no_hypocrisy
no_hypocrisy's JournalI had an interesting day while teaching.
I substituted as a class aide and was assigned at the end of the day to the preschool class for special needs children. I've been with them about 10 times in the last six weeks. I know the staff and the kids.
A boy was put in our class one minute after his third birthday. He is autistic and can't use words to communicate. He uses a variety of screams and shrieks. I've come to recognize a pattern or two, and realized he was trying to communicate the only way he knows how.
When I first met him, he was anti-social insofar as he was suspicious of people he didn't know. He was frightened and made for the door any time the thought occurred to him. While he didn't bite or was violent, he made it clear he didn't want to be in the class and school. He was also noticeably intelligent and seemed to love the I-Pad.
Fast forward to this afternoon. The kid was acting up a little and needed focus. The head teacher put him in a make-shift cubicle with games and activities, not very large. I was asked to sit on a chair near him to observe him (and to block the only exit of escape he would likely try). He played and seemed intent on what he was doing. Then -- without warning -- he approached me, climbed onto my lap and hugged me. He did this three times. This came as a surprise to me as we didn't exactly have a rapport established. I haven't seen him do with other teachers, although it's possible he has as I haven't been with this class for about a week.
BTW, this school has a very advanced program for special needs children from preschool to second grade.
When my father was barely "there" mentally and physically during his last years,
he enlisted a witless neighbor to enable him in the charade that everything was okay.
Repeatedly the neighbor would tell me, with admiration no less, that my father "really knows what he's doing".
In the meantime, just the opposite was going on. My father let his dog piss and shit all over the house as well as let the dog tear up the cushions on a sofa. When I tried to clean up the aforesaid, my father would get hysterically angry at me. My father also broke a front upper tooth and refused to get it addressed, repaired, etc. for more than a year. He would joke that he looked like Alfred E. Newman. (My father was a retired physician. He knew better and he had the money for a dentist/dental surgeon.) He didn't pay his bills for 6+ months and refused to allow me or my sister to get them ready for payment. He got into numerous fender-benders because he lacked the concentration and reflexes to drive safely. He had gouty knees and refused my offer to take him to the ER but preferred to call the EMS to take him there via ambulance. (He refused treatment once he arrived at the hospital. He then accepted my offer to drive him home, BUT he wanted me to stop at a take-out for some food AND wanted to get out of the car to walk the aisles. At that point, I had it with him; I told him if he did that, I'd drive away and leave him there.)
I respected my father's wish to remain in his home and not to move to an adult facility. But yet, he couldn't handle living alone and he just didn't "know what he was doing".
Trump brings back a lot of bad memories for me.
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