[blparent] Lockdown Drill at School
Jo Elizabeth Pinto
jopinto at msn.com
Mon Jan 13 18:31:56 UTC 2014
You have a point. Most likely, the attitude came from her older brother,
who has had to deal with a long string of therapists, school counselors,
evaluators, police officers, CPS workers, and other authority figures over
the years. Some of them he liked, some of them he didn't. Some of them
were more pleasant than others, sometimes his attitude was more pleasant
than others. My daughter, unfortunately, saw her brother arrested and taken
away by the police after an act of vandalism when she was almost four.
There was nothing I could do to prevent that. Believe me, I tried. I've
spent the last two years actively working to deprogram the belief that
police officers are bad. As in, stopping them on the street when I
encounter them and having my daughter walk up to them so they can introduce
themselves and talk to her. I want her to find out they are nice, friendly
people. She's gotten to sit in a cruiser, she's found out that the officers
have children at home, they've smiled at her and given her candy. It's
slowly working.
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: Gabe Vega - CEO Commtech LLC
Sent: Monday, January 13, 2014 11:11 AM
To: Blind Parents Mailing List
Cc: Blind Parents Mailing List
Subject: Re: [blparent] Lockdown Drill at School
it's kind of weird that your daughter would think that a school counselor,
or anybody in authority for that matter, would be mean to her. Is that
something may be that you output when you deal with authorities? Do you
maybe side and frustration or explain to your boyfriend in front of her that
some or certain authorities can be mean? Children listen to everything we
do, and they watch us even though we don't know they are watching. And
sometimes things that we don't want them to know or care for them to know
they will still no simply because they're always listening and watching us.
Gabe Vega - CEO
Commtech LLC
The leader of computer support, training and web development services
Web: http://commtechusa.net
Twitter: http://twitter.com/commtechllc
Facebook: http://facebook.com/commtechllc
Email: info at commtechusa.net
Phone: (888) 351-5289 Ext. 710
Fax: (480) 535-7649
> On Jan 13, 2014, at 11:06 AM, Jo Elizabeth Pinto <jopinto at msn.com> wrote:
>
> 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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