[blparent] Lockdown Drill at School

[Jo Elizabeth Pinto]

So far, my daughter says she doesn't want to talk to the school counselor. 
But I'm not sure she knows what all that entails.  I asked her why she's not 
interested, and she said the counselor might be mean.  I assured her the 
counselor would be a very nice person who would help her sort out her 
feelings, if it turns out to be necessary.

We had a bit of hesitation going to school this morning, a bit of "I'd 
rather stay with you" stuff, and I let her wear a necklace of mine but not 
take anything else.  No calls from the health aide yet; it's eleven o'clock. 
Fingers crossed.

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: Star Gazer
Sent: Monday, January 13, 2014 9:38 AM
To: 'Blind Parents Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [blparent] Lockdown Drill at School

First, the school health aid is someone who can't get a job in a real health 
care profession. I'd not let her comments bother you.
Does Sarah want to talk to the school councelor? What does her teacher say?
You could also let the principal know the health aid's comments were 
inappropriate, lots of kids worry about their parents especially if that 
parent is home all day.


-----Original Message-----
From: blparent [mailto:blparent-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jo 
Elizabeth Pinto
Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2014 4:43 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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