the staff had not, at least, addressed what they saw as a "trend" (which was utter poppycock) in the first place by writing in the referred to communication book and agreed to speak to the staff member as well as others who were involved in the whole fiasco. I wasn't really satisfied but knew that was as good as it was gonna get, which doesn't speak well to his skills as a principal. How sad.
Just for the record, ironically, we had just given our daughter a whole new wardrobe for Christmas because, even without the school staff drawing it to my attention, I HAD noticed she had gone through a growth spurt over the previous months. I counted and she got, let's see, fourteen pairs of pants, about 11 shirts, several beautiful sweaters, 20-odd pairs of socks, two new pairs of winter boots, four pairs of PJs and several sets of hair accessories. Oh and a few new bras thrown in for good measure. I also went through her old things during the Christmas break and gave to charity anything that was too small....NOT that I aim to admit they MAY have had a case against us, but, as you, dear reader, do not KNOW our character or what kind of parents we are, you deserve to know the details to allow you to judge for yourselves.
The day I got the phonecall in question, was about three weeks after school had started up again. I mean, who was awake during those weeks and missed all these new things she was wearing?
And here is where it gets REALLY interesting.
About a half hour after I had the short but pointed talk with the principal, I got yet another phone call from the school. THIS time it was the school resource teacher and she was speaking as if I were made out of eggshells. And she proceeded to tell me our daughter was unwell and had to be picked up. I rolled my eyes.
I asked her how she knew our daughter was unwell enough to be picked up and she said she seemed hot. I asked her if she had taken her temperature and she got quiet for a second and then said, "no." But, just as quickly as it came out of her, she backed it up by saying she had touched her forehead and it was burning up.
Well, of course, like ANY good parent, NOW she had my full attention. But, knowing how teachers could be at times I proceeded to ask her if our daughter seemed lethargic. She said, "Oh yes, she can barely hold her head up."
I thought hard. It just seemed really suspicious, yet, I refuse to gamble where our daughter's health is concerned, when all is said and done. Because she had open heart surgery at ten weeks of age and, since then, I have, if anything, been hypervigilant about things like injury or sickness. I tend to be anal about it too, not giving in to pleas for sweets and junk food and making certain she is carefully bathed and warmly dressed come the hard P.E.I. wintertimes.
She must have sensed a weakness in me and added the clincher.
"I would want to know if MY little girl were sick."
You could almost hear the violins playing in the background.
Funny, I should have KNOWN something was up, given what had transpired earlier. But, like the responsible person I am, I wasn't willing to endanger my daughter's health over an issue of who was right or wrong and I arranged to have her picked up as soon as possible.
As soon as she got in the door, I ran to her and felt her forehead. It was as cool as a cucumber. Albeit her nose was running, but that was because she still did legitimately have a cold, of course. Which I had already known about. And which I knew, based on her behaviour, was on its way out.
So I got her layers of outside winter clothing off immediately and took her temperature three times.
Each reading said she was BELOW normal.
And I have to say, she really enjoyed her afternoon at home that day, playing around the house energetically and happily. To boot, she ate a full lunch and supper. I mean, come ON.
Incidentally, I called the school back right away and asked the resource teacher to call me back as soon as she had some free time. I left the message that our daughter was fine and did NOT, in actual fact, have a temperature. I even gave the readings - All three of them.
Suffice to say, she never called back.
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