Goodnight Moon
As expectant parents we paint the nursery walls with stars and planets, hang visually stimulating mobiles above the crib, and plant copies of Goodnight Moon on the bookshelf. Meanwhile the baby grows inside the womb in a genetic stew over which we have little or no control. So it is that each of our children is born into the world with his own set of plans.
Carly was born a survivor. She survived the playgrounds of schools with the lowest test scores, and endured sword and dart gun attacks from her brother. At six she played soccer on the unpaved streets of Colima with kids whose language she recognized but could not speak. And at fifteen she endured the boys at the city skate-park, who dropped x-rated comments as often as they told her to drop in on the half pipe.
Eliot was a different animal; enrolling him in public middle school was like tossing him into the jungle without his trusty light sabers and swords. He couldn’t even enter the sanctuary of the Life Lab Garden, much less the severely handicapped classroom, without erupting. When he was in the sixth grade I pulled him out of public school for good. By the time he started his new school, he had been home with me for a year.
In Santa Cruz and Monterey counties there are a myriad of services for families of children with special needs, including Balance4Kids, San Andreas Regional Center, SPIN, and Easter Seals. There are special education teachers and occupational and speech therapists in all the public schools, many of whom have made a difference in Eliot’s life. But I only know of one school like the Bay School.
Even after the Bay School determined Eliot was a good fit for their behavioral and academic program, the process of enrolling him was not easy. But once he was enrolled staff and administrators told me repeatedly, "We'll work with Eliot," "We want him to be excited about coming to school," and "There is no behavior we haven't seen." They started by setting high but achievable goals for their students. And the sky was the limit in terms of the rewards the students could earn by meeting those goals: in Eliot’s case, a trip to the toy store, a hike, or an in-house concert. Environment and teacher-student relationships were paramount, and the students felt it. "I go to the Bay School," Eliot said with obvious pride after his first visit.
Throughout the day the Bay School used what was called Adaptive Behavior Analysis, documenting all of a student’s behaviors, antecedents to the behaviors, and consequences. Teachers met their students outside the building each morning, and escorted them out to their parents and buses in the afternoon, giving each parent a brief summary of her student’s day.
Blue and I called Eliot’s teacher Alona "unflappable," because her demeanor did not change even when the atmosphere around her became tense. She was exactly what an excitable student needed. Most of the time she came out and said, “Eliot had a great day.” On the days where he was aggressive she said, “He had a great morning,” and then filled us in on the difficult part. Instead of phoning us at home or work, staff members told us immediately after school what Eliot had done, the antecedents to the behavior if there were any, and how they had responded.
“It will get rougher,” Ethan, the director of the school, told me not long after Eliot started. “Most of the time our students meet their goals, which makes it challenging for them.” I appreciated the fact that Ethan was honest and proactive.
And it did get rougher. With Eliot there was no apparent antecedent to the first major incident, only hormones, the full moon, a pain his foot, who knows. I talked for a long time outside the building with his teacher and the psychologist. What they gave me were the specifics of the incident, but what I heard was that they considered it their job to decipher Eliot, and that they would do whatever it took to help him learn self-control. For the first time since Eliot’s third grade teacher Robin, Blue and I were able to let down our guards during school hours.
As Eliot and I walked to the car, I pointed out the hammerhead shark on his t-shirt. I told him this type of shark had an unusually shaped head that gave it acute vision and hearing so that it could more easily detect its prey. And it occurred to me that autistic kids carried their differences like hammerheads, sometimes odd, yet able with their unusual sensitivity to pick up electrical stimuli other beings couldn’t detect.
To me, the full moon was a beautiful orb that shone gold as it rose through the atmosphere, and the summer solstice brought fogless days and south swells. To Eliot, though, the gravitation of the sun and moon at that time of the year tugged at invisible forces within his body and sent it into its own mysterious orbit.
At that moment Carly was out surfing a south swell. Most of the time I had to beg her to hug me back, or let me feel the exquisitely soft skin on her cheek. But Eliot, a different soul altogether, doled out kisses like rain. That afternoon I was grateful he let me take his hand as we walked to the car.
Carly was born a survivor. She survived the playgrounds of schools with the lowest test scores, and endured sword and dart gun attacks from her brother. At six she played soccer on the unpaved streets of Colima with kids whose language she recognized but could not speak. And at fifteen she endured the boys at the city skate-park, who dropped x-rated comments as often as they told her to drop in on the half pipe.
Eliot was a different animal; enrolling him in public middle school was like tossing him into the jungle without his trusty light sabers and swords. He couldn’t even enter the sanctuary of the Life Lab Garden, much less the severely handicapped classroom, without erupting. When he was in the sixth grade I pulled him out of public school for good. By the time he started his new school, he had been home with me for a year.
In Santa Cruz and Monterey counties there are a myriad of services for families of children with special needs, including Balance4Kids, San Andreas Regional Center, SPIN, and Easter Seals. There are special education teachers and occupational and speech therapists in all the public schools, many of whom have made a difference in Eliot’s life. But I only know of one school like the Bay School.
Even after the Bay School determined Eliot was a good fit for their behavioral and academic program, the process of enrolling him was not easy. But once he was enrolled staff and administrators told me repeatedly, "We'll work with Eliot," "We want him to be excited about coming to school," and "There is no behavior we haven't seen." They started by setting high but achievable goals for their students. And the sky was the limit in terms of the rewards the students could earn by meeting those goals: in Eliot’s case, a trip to the toy store, a hike, or an in-house concert. Environment and teacher-student relationships were paramount, and the students felt it. "I go to the Bay School," Eliot said with obvious pride after his first visit.
Throughout the day the Bay School used what was called Adaptive Behavior Analysis, documenting all of a student’s behaviors, antecedents to the behaviors, and consequences. Teachers met their students outside the building each morning, and escorted them out to their parents and buses in the afternoon, giving each parent a brief summary of her student’s day.
Blue and I called Eliot’s teacher Alona "unflappable," because her demeanor did not change even when the atmosphere around her became tense. She was exactly what an excitable student needed. Most of the time she came out and said, “Eliot had a great day.” On the days where he was aggressive she said, “He had a great morning,” and then filled us in on the difficult part. Instead of phoning us at home or work, staff members told us immediately after school what Eliot had done, the antecedents to the behavior if there were any, and how they had responded.
“It will get rougher,” Ethan, the director of the school, told me not long after Eliot started. “Most of the time our students meet their goals, which makes it challenging for them.” I appreciated the fact that Ethan was honest and proactive.
And it did get rougher. With Eliot there was no apparent antecedent to the first major incident, only hormones, the full moon, a pain his foot, who knows. I talked for a long time outside the building with his teacher and the psychologist. What they gave me were the specifics of the incident, but what I heard was that they considered it their job to decipher Eliot, and that they would do whatever it took to help him learn self-control. For the first time since Eliot’s third grade teacher Robin, Blue and I were able to let down our guards during school hours.
As Eliot and I walked to the car, I pointed out the hammerhead shark on his t-shirt. I told him this type of shark had an unusually shaped head that gave it acute vision and hearing so that it could more easily detect its prey. And it occurred to me that autistic kids carried their differences like hammerheads, sometimes odd, yet able with their unusual sensitivity to pick up electrical stimuli other beings couldn’t detect.
To me, the full moon was a beautiful orb that shone gold as it rose through the atmosphere, and the summer solstice brought fogless days and south swells. To Eliot, though, the gravitation of the sun and moon at that time of the year tugged at invisible forces within his body and sent it into its own mysterious orbit.
At that moment Carly was out surfing a south swell. Most of the time I had to beg her to hug me back, or let me feel the exquisitely soft skin on her cheek. But Eliot, a different soul altogether, doled out kisses like rain. That afternoon I was grateful he let me take his hand as we walked to the car.
posted by Victoria Tatum at 12:24 PM
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