Things are out of wack this morning.
Steve started his new day of work all the way down in lower Manhattan. Car to the train to the PATH and then a walk. He left at 6:45 for the 7:02 express train. He’s not sure when he’ll get back. Maybe 7:15. After a week, we’ll have a better idea of the new routine.
Jonah missed the school bus this morning. I had to leave Ian alone for fifteen minutes, so I could drive Jonah to school. I don’t like to leave the 11-year old autistic kid alone ever, but it had to happen this morning. When I came back, he had finished making himself breakfast and put the bowl in the sink. Big boy.
As we waited for Ian’s school bus, he told me that his new school was “weird.” [deleted info]
I skimmed the most-read articles on the New York Times website for the topics that are freaking me out the most — the shutdown and the sad fates of the Kenyan mall hostages. Nothing. Sweet and heartwarming stories, but nothing about the impending doom in Washington and abroad.
Like Ian, I need some structure right now. I need to know whether or not my husband will be home for dinner. I need to know that the government is going to work tomorrow. I need to create a work-plan for myself.
Apt. 11d 
Back to school is a tough time in our house too. My kids are in 5th and 7th grades, and for the first time this year are in different buildings with totally different schedules. And my husband’s work schedule (he’s a special ed teacher) also changed. So I am trying to hold it all together.
I am reminded of your post from last week, that thinking about the future is sometimes a luxury. When things get crazy like this I end up obsessing over how to make every meal in the crock pot (no timing dependencies in the late afternoon), tweaking carpool schedules, and buying more granola bars (just in case). I will say that last week showed serious signs of calming down. Or maybe I’m just finally adjusting!
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Just talked to the school district. Apparently, part of chaos in Ian’s class is due to the fact that all the experienced aides quit this summer when their hours were reduced from 7 to 5. The school district didn’t want to pay for their health insurance. So, some counter evidence to an old blog post.
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The fact that the experienced aides all quit, while it sucks for you, isn’t actually counter-evidence for your old blog post. If they all quit, it seems likely they just went to work for somebody who will give them enough hours. It suggests that employers will be unable to hire experienced workers if they try to dodge the health insurance mandate which is different from suggesting that those experienced workers will be forced to take part-time jobs because of Obamacare.
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But it does show that employers are not just going to roll over and hand over the goodies–they are going to put up a fight and there is going to be chaos.
Laura, how about tracking down the aides and seeing where they went and where they are working now and for what wages? That would be a very interesting project. Also, it would be very interesting to find out if they needed additional health insurance at their school jobs and if they have health insurance where they are now. It’s possible that some of the aides did not actually quit to go to a better job.
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If Obamacare produces enough people quitting low-paying jobs for better jobs to cause actual chaos, I’m going to vote Democrat for the next 20 years even when the Democratic candidates are obviously stupid.
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“But it does show that employers are not just going to roll over and hand over the goodies–they are going to put up a fight and there is going to be chaos.”
Chaos is bad, but we have to re-set our economy and just not stay with all the old ways just because change is too scary. And it’s not that the school district “refuses” to give its employees health insurance. It’s that we do not fund the schools enough to pay decent wages and benefits. The school could attract back those aides, perhaps, by estimating how much it would cost to purchase health insurance on the exchanges and then add that amount to the wages and not offer health care. It would be a step to what I personally think should really happen: employment and health insurance should be separate.
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I guess what is also on my mind is the idea of “the employers not handing over the goodies.” I’ve seen small business owners comment that they “would hire someone if it wasn’t for those nasty requirements about wages/benefits/etc.” Well, then, fine. Don’t hire anyone. But when demand goes up because people are finding other jobs, and you can’t make your product/sell your service fast enough to keep up with demand, you know what? You’re going to hire more employees. Businesses don’t want to be the one to take the risks, and well, fine. But eventually, things will resettle so that people get paid decent wages for honest-enough work, and those wages will enable them to create the kind of economic demand that will make more jobs necessary. Someone’s got to blink.
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Wendy said:
“But eventually, things will resettle so that people get paid decent wages for honest-enough work, and those wages will enable them to create the kind of economic demand that will make more jobs necessary.”
No, there is no reason at all why that has to happen. If the law were to say that minimum wage was $100 an hour, without significant inflation, that would immediately be followed by the formation of 1) a huge black market in labor and 2) massive unemployment. It is possible to make policies that are so stupid and counterproductive that the economy will fail–see Venezuela, see Zimbabwe, see the Soviet Union, see Poland just before martial law, see Chile, etc. It is possible to be so stupid about our economy that we will all suffer terribly for decades–it has already happened in dozens of countries across the globe. We aren’t so special that it can’t happen to us. .
Now, in the case of Laura’s very particular ritzy part of NJ, I the school districts probably can afford to double the cost of hiring aides, but there is no reason to think that is the case across the country.
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Time to raise some hell, I guess. Here’s some structure for you. You’re welcome!
1. Arrange to meet with SPED director and superintendent as quickly as possible to find out exactly how they will provide decent support when they refuse to give staff doing important work enough hours and health insurance to retain them. Ask that they hire the experienced aids as contractors (double their earlier rates, at least) to help with the transition. Ask what their retention strategy is. Go in as Mom, education policy expert or journalist as needed. They should be a little scared of you.
2. Meet with the teacher. Note the deer-in-the-headlights look, make empathy statements about how hard it is to start the year without adequate help and then drill her in Ian’s program and needs until she realizes it will take more time to deal with you than to deliver the program well.
3. Call the SPED PAC and make sure they know what’s going on. An effective one will already be doing task 1, but the more directions it’s coming from, the better.
4. Publicize as much as possible. If a local paper starts asking the questions in task 1, all the better.
Yeah, I was *that* Mom and it sucked, since I’m naturally a conflict-averse nicey-nice type. But my autistic kid is kicking it in college now and it really did not break our school district to provide decent services in the end, so I have no regrets.
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Artemisia is right. Your kid’s education is his right as a citizen of the state, and you have to demand it, much as it sucks that you have to. The schools have to pony up. This is why we have regulations by the government, so your kid isn’t stuck with a crappy education forever (it’s bad enough he has to have it for a few weeks while they get their act together).
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So do they not have aides? Or do they have inexperienced aides?
It’s tough when you’re kid is having to deal with a bad situation, but the most direct person (i.e. the teacher) is being put in an impossible role. I hate the idea of the teacher who is feeling like a deer in the headlights.
But, hey, “When I came back, he had finished making himself breakfast and put the bowl in the sink. Big boy.” isn’t that fabulous? I don’t generally leave my little guy (a year younger than I.) alone at home ’cause the last too times I tried, he did something he shouldn’t have (not serious, but enough that I didn’t think I should leave him home alone). But last week, we had a milestone — I left him alone for 15 minutes and all went well. He didn’t fix himself breakfast though.
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There are aides in the class, but sometimes having a clueless body in the room is worse than having nobody. The teacher has to micromanage them. Yeah, I feel bad for the teacher, too. I stopped e-mailing her questions, because I could tell that i was freaking her out. At this point, it’s too late to switch classrooms, so we need to make this work.
At this point, I’m not worried about Ian burning down the house or anything. I worry that someone will knock on the door and then something bad thing will happen. He doesn’t have “bad guy radar.”
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Laura, this might an oversimplification of the issue, but our rule for our 11 yo neurotypical daughters is simply: Don’t answer the door when your parents aren’t home. We reasoned with them that our trusted relatives/friends have keys, and that anyone else would understand the rule and not be upset if they didn’t answer. That way we avoid “bad guy radar” altogether, which I just don’t trust in tweenage kids.
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“I worry that someone will knock on the door and then something bad thing will happen. ”
This is actually the issue with ours — we’ve given him the same instruction, “don’t open the door to strangers”.
But, when faced with the situation, his imagination gets ahead of him and he spins complicated scenarios. Instead of just sitting where he is and ignoring the stranger at the door until they go away, he 1) tries to hide and look and see who they might be. 2) considers the possibility that they are actually calling him 3) comes up with hypothetical possibilities where he should open the door (i.e. the person is a policeman or a fireman coming to warn him of an impending bomb threat in the neighborhood) and it all blows out beyond the rule.
The first time we found him alone, he’d gone through all those scenarios and decided he needed to call the grandparents (who live nearby, so they came over, but then we could have just planned things that way). The second time, I think he opened a door to a stranger or at least hid awkwardly while the stranger was at the door wondering what was going on.
(Of course, remember, the active imagination, so we don’t actually know for sure whether there was any stranger at the door or only in his imagination — we don’t actually get many).
I agree that neurotypical tweens don’t have a bad guy radar, either. My pre-tween can come up with scenarios where any rule should be violated, and that’s our concern. I was pleased that the 3rd time he just kept doing what he was doing until we came home.
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“My pre-tween can come up with scenarios where any rule should be violated, and that’s our concern.”
He sounds like a small version of my husband.
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Hmm, our neorotypical tween wasn’t that argumentative. (That came later, with the hormones, although she’s more often sullen and hostile than really argumentative.) But when she was 11, if she had been instructed not to answer the door, she would absolutely have obeyed. Of course, our world is different: there’s a doorman and an elevator man between home and the outside world, so that wasn’t the main issue when leaving her home alone.
Still, I’m surprised that this a live issue for Laura. Are there really any bad guys in your town?
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First off, congratulations to Steve on his new job location and my fervent wishes to you that he actually can get home for dinner. What a nasty commute that sounds to be!
With regards to the aides – eek! Even though our situation here in Canada is more stable, the aides do move around a lot more, seeking to work in the school situation that best suits them for a shorter commute or with younger kids if that’s what they prefer. But there’s been a good core of aides at Autistic Youngest’s high school which has helped this year to be the smoothest back-to-school ever. Not a single phone call complaining of some imaginary ailment. No outburst or acting out serious enough to warrant a call or a long note.
She’s also starting to be able to be home alone for more than five minutes – more than an hour. She imagined up all sorts of doom scenarios but we remind her of all of her contact options and the timeline. Now that she’s used to it, our short trips away don’t disconcert her as she tootles along on her computer or on the Wii.So it can come, just quite a bit later than with some neurotypical kids!
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We are just now shifting to where the creative scenarios are purposefully designed to violate a rule, rather than purely the active imagination of a child in whose world all things are possible (however implausible).
There are bad guys everywhere. Though probably not enough frequency anywhere that we should worry about leaving our child alone for a short time out of fear of them (different when they themselves are worried, or when they are considering burning the house down — or at the least — taking the opportunity to do some experiments on the gas stove — really they’re like the ones he uses in science and he just wanted to check if orange juice would change the boiling point).
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I am a DC fed, and we have been told to go to work tomorrow, for the purpose of being laid off (and getting a form we can turn in to our state unemployment office!) So we will be there for most of the morning, ready to turn on a dime and go back to working in the service of the people if they manage to come to a deal. We will busy ourselves with our outgoing messages and shutting down the computer and squirreling away any secret documents.
I’ve been through these things before. We are told not to go far, we will likely be paid if we are there the day after the thing solves, not to be paid if it takes us coupla days to get back from the Bahamas. Very odd feeling. When the elephants struggle, the mice get trampled.
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I was at a DC area government agency during the 1995-1996 closure (as was my spouse). That one lasted almost 30 days and ended on the day of an enormous snow stormstorm.
I was a fellow, and the appropriations bill for my husband’s agency had passed. So, we were economically unaffected. My agency was a little bit of a ghost town, but since it was staffed heavily with fellows + support staff who were deemed essential (I think the lab heads might not have been, but they got to decide who was essential :-)). The main impact was that the secretaries and a few technicians (the ones who hadn’t made it to the essential list already) got a very long paid holiday and labs couldn’t buy anything. It was a strange year, though, especially since the man-made crisis ended with a weather crisis (eventually we lost power and weren’t able to drive out of our neighborhood for 6+ days).
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I was in the Russia with the Peace Corps for the 90s shutdown. The Peace Corps HQ people were very freaked out about it, but I don’t think it affected us lower-down people at all.
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The country is large and the Tsar is far away.
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China has that same expression, almost exactly: 天高帝远 (heaven is high and the emperor is far away).
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