[blparent] Lockdown Drill at School
Jo Elizabeth Pinto
jopinto at msn.com
Mon Jan 13 18:49:40 UTC 2014
Which is why I still read your messages ... yay for me.
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 11:45 AM
To: Blind Parents Mailing List
Cc: Blind Parents Mailing List
Subject: Re: [blparent] Lockdown Drill at School
see, even when you are the biggest controversial person on the list, you
could still make good points. Yay for me! :-)
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 11:31 AM, Jo Elizabeth Pinto <jopinto at msn.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
>> _______________________________________________
>> blparent mailing list
>> blparent at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blparent_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> blparent:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blparent_nfbnet.org/pickrellrebecca%40gmail.com
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> blparent mailing list
>> blparent at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blparent_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> blparent:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blparent_nfbnet.org/jopinto%40msn.com
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> blparent mailing list
>> blparent at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blparent_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> blparent:
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blparent_nfbnet.org/theblindtech%40gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> blparent mailing list
> blparent at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blparent_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> blparent:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blparent_nfbnet.org/jopinto%40msn.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> blparent mailing list
> blparent at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blparent_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> blparent:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blparent_nfbnet.org/theblindtech%40gmail.com
_______________________________________________
blparent mailing list
blparent at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blparent_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
blparent:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blparent_nfbnet.org/jopinto%40msn.com
More information about the BlParent
mailing list