Susan Senator

The arrest of an 8-year-old Asperger’s girl in Idaho has brought back raw memories of what happened to Nat when he was 8. He was not arrested for his outbursts, thank God, but he was expelled. That school refused to put in any of the supports that our behaviorist recommended, even when our town was willing to pay for the additional staff (this was an out-of-district placement). The dialog around what was happening with Nat in that school program over the course of that year was similar to what I read in the story about Evelyn. In the ABCNews report, the school officials talk about Evelyn — who had an aggressive outburst as a result of being kept from a class party — as if she were an inexplicable creature, an oddity; someone to be tolerated at best, and ostracized (and arrested) at worst. Apparently she did not get to go to the party because she refused to take off her beloved cow costume.

Yes, yes, of course I don’t know all of the facts, but I’m going to jump right in anyway. I read the news story twice to try and piece together the scenario. In trying to be fair, I wondered about the insistence to remove the costume. The teachers were probably always trying to get her to act more “age-appropriate,” (note the use of quotes; I don’t really go in for age-appropriate so much myself or believe it should be insisted upon for any kids) and most likely they focused on motivating her to wear other things and fit in. Perhaps they used the party as a motivator, but phrased it all in such a way that they shot themselves in the foot, e.g., “You can’t go to the party unless you are dressed appropriately (no cow costume).”

Fitting in is overrated. Being indistinguishable from the “typical” kids — what a lousy aspiration, yet that is so often the goal. I suppose, to some degree, we all have to learn this, but perhaps a child with difficulty understanding social mores can be given some kind of break, especially at age 8? I’d even like such dispensation for the 19-year-olds, but…

But there were also references to “escalation.” I have learned to beware of the Autism Escalator. As soon as a school system starts seeing Nat in terms of behaviors “escalating over time,” there is possibly trouble brewing. What I learned at that particular “special needs” program is that they probably had marked Nat as trouble even before the first day. It was, therefore, a self-fulfilling prophecy. You expect the worst, you get the worst. And once trouble did indeed start, the teachers were mostly reactive and afraid — and angry. I tried to point this out, by asking how the different staff treated Nat, felt about Nat, but of course I learned nothing. Anyway, “someone like Nat” could never be expected to pick up on all that, right?

Right? Of course wrong. Nat knows how people feel about him, he just doesn’t know how to show what he knows. He appears stoic, but I don’t know if that appearance matches what he feels inside.

Like a child about to get on an escalator for the first time, I started to panic when I got word from Nat’s school, eleven years ago, that his “inexplicable” aggressive behavior was escalating. The staff also referred to the many things Nat did to them, (like Evelyn’s teachers) in ways that you could just smell how personally they were taking it. How Nat had “lunged” at the teacher who was pregnant, for example. I’ll never forget that one. Did they really think that an 8-year-old kid would realize that she was carrying a delicate fetus in there, or what hitting her belly meant? He probably sensed her own sense of fragility, her skittishness. And, there was no thought about what that teacher was like to Nat, what vibe she might have been giving off. He used to laugh whenever Max cried. Was he a sadist? No, he was probably stimulated by the strong emotion he was witnessing. He was probably confused. He might also have been psyched, being a sibling. I don’t know.

No attention paid to the relationships Nat had with those teachers, how one or the other may have treated him with fear or distance. No, his behavior was always, “out of the blue.”

Relationships are symbiotic. They are two-way, enmeshed, and messily interdependent. If you don’t know that, you will have trouble fully understanding what happens to you (and the other) in a given relationship. You will have difficulty owning what pieces are yours, how your behavior affects the other person. But such understanding is key for the relationship to grow and be healthy. This is true for our relationships with our children, and it is true for the teacher-student relationship.

If the Idaho school teachers merely viewed Evelyn’s behavior at a distance, or worse, at a frightened distance, and never figured out how to connect with her (using her interests and building a bond), then no wonder things escalated over time. Barring her from a party, keeping her in a separate room because of her outfit — or because they were afraid of her/repelled by her on some level — is just a sign that there were deeper problems there. Not enough teacher-training, for one thing.

The staff at that school would do well to take a good hard look at themselves and their behavior (not just around the party, but all year) to really understand what was happening between them and Evelyn. Why was it so important to them for her not to be a cow?