[blparent] Lockdown Drill at School
Michelle Creedy
michelle.creedy at gmail.com
Sun Jan 12 16:44:40 UTC 2014
Jo Elizabeth, you could always tell the school you're having her talk to someone even if you're not. Just keeping them at bay.
Michelle
-----Original Message-----
From: blparent [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jo Elizabeth Pinto
Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2014 4:24 PM
To: Blind Parents Mailing List
Subject: Re: [blparent] Lockdown Drill at School
Yes, the health aide has mentioned it, when she suggested having my daughter speak with the school psychologist. I politely told her I'd rather hold off on the counseling for now and just continue having her reassure my daughter that I'm fine at home and sending her back to class if she comes down for a temperature check. The teacher is required to send a child to the health aide if the child requests it, even if the teacher and the health aide suspect that the child isn't sick. I said I don't think it's overprotectiveness of a blind mom on my daughter's part; it's more of her identifying with the Power Puff Girls or Raven on Teen Titans and feeling like a super hero. She'd feel like that at school or at home. She told me if she were at school and a gunman got in, she'd grab the gun and give it to her teacher. But I'm all by myself at home. It's basically a matter of numbers to her. She's not the only superhero at school, see. There are others in her class. They play at recess every day. But at home, she's all there is. Of course, it's cute in our eyes, but from her perspective, it's all very serious business.
Jo Elizabeth
Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jennifer Stewart Jackson
Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2014 4:44 PM
To: 'Blind Parents Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [blparent] Lockdown Drill at School
Has someone at school actually brought up the idea that this is about her being over protective of a blind mom?
Jennifer
-----Original Message-----
From: blparent [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jo
Elizabeth Pinto
Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2014 5:08 PM
To: Blind Parents Mailing List
Subject: Re: [blparent] Lockdown Drill at School
I'm just not sure the schools know how to handle all the scenarios, which
are different for each kid. My daughter also got in trouble on Wednesday
and Thursday this week for taking a comfort object to school with her, after
what happened on Tuesday. It was a Christmas ornament that her nanna had
given to her and helped her paint. The problems were, first of all, that it
was *gasp* a Nativity with Mary and Joseph and the Baby Jesus on it and
secondly, that the kids aren't supposed to bring items from home. I
understand that rules are rules, and they have to be enforced equally. I
really do. I didn't know that my daughter had taken the ornament, or I
would have stopped her. I knew she took it on Tuesday because the kids were
encouraged to take their favorite ornament and tell the class about it,
which she did, and for that day, the Nativity issue wasn't a big deal. So
she told the class about the ornament and how a favorite neighbor had given
it to her and her nanna had helped her paint it. Then Tuesday night, I
guess she slept with it under her pillow and Wednesday, she slipped it into
her backpack after the tantrum because Mom and Dad weren't real high on her
friend list and Nanna was a source of comfort to think about. The teacher
saw the ornament at school and made her put it in her backpack and leave it
there. Fair enough. I guess at the end of the day Wednesday, the teacher
told her the ornament better not come back to school, even in the privacy of
her own backpack, because it wasn't allowed since it had Jesus on it. That
I do have a problem with. I can see not carrying it around because it could
get broken or lost, and not showing it off to the other kids because it
could make them uncomfortable, but if it made her feel better to see it in
her backpack or lunchbox, what's that going to hurt?
So anyway, my daughter, being what she is, didn't put the ornament in her
backpack on Thursday, but she wanted it with her because school wasn't
feeling very safe by then. She stuffed it down her pants! A half hour or
so into school, it got uncomfortable and the teacher saw her squirming
around and took her to the restroom so she could get it out. She
confiscated the ornament and put it on her desk. Well now, we've defeated
the purpose of the other kids not seeing the Jesus ornament, haven't we?
There it is on display all day. Plus, my kid gets what she wants, which is
to look at the thing whenever she feels like it. The teacher says if she
sees the ornament again, it's going to be confiscated for two days. I
thought she would have been better off putting the ornament in a desk
drawer. Anyway, when it was sent home, I took it and put it on my desk,
where it's still sitting. I'll give it back when I can trust it won't be
taken to school anymore. But this whole thing has turned into a mess. My
point is, instead of handling all of the issues together as a problem tied
to the fears stemming from the lockdown drill they're being handled as a set
of disciplinary problems and emotional worries that might be coming from
feeling overprotective of a blind mother ... it makes my head spin.
Jo Elizabeth
Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may
kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at
evening.--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
-----Original Message-----
From: Michelle Creedy
Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2014 3:44 PM
To: 'Blind Parents Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [blparent] Lockdown Drill at School
Jo Elizabeth, my nephew is 7. Yes, this is certainly the age of what if. My
nephew was asking me questions about being blind this weekend which of
course I don't mind and always encourage. The professionals want to take
everything so seriously! For goodness sake, she's a child who is worried
about her mommy. It doesn't matter why. When my sister broke her foot, my
nephew was especially worried about her and no, he wasn't having to look
after her but he wanted to do things to help. That's of course much
different to our lives as blind people because it's an injury but kids are
kids. People really need to stop being so very serious!
Michelle
-----Original Message-----
From: blparent [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jo
Elizabeth Pinto
Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2014 2:09 PM
To: Blind Parents Mailing List
Subject: Re: [blparent] Lockdown Drill at School
She's five; she'll be six the first of March. Maybe older kids can reason
this stuff out, but the younger ones have such vivid imaginations!
Jo Elizabeth
Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may
kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at
evening.--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
-----Original Message-----
From: Michelle Creedy
Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2014 2:59 PM
To: 'Blind Parents Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [blparent] Lockdown Drill at School
Hi Jo Elizabeth
I'm so sorry you have had to deal with all of this! Out of curiosity, how
old is your daughter? I could see my nephew coming up with exactly the same
thought process. You did all the right things by reassuring her. She sounds
like she's probably empathetic by nature. I personally wonder if she's
picked up these fears from someone even just in passing?
I'm not much help here but wanted to let you know I'm thinking of you.
Michelle
-----Original Message-----
From: blparent [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jo
Elizabeth Pinto
Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2014 1:43 PM
To: NFBnet Blind Parents Mailing List
Subject: [blparent] Lockdown Drill at School
Okay, bear with me, because this does have to do with blind parenting, and
we’ll come to that, but it doesn’t start out that way. Sometimes things get
really compicated, and my questions are one, is there anything I’m missing
that I can do to reassure my daughter that I haven’t thought of? And two,
am I right to keep the school counselor out of this, or am I paranoid? I
admit I am, a little. My feeling is, once the psychologist gets involved,
an issue is made where there wasn’t one, and it’s really hard to get rid of
the professionals once they’re sniffing around. And once someone hints that
blindness might be part of the problem, which I don’t think it is at all,
then you’ve got red flags where they don’t need to be.
My daughter was already a bit hesitant about going back to school after
Christmas Break. Vacation was long, and she was starting in with the “I’ll
miss you too much” stuff. I don’t know why; she likes school and has
friends, so I figured she’d pop back into the routine and do fine. I let
her wear an inexpensive necklace of mine so she’d have a tangible connection
to me all day and sent her off Tuesday morning with lots of hugs. Well
then—and I think this was poor timing on the part of the school, but that’s
just my opinion, for what it’s worth—the school held a lockdown drill
Tuesday morning. I didn’t know it at the time. I think parents should be
given a heads-up by automatic phone dialer or e-mail if there’s been a
lockdown drill in case their kids have issues, but whatever. The only thing
that happened Tuesday night was that my daughter mentioned yet again that
she thought she should be home schooled. She’d been seeing commercials for
K-12 Online, a home school academy you can do on the computer. I dismissed
the idea casually, saying it wouldn’t be a good fit for our family and that
she needed to learn at school with her friends, and she went to bed without
incident.
Wednesday morning, out of nowhere, she had the queen mother of all tantrums,
refusing to go to school at all. Kicking, screaming, ripping her clothes
off, insisting she was sick. Her dad tried holding her down and putting her
shoes on by sheer force. I stopped that because I was afraid either he
would break her ankle or she would kick him in the face and smash his
glasses. So I made him leave her in her room and shut the door till she
calmed down. I told her if she was too sick to go to school, she could go
back to bed. That was what sick people did, sleep. No friends, no toys, no
TV, no electronics, nothing. She didn’t like that idea, so she got dressed
and went to school. We took TV away that night because of the tantrum and
because she was late for school that day. I felt bad later because I didn’t
know the motives behind any of it, but she hadn’t opened up to me.
Well, about eleven o’clock, her teacher called me, not very happy. She told
me my daughter had been to the health aide—there are no RN’s in schools now,
they’re health aides—three times with a headache and a tummyache. No
temperature. Neither the teacher nor the health aide believed my daughter
was sick. The teacher said she was over it; she had 25 other kids to deal
with, it was my turn. So I got my daughter on the phone and said she could
either listen to her teacher and do her schoolwork or come home and go to
bed. I wouldn’t get into the “I’m really sick, Mom” discussion with her. I
told her no more trips to the health aide. Either stay at school and do her
work or Dad would bring her home and she could go to bed.
Thursday, two more trips to the health aide. That night, my daughter and I
started talking about what was going on. And she told me the school had
done a lockdown drill on Tuesday. In her words, the office lady had come on
the loudspeaker and said they were going to pretend a man with a gun had run
out of the bank and was coming toward the school. So everybody was going to
crawl under desks and tables till the teachers said it was okay to come out.
(I found out later that nobody came on the intercom and said anything about
a gun. That was either filled in by my daughter’s imagination or by what
the other kids were saying. Kids aren’t stupid. The office person said it
was a lockdown drill, the teacher said a drill might happen if there were
trouble at the bank or in the neighborhood, kids aren’t stupid. They know
what that means. Nobody crawled under desks, which aren’t bulletproof; they
stood along a cinderblock wall lined with cupboards with no windows, which
might be somewhat better I guess.)
Anyway, my daughter—bless her heart—wasn’t freaked out for herself. She
thinks she’s one of the Power Puff Girls or Raven from Teen Titans, so she
figures she’ll kick butt and take names wherever she is. She started
thinking about me, here alone. She started worrying about how old and
feeble my guide dog Ballad is getting and what I would do if the man with
the gun ran to the house. So by Tuesday night after the lockdown drill, she
didn’t tell me why, but she thought she should be home schooled so she could
stay with me and be her superhero self. And by Wednesday morning, she
decided she wasn’t going to school. When we made her go, she tried to get
herself sent home sick.
So I reassured her as best I could. I showed her how the dead bolt worked
and how far it went into the wall, how the door won’t budge an inch when it’s
locked. I made her a pinky promise deal that I’ll lock the door every day,
and that when she leaves with her dad in the morning, she can check it
herself. I sent her outside to ring the doorbell so she can hear how loud
the dog’s bark is from out there. I reminded her how fast the firemen got
here once when we had to call 911 because the neighbor’s smoke alarm was
going off and he wasn’t home. I said if a man with a gun was running around
and I called 911 and told the police, they’d be here that fast. Is there
anything I’m missing as far as reassurances go?
So anyway, here’s where the blind parenting part comes in, if you’ve stuck
with me this long, and thanks for still reading. I called my daughter’s
teacher to explain all of this because I wanted to let her know what effects
the lockdown drill had—and to find out exactly how it had happened because I
didn’t quite believe the kid version of the story. I also wanted to explain
why my daughter had been pretending to be sick so much. The teacher is
great. She understood. But the health aide suggested maybe I should have
my daughter talk to the school counselor because she said she thought my
daughter felt overly responsible for me, and that’s not healthy. She said a
daughter shouldn’t feel she has to take care of her mother; a mother should
be taking care of her child. I told her I do take care of my child. I said
I don’t think we’re talking about an unhealthy relationship here. We’re
talking about a little superhero who thinks she’s going to save the day.
There’s a big difference. I don’t believe the health aide would have come to
the same conclusion if I’d been a sighted mom. So far I believe I’ve held
her off, and I’m hoping the problem resolves itself before her worries go
any further. If my daughter gets sent there with false symptoms again, I
asked the health aide to reassure her that I’m safe and that she checked the
lock with her dad in the morning, instead of focusing on the fact that she
isn’t sick, which isn’t the real issue.
I hate these lockdown drills. I suppose we’re stuck with them in the world
we live in, and hopefully most kids aren’t having the reaction my daughter
is. But we’re stealing the innocence from a whole generation of kids, and
truthfully, I’m not sure the drills would have prevented any of the
tragedies at Columbine. I don’t know, it’s said they did help at New Town,
where kids knew what to do and moved quickly into position; I just hate that
kids have to be burdened with this crap!
Thanks for sticking with me; it’s been a hell of a week!
Jo Elizabeth
Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may
kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at
evening.--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
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