THE BEHAVIOUR CHART

‘I need a favour mama. I have a stupid behaviour chart that I have to turn it in to all my teachers every day. It’s embarrassing.’

‘A what? Why?’ I asked my son as I walked through the door after work.

‘Because of the stupid autistic thing.’

Ah, yes. That issue is back to haunt us this year as it did last year when I found out that my son’s father had him labeled as autistic at the elementary school without my knowledge or consent. Something that is clearly against the custody order that we have, stating we have joint managing conservatorship, which includes medical decisions.

The result of this assessment having been done in elementary school means the middle school needs to follow that assessment or else risk losing their jobs, something I’ve learned from a reliable source who found out that the current school does not believe my son is autistic at all. They are all blindly following rules instead of seeing the damage this can do to a child’s self-esteem and self-worth.

‘Do you want me to intervene?’ I asked my son. I had done much intervening last year which resulted in so much unnecessary drama, meetings, and endless emails.

‘Yes, please.’

Sage continued to explain that he needs to turn in a piece of paper to each teacher, who then makes a note on it with regards to his behaviour. It started yesterday when he was asked to leave his Math class to accompany a teacher to an office where other students were also waiting.

He felt absolutely humiliated as the teachers stood in front of him, asking him which colour of folder he wanted, if he wanted a special reward, and described the different forms of punishment if the assessment of his actions reached a certain percentage. They were treating him as if he was in kindergarten.

‘Are you serious?!’

‘People are going to make fun of me! Julian already said “Ha! Ha! You have a behaviour chart!”’

And this is coming from Julian the troublemaker who destroyed my son’s laptop last Friday when he reached over to my son’s desk to try to shut the laptop. This resulted in the screen being half unusable. When this happened, I told my son to send an email to the teachers, counselor, and principal. Nobody has done anything yet as Julian claims he never did anything.

I really wanted to reduce my interaction with the drama at school this year, but it appears I need to send an email to everyone involved to see how I can bring an end to this nonsense. As for the behaviour form, I will hold onto that. I will now allow him to be treated as a delinquent.