Two families are suing the Waukee (Iowa) school district for the way that timeout rooms were used to “discipline” their children. Today’s Des Moines Register notes that one child was locked in timeout 64 times during his first-grade year at Waukee Elementary School in 2006; his grandparents were informed about only 17 of those instances. Isabel Loeffner was locked in a timeout room for 3 1/2 hours; while Isabel and her parents, Doug and Eva Loeffler, have moved to California, the family has continued their legal fight “for the sake of [their] daughter’s alleged suffering.” Go here to read …read more

“What Tim eventually said….was that he didn’t want to go to school because he thought the school was trying to kill him.”
John Miller, a podiatrist in Allegany, N.Y, says this about his 12-year-old son, who has Asperger Syndrome, and who was, according to a July 15th New York Times article, held down prone on the floor by teachers (one time for 20 minutes) when he was “confrontational.” The NYT article discusses something that is too familiar to me—and to parents of special needs children—-and that is, one suspects, a bit more than shocking to many. Kids coming home with bruises …read more

Up until last week, posts about “mercury” and “Jenny McCarthy” had the most comments—-after last week, the topic of religion and the restraining order filed against the parents of Adam Race generated a torrent of discussion that’s still going on).

Priest Files Restraining Order Against Parents of Autistic 13-year-old
Some 250-plus comments about Adam Race and the parish of St. Joseph’s in Bertha, Minnesota.
A Mother and a Housewife
Mothers and housewives can be pretty accomplished—-one whom I know (via the internet) is Kathleen Seidel, who writes the Neurodiversity weblog.
Read with Care: New Study on Thimerosal and Neurodevelopmental Disorders
A new …read more

Put in a timeout room more than 90 times?
Coming home from school with cuts, bumps, and bruises?
Being held on the floor on his stomach by two adults?
All of these happened to 9-year-old Matthew Montgomery in Oldham County, Kentucky, WAVE 3 news reports. Some of them have happened to my son Charlie and maybe not everyone realizes this, but these kinds of physical restraints can have a long-lasting effect on an autistic child; on any child.
Matthew’s mother, Jeanie, took him out of school in March of 2008. She and her husband are now being charged with truancy by the school district …read more