no I’m scared of being trapped
I feel this.My elementary school had a PMI program for kids with disabilities like me, for people with ADHD, Autism, etc etc……
There were two rooms.
One was a padded room that was pretty much gym pads in a section of a room. The other was a fucking coat closet. Like really small.
I was trapped in the padded room for an entire day once, without bathroom breaks, because I was ‘too rambunctious’ and ‘uncontrollable’.
I cried and screamed and hit the walls (and myself) until I passed out on the floor and fell asleep in a puddle of my tears.I have ADHD.
I was in first grade I think.I can’t stand elevators and small rooms anymore.
Another time, I watched helplessly one day as my friend Ben was restrained by two teachers crawling on top of him, yanking his arms behind his back and digging their knees into his spine and between his shoulder blades. They then stuffed him into the closet and locked the door.
He screamed for an hour before submitting and quieting himself.
They didn’t let him out until a half an hour after that.He had Tourettes and Autism.
He was a third grader.And they treated him like a violent rabid animal.
I will never forget that.
We arent people to them
At the progressive kindergarten/daycare I attended in Charleston, SC, they had a Quiet Room. (I want you to imagine the words “progressive kindergarten” being said by William S. Burroughs, specifically with reference to the Green Nun from The Wild Boys.) They meant it as punishment; I welcomed it as a reprieve from the screaming demons, and specifically from my futile attempts to speak to those howler monkeys in their own language and my own words. It was only later, when I couldn’t get away from other children except by being dragged away, that I realized they meant solitude as punishment and company as reward, rather than the other way around like a sensible person would.
I didn’t have it as bad as @hate-police and their friend Ben, but I can relate to the original cartoon, particularly the bit about “it’s only natural to hurt yourself”.
I know I just reblogged this, but it was queued, and apparently there’s been more stories since I did this as well. I also have never added my own commentary.
For those of you who think these have to be isolated instances???
Ha. No. They were at every. Single. FUCKING. Public. School. I’ve. Been. At.
Every one of them. Even after I got out after middle school, or went to one of the “better rooms” (one had two. One for mild kids and one for more severe) this shit still happened.
And most parents, I guarantee, if they find out it won’t be from the kid tattling. Or, at least, not purposefully. Maybe in a passing comment. But you never think that there’s a chance people don’t know what’s going on. Of course they would. Why wouldn’t they know?
And so it goes fucking on. To this day. I still have massive blanks in my memory from elementary to middle school (though many more are still very much crystal fucking clear) and I’m to this day not sure if it was due to the sheer outrageous amount of meds I was forced to go on, or trauma. It’s blocked.
My mom and nan were often very sick, so it was pretty easy to blame any “behavior” issues on a unstable home life. Maybe there’s something actually to that. At least contributing. But I will never back down from the belief my childhood would have been a hell of a lot better if I was treated like a CHILD instead of an animal or some bullshit.
Because goldmane is right. Disabled kids are not seen as fully human. We never have been. Either we’re pitied, or we’re treated like little demons.
Hell. One set of teachers nicknamed me the devil child. Acted like I couldn’t hear them saying that. I still have yet to regret throwing a desk at one. If anything I regret it missed.
Spread this like wildfire, because to this day a good chunk of people don’t believe the crazy ass shit I went through. What so many of us went through.
“Oh. But my nephew is in Special Ed and we’ve never had any issues!”
“Well they have to do something to avoid kids hurting themselves and others! I’m sure your misremembering it worse than it is.”
Ha. Yeah. Fuck you.
People don’t know what goes on. They don’t know how common it is. Because disabled children are constantly taken advantage of. CONSTANTLY. So yeah. Spread this.
I don’t care if it makes people uncomfortable. My entire childhood was hell. They can afford to be uncomfortable.
YOU ALL SHOULD BE!
Don’t get me started on the waterbottles they’d use on you until you were literally soaked on the ground. Like you were a misbehaving dog. And this shit is still fucking happening. Boost the shit out of this. Let people fucking know. Everyone needs to know.
so i have always remembered the “quiet rooms” they would put me in in elementary (and one high) school. i have always remembered the cold, hard walls and floors with no padding and peeling baseboards. i have always remembered screaming and crying to be let out, only to be told, if they responded, that my time was being extended for being bad/loud.
but only just now did i remember throwing myself against the wall, hitting my head against the wall, peeling the plastic off the baseboards or tile off the floor while i waited to be let out. that first room, the one with the peeling baseboards, was always dark. there was a tiny window in the door as the only source of light.
when i went to a special high school for a few months they had a ~nicer~ quiet room, with hard painted walls and a carpeted floor, lights, even a chair. i still hit my head against the wall in frustration, i still tried to knock the door open in terror.
when i was 10 i was sent to a ~professional~ assessment program at a hospital (which is just up the street from where i live now and i cant pass it without those PTSD feels) that had a quiet room. the lights were off in that room too, but at least it was ~padded~ (this place also used the colour coded behaviour cards, red meant you couldnt leave your room, yellow was only allowed in the unit, green could go outside, and gold had privileges like being allowed to play video games)
those quiet rooms (and card systems) were torture and i managed to block a lot about them out until just now. i’m still feeling the effects 10-20 years later.
this is no joke.Oh yeah, I remember this shit, I got put in one of these fucking rooms so many times that eventually I think I sort of forced myself to enjoy solitary confinement so I wouldn’t lose my mind in there, because whenever I was OUT of the room, I was so uncomfortable and panicked that of COURSE I wouldn’t ‘listen to directions’ and they’d put me back in there. This shit doesn’t help, this makes things WORSE. To this day I start to get uncontrollably anxious when I know I’m locked in somewhere.
I actually remember being put in these kinds of rooms for crying whenever i was being bullied (which happened a lot); every time they put me in there i would cry and pound on the door but nobody would say anything and i could always hear the kids in the other rooms doing the same thing. This shit played a big part in me believing i had done something wrong to deserve all the bullying i got, i mean if even the school was punishing me i must have done something; it took me a long ass time to learn that i wasn’t inherently a horrible person who deserved everything she got.
Okay big question here: how can this be something the parent can discover? Like, I want to find this room at the school and call them out. How do I find it? How do I confirm if my child has had this happen?
It’s most likely in the Special Ed room if it’s anywhere, but I’m only guessing. Can someone who’s actually been through this help out?
Proof your education system is not fucking working: your first impulse when a child is reacting to things you don’t understand, and you don’t want to deal with that, is to isolate them until they develop self-loathing and claustrophobia for the rest of their fucking life.
