I am currently fighting our school district to pay for a therapy school for my 13-year-old son. Very simply, our home school is not equipped to handle a child with three specific diagnosis. They actually yelled at him in class to stop “flexing” .. .one of his tics. Really?? These people are supposed to be the professionals!
I found a school nearby that I believe will benefit him greatly, and I am now in the process of trying to get our home school to pay for it. I will take this to the very end. I have a child advocate working with me and, if necessary, I will hire a lawyer. I WILL fight and I WILL win!!! I can no longer take the school upsetting my child any longer because they cannot handle him. I will keep you updated.
I’m a high school sophomore with Tourettes and this just broke my heart! I can’t understand how of all people, teachers! Would do that to a child!!
Hi Alex, would you like to join our Teens4TS blog as a contributor? If so, please e-mail us at teens@njcts.org. Thanks!
Hi Alex, I know, I too am shocked! The school on the other hand seems to think they have done nothing wrong. We go to mediation on Feb27th. I’ll let you know what happens. I would like to know what happened to the HIB (harrassement, intimadating & bullying) Law. They are supposed to be inforcing that!!! It’s amazing!!
How are you doing in school??
Lots of progress wishes Lynni! Great to hear you are taking them down! :)
As far as fighting for your son’s rights for the therapy, yay! The school should be encouraging the district to pay for it, if they are the ones that don’t want him there. My son is eligible under special education to be at a school with full resources. They also provide bussing to a school that he will benefit from if it is not our home school. I actually got the district to bus my son to school this year, even though he did not qualify because it is his home school. It was a hardship in the morning to get him up and out the door, so having the bus pull up in front of the house eleviated a lot of stress! If there is no school available in your area, they need to address this. They won’t be making money for this private school, but he has a basic public right to an education. If the district is failing him, they need to come up with a solution because simply dismissing this is unacceptable! My son gets full accomodations at his current school while being mainstream. This is the first time he is enjoying school. If only I knew more earlier on, life would have been much more positive all around. Fight on!
thanks Christina…I will fight!!! And sadly, they are fighting me because they don’t want to pay for his schooling outside of our district. Not what is good for my child, but the $ issue! It’s so very sad. My meeting is this week so I will let you know what happens but, I’m pumped!! They are going down!!
Elizabeth, how horrible for your son! I have had to bite and shove my son’s school district to get what is needed for my son. My bite is big and effective so I have made strides for my son but it has never been easy! I am a natural born fighter and can express myself in a way that gets results. I make it clear that I don’t need to be friends with any of the staff that does not like my persistence. I am not sure I would have handled myself so eloquently if they had treated my son like that! I really feel for you! I once called a college on someone’s behalf because of a professor who was deliberately making noises near a student to get her to tic more. When she tic’d more, she would walk out of the class which is what the professor wanted! I nipped that right away with legal verbage. How disturbing to say the least!
Oh I wish you all the luck in the world! I just removed my son from the public school system. I think a lot of damage has already been done-don’t know if i’ll ever get him back! One of his past teachers used to drag his desk to the hallway for “making noises”!!! AND told the entire class to just ignore him–AND told him the reason that no one wants to sit with him was because he was “noisy”.
They were vocal tics.
nuff said.
Take it as far as you need to-you can just place him then go after the school district to reimburse after there is proof that he is thriving there.
Why do our kids have to go through this? They did nothing wrong. It just breaks my heart!
Oh Elizabeth, I don’t know why our children have to suffer in SCHOOL of all places!! My heart breaks also. My son was yelled at to “stop flexing”…one of his tics.
I believe that even though we are making great strides getting people educated about TS, there are still people, and worse yet, teachers, who don’t know a thing about it. It kills me. I had one teacher who told me she had never heard of tics and said she didn’t know what else to do. My question was “are YOU not the professional here”???
Again, I will go all the way with this and I too hope that the damage hasn’t already been done. My biggest fear is him turningto alcohol or drugs for some release. At the moment he is acting out in class and trying to be the class clown. That’s the least of my problems!!
I’ll let you know what happens. And thank you for your understanding on this one. Sometimes I just need to know somebody REALLY gets it, ya know?
And why do you think you have “lost” your child??