****Third times a charm*****

I was watching a segment on ABC News about the types of punishment or restraining methods on Autistic children.
Heres the page link
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/death-school-parents-protest-dangerous-discipline-autistic-disabled/story?id=17702216&singlePage=true#.ULhmYayAArg

Its a lengthy article so ill highlight some experts


Thousands of autistic and disabled schoolchildren have been injured and dozens have died after being restrained by poorly trained teachers and school aides who tried to subdue them using at times unduly harsh techniques, an ABC News investigation has found.
With no agreed upon national standards for how teachers can restrain an unruly child, school officials around the country have been employing a wide array of methods that range from sitting on children, to handcuffing them, even jolting them with an electric shock at one specialized school. Some have locked children in padded rooms for hours at a time. One Kentucky teacher's aide is alleged to have stuffed 9-year-old Christopher Baker, who is autistic and was swinging a chair around him, into a draw-string duffle bag.
How to safely handle an out-of-control student has been a longstanding issue for parents whose children attend special schools for those with autism or with behavioral or developmental problems. But experts told ABC News it has become increasingly vexing for officials in traditional public schools as they have sought to accommodate children with special needs. Many of the schools provide little or no training to teachers and staff for how to intervene when the student misbehaves. That has left teachers and school administrators to find their own solutions, at times with terrible outcomes.
Daniel A. Domenech, who heads the American Association of School Administrators, said the practice of restraining an out-of-control student is an unwelcome but essential part of keeping teachers and other students safe. And the vast majority of the time, he said, school officials are able to subdue a child without harm coming to anyone.

"All that I was told was that they talk to the students -- you know, try to calm them down," said Foster, whose son Corey, 16, died at Leake & Watts, a school and residential treatment center just outside of New York City. "I didn't know anything about restraint and seclusion therapeutic holds until this happened."
A school surveillance video that Foster shared with ABC News shows her son shooting baskets, and then being shoved into a gymnasium wall, surrounded by a group of school staff, and forced to the ground. For several minutes he is at the bottom of this scrum. A gurney can be seen being wheeled into the gym, where a motionless Foster remains on the ground.
The school told ABC that the staff behaved exactly as they were supposed to. "Our staff used various de-escalation and re-direction techniques prior to initiating the therapeutic hold, which was performed correctly and in accordance with the state-mandated protocol," said Meredith Barber, director of Institutional Advancement at Leake & Watts. "We regularly train and retrain our staff in TCI (Therapeutic Crisis Intervention), a crisis intervention technique designed by Cornell University."
Today, skin shocks are applied less frequently, and students would not be shocked while bound to a wooden board. That said, the school continues to use electric shock as a method for changing the behavior of some children who fail to respond to less extreme measures."I do want to emphasize that behavioral skin shock treatment is effective and necessary in some cases," Burns said. "It was a necessary and effective treatment for Andre."
Earlier this year a school in Mississippi was ordered by a federal judge to stop handcuffing students for hours for such minor offenses as dress code violations, and to stop forcing them to eat lunch while chained to railings and to call for help when they needed a bathroom break. Officials at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which brought the suit, told ABC News the practice was part of a profoundly dysfunctional school culture. In a deposition, the school's principal, Marie Harris, said she only handcuffed children to keep them safe – for instance, to prevent them from running into a busy street.

He said he's heard plenty of horror stories from his own students, many of whom moved to Centennial from mainstream public schools after incidents involving misbehavior and violence. Jordan, an 11-year-old student, described for ABC News what would happen at her previous school when she started to act out.
"They'd grab you by your wrists, and they would intentionally drag you to a room and they'd lock you in there and it was dark, there's no windows, and you're just stuck in there for the whole day," she said.
George said he had not heard that Jordan had been locked in a dark room for the entire school day.
"It is horrible is what it is. It is absolutely horrible," George said. "Someday I think we are all going to look back and say … can you believe what we did here? Why did we do this? What were we trying to accomplish?"

What are your thoughts




"I do want to emphasize that behavioral skin shock treatment is effective and necessary in some cases," Burns said. "It was a necessary and effective treatment for Andre."

I cant post the link if someone else can that would be great

Link button isn't working for me either...must be BG

Im interested to hear what moms who do have autistic children think about these methods. I have no experience with autistic children so im not sure how discipline works with them

Quoting Misty Walls:" Im interested to hear what moms who do have autistic children think about these methods. I have no experience with autistic children so im not sure how discipline works with them"

Me too. I have 1 friend & he is young - so they aren't at this type of thing yet & I don't know what she thinks.

No,i don't agree with it.  
I don't agree with any child being disciplined that way in school.

I am on the fence.....the electric shock from a teacher is too far imo, if they get that unruly a law enforcement officer should be involved. However my SIL is a special ed teacher who specializes in autism (she works with the severly autistic, the children she works with are almost considered non-functiong in a regular class, can't read or write, barely verbal, and she even has one that isn't fully potty trained and they are between 3rd and 5th grade). She has told me there are special holds they are taught for if a child does start to get out of control (meaning their actions are putting themself or others in danger, not they are talking out of turn or something small). And in her classroom she does have a quiet room, it is a big closet with a small stuffed chair and it is like a big time out. I have volunteered with her class a fee days, some of the tantrums (for lack of a better word) I saw were really scary. I see the reason for the closet/quiet room (not all day but I see it being something necessary), I suppose the handcuffs if you need to restrain them to wait for further help (it would have to be pretty bad though), and the holds are definitely useful.

I don't agree with it. I don't understand why they would need to handcuff/lock up a child for an ENTIRE day? If it's that bad, call their smurfing parents.

Quoting Mama Rice:" I am on the fence.....the electric shock from a teacher is too far imo, if they get that unruly a law ... [snip!] ... need to restrain them to wait for further help (it would have to be pretty bad though), and the holds are definitely useful."

Agreed.

My mom is the adminstrator for special ed up here. The teachers or aids are not allowed to touch the children. Teachers have had their noses, feet, jaws broken. The parents laugh and say oh well. Hince why i would never be a teacher. I would want to punch the parents  

im on the fence here also...teachers should have away to protect them selves but not like this

Quoting mamaluvsher4babies:" My mom is the adminstrator for special ed up here. The teachers or aids are not allowed to touch the ... [snip!] ... jaws broken. The parents laugh and say oh well. Hince why i would never be a teacher. I would want to punch the parents  "

I'm trying to be a teacher. I'm going to school for Early Childhood Education, then planning to move up to a regular teaching degree. I want to be a Pre-K teacher.   That said, I KNOW I couldn't handle being physically beaten up by children, and would never even think about trying to be a special education teacher. I give massive kudos to the women strong enough to do so.

There are safe ways to properly restrain children. We are trained annually in my district.

My philosophy though? Get everyone out of the classroom, including myself, and lock the door behind me. Let the kid destroy everything in that room until he tires out.  

Shock? That should be used by psychiatrists or the police.

Restraint? Hell yeah. If they are causing themselves or others harm, you do what you need. My sister works with Pre-K special ed students and one of the boys in her class stabbed her with a fork at lunch time when she turned her back on him. She's had chairs thrown at her, screaming children, and almost got her nose broken.

I don't see how she does it!