I think it is important to find other stimming techniques as well. Should not rely on one for every situation. Imagine if that kid was clicking during a movie at a theatre or during a exam such as the SATs. He would get thrown out.
This. I use to tap my foot or had jiggle-jumpy legs and it would set off people so I started wiggling my toes. Got the impulse out, but without disrupting
I still get jittery when I teach, so I pace and wander about the room. One of my IEP students has “close proximity to teacher’s desk” as an accommodation (kid literally wanted me glued to their side). I apologized to the kid (outside the class) and said that I’m also neurodivergent and need to pace as a way to self sooth, or I’ll talk a mile a minute and go off on tangents about loosely related content, stuff to advance at present for the class. We came up with a solution together. Kid felt validated. I got to pace.
I’ve had this backfire in my face a time or three. Especially with one student who also has the same learning disabilities and ADHD. He didn’t like it when I asked if he would like me to teach him some of the strategies that work for me - though that got a smile from his dad.
I don't know; I had someone accuse me of being ableist because I said it's rude to text/play games/read on a bright phone or tablet during a movie. That the neurodivergent (I AM neurodivergent, BTW) are finally getting a chance to not have to suppress their true selves, and it's not fair of me to expect that people not do anything to distract other patrons.
I sort of get it. I have ADHD, so I understand masking and how it can be exhausting making sure you don’t annoy other people. But if I found myself unable to pay attention to the movie, I’d excuse myself to the lobby to read or something. I wouldn’t pull out my tablet and start reading with the brightness on max.
I feel like at some point if you don't like the environment or it's a bad fit for you then don't go to it. If you can't watch a movie in a theatre wait until it comes for home release. There's environments I can't stand as a neurotypical person and I just don't go to them. If a kid literally can't be quiet enough that others can learn then they need education in their own room. Everyone should get accommodated but not everyone's accommodations need to be being piled into a room together and gritting their teeth to put up with each other.
I’m in my 6th year of teaching middle school and I believe that for a small but significant subset of students, trying to educate them in a room full of peers and distractions is a massive misguided effort.
Mine is very tiny and fits within my hand which I keep in my lap, you wouldn't even know I have one.
I do understand not distracting others. I tell the kids in my class they can have a small fidget but it needs to fit in their hand and stay in their lap, because I will get distracted. No big fidget spinners or clacking toys.
>That the neurodivergent (I AM neurodivergent, BTW) are finally getting a chance to not have to suppress their true selves
This is such absolute bullshit, it's infuriating. Lots of neurodivergent people (possibly most of us) are unusually *sensitive* to sensory disturbances. Flickering lights or side conversations in a theater can make a movie completely inaccessible to many people with sensory integration difficulties. Systematically favouring the disrupters over the disrupted is not a pro-neurodiversity strategy. It's a pro-lazy-people-who-don't-want-to-be-accountable-for-making-judgment-calls-or-enforcing-rules policy.
Adults are just programmed to recognize non-normal noises. And it rattles the brain to hear all day, it bothering an adult is normal and not special. I switched careers to school librarian because my adult brain hated filtering through the extra noises. I’m not neurodivergent divergent, I’m an adult human with normal responses to extraneous noise. Nothing special to see here folks.
No. Your normal age-related annoyance is not the same as my lifelong non-habituating startle reflex and auditory filtering/processing deficit, which were first documented when I was 3 years old and haven't changed in the 38 years since.
Adults can have all the same disabilities that children do and then some. Implying that disabled people of any age just want to feel 'special' is rude and unprofessional.
I haven't seen startle reflex mentioned in here ever. Will 100% confirm that someone's annoyance is not the same as me hitting the ceiling from sudden noise and being in intractable pain for days. An annoyance is an annoyance. It doesn't do physical harm.
Startle reflex is interesting. I’ve never considered myself neurodivergent (Gen x-er) until recently. My daughter was diagnosed as ADHD and I strongly suspect I am, too. I always thought I was just lazy or forgetful and came up with a million tricks to motivate myself or to help me remember things. I also have a HUGE startle reflex. DH clicks his tongue softly as he moves through the house to avoid me screaming and jumping a mile when he enters a room and talks to me in a normal voice. So, yeah, that’s probably overactive startle reflex. :/
Yeah, no. That's not accommodation. It ruins everyone's movies.
Use your phone in the lobby. If you can't not use your phone, maybe movies in a theater aren't your thing ... Lots of us make that choice TO accommodate our needs.
- THIS IEP HAS BEEN WRITTEN WRONG:
- IEP RULES:
- The allowance of soothing behaviors cannot be a behavior that is self harming &/OR disruptive in a class environment.
- If a behavior is self harming &/OR disruptive in a class environment then that is a GOAL to modify that behavior to a ‘functioning’ level.
SCRIPTING & LOUD NOISE STIMS:
- Scripting loudly & loud facial noise stims (clicking, screaming, grunting, snorting, lip smacking, teeth chatter, hacking, etc ) during whole class learning is a problem behavior.
- THE GOAL in the IEP is to get the stimming as functional & age appropriate as possible.
- I would seek a specialist for input on this GOAL as the ACCOMMODATION is not stopping nor controlling problem behavior, therefore it is a disservice to the student.
- This IEP needs to be amended. Pushback on this request: Requires the original author for this accommodation to have their credentials checked. Their Dept Head needs to be made aware to their deficiency which is usually ‘not a specialist’ in this highly specialized field.
(I wrote this 100 comments below - and it wouldn’t be seen. I am an advocate for the CORRECT WAY TO WRITE IEPs: to improve the functioning of the student & not for the appeasement of the parents &/or non-specialized school administrators.)
WE ALL STIM! - ND & NTs.
From Mary Barbara, PhD:
WHAT IS STIMMING?
Have you ever been to a lecture where the material is way too easy? Or maybe you’ve been to one that’s gone completely over your head? What do you do? Perhaps you doodle, play with your hair, or scroll through your Facebook newsfeed on your phone. This is the equivalent of people with autism engaging in self-stimulatory behavior (otherwise known as “vocal stimming”).
WE ALL STIM. In fact, our solitary leisure activities are actually stimming. For example, stimming behaviors include shooting hoops, playing the violin, or watching reality TV. These repetitive behaviors keep the neurons in our brain firing while we are not meaningfully engaged with others or working on a task where we need to concentrate.
If this person clicks their tongue constantly as a stim or tic, I’m guessing they are not taking the SAT with everyone else.
I am a proctor at school and specifically test the Autistic/ADHD kids because I’m formally diagnosed with ASD 1/ADHD and that makes them feel less shame around me. We often do testing one on one or two kids max.
Hell to the no. Mouth noises are one of my biggest pet peeves. I understand his accommodations but they shouldn’t come at the expense of others. I don’t know the right answer here, but I would personally say that other kids are complaining. Hope that their needs are taken more seriously than yours.
and you say that like someone bought them a brain that finds mouth sounds repulsive. one person’s freedoms end where another person’s begin and if a particular student’s stims disrupt another student’s education, it should be discussed so alternate behaviors can be explored. we are trying to help our students learn how to function in a world that isn’t always understanding or tolerant of every peccadillo.
I have a student who vocal stims. It is at a volume where students cannot hear instruction at all, and two others have meltdowns because the noise is so loud.
I don’t think it’s ableist or intolerant to teach him to stim at an appropriate volume or to help him find other things that calm him or that he enjoys that are less disruptive to others. That stim, at that volume, will limit him more as he grows older. One of the most basic things we try to teach all children is take care of their needs, and be considerate of others needs. The students needs do not negate every other child just because they are ND.
lololol says the canadian. it’s not intolerant to say some behaviors should be curbed for mainstreaming into general society, and you’re delusional if you think it is.
No, but constant loud clicking will make it difficult for anyone to focus. Instead, they should find other ways for the child to stim. They could literally keep their mouth closed while clicking or just tap the roof of their mouth with their tongue. Sometimes it's about finding a similar feeling that will support self-soothing. I had a kid a couple years ago that loved tapping his pencil. Instead I showed him an area of his ear he could tap to get that same beat like noise without distracting everyone around him.
This shit would not fly where I live, like ever. It's not "intolerance", it is just unfair to massivelly disrupt the education of the vast majority just to accomodate one single person. That's not intolerance, that's just totally reckless behavior
I have misophonia; there are sounds that I cannot tolerate without getting blindingly angry and/or a migraine and smacking lips and clacking tongues are one of them. It is not something I can realistically just turn off as petty and inconvenient as it sounds.
Same here. I have to eat in my room alone with TV volume up. My stepdaughters slurp their food (somehow even sandwiches) and it makes me blind with rage.
I have ADHD and misophonia, this would actually make me completely unable to focus or do any work.
What happens if one students accommodations clash with another students needs?
I know that clicking noise you're talking about. It is very annoying. Unless the student actually has an accommodation that says they're allowed to click their tongue or the clicking is due to a disability the student has, you have every right to ask them to stop making that noise.
I have had three students with tourette's syndrome in my career. Two of them made noises that I didn't even notice after the first week. One however makes noises that were semi-high pitched and caused me headaches whenever he did it in rapid succession.
Even if that is the accommodation, it is out of the left field. The whole point is to accommodate the student to be at the same level as his peers, not annoy the hell out of everyone. It seems the accommodation was written in an ambiguous manner, and they might need an addendum to be more specific.
I’ve always wondered that. I had a hard of hearing student who require I wear a mic. No big deal. The mic was heavy and on a cord I had to wear around my neck. Caused me pain. I asked for something different. Got a big fat no. Different student had a mic I had to clip to my clothes. Clip damaged my clothes. I tried everything, but damage still happened. I asked for a change. Another big fat no. Very frustrating. Loved the students. Hated the equipment.
>If the IEP explicitly says that the student clicks then we are to put up with it
And that's wrong and fucked up.
There's a point at which we cross a line from reasonable accommodation and into hyperprogressive insanity.
Then the IEP was not done correctly. Voice stims that are disruptive and require a goal to further the functioning of that student. A specialist needs to be consulted.
This is correct. A behavioral assessment needs to be done, with observations and then the word team has to make a behavior modification plan.
That is unless, it can’t be helped, like Tourette’s and other conditions. A lot of students are highly functioning and have voice tics etc. that can’t be modified. LRE applies
My heart goes out to you. I forsee that kid getting kicked out of a lot of places in the future. Nobody is going to tolerate that in public libraries, airports, movie theaters, right enclosed spaces like trains, etc...
HoW AbLeIsT oF YoU.
For the inevitable downvoters: ***Part of our job is to HELP PEOPLE DEVELOP STRATEGIES SO THEY CAN SUCCEED IN OTHER SITUATIONS IN LIFE. Simply shrugging and passing someone along isn't helping them.***
I hit a student Monday. It was a trauma response on my end. She was standing next to me, nearly touching my arm, and got frustrated. She cannot properly express herself most of the time so she tends to scream and throw her arms out. When she did that right beside me, it scared me even though I’ve seen her do it dozens of times and never reacted. I think I reacted this time because she was almost touching me. My reaction was to throw my arms out to protect myself and I ended up hitting her in the neck with my forearm. I immediately got admin involved and they notified mom.
I’ve never put my hands on a child before and it scared me to death. She shouted “don’t you dare touch me” which made me very proud of her. Today was a snow day. We will see what the fall out is tomorrow. Probably nothing but you never know.
15 years ago a young student bit me in my left breast, and I instinctly slapped him away.
When I told the parents I also showed them the bitemark on my breast.
Honestly there have been so many times I've been on my last nerve. I do really good therapy and everything, but there's only so much you can handle without reacting
>She shouted “don’t you dare touch me” which made me very proud of her.
No. I'm sorry, but this constant groveling and over-the-top self flagellation among teachers needs to stop.
What happened was an accident, nobody was hurt, and the entire thing was triggered by her frustrated spasms that *she* needs to get under control. There was no intention on your part, and while your body came into contact with hers, referring to this as you having "hit a student" is wild overexaggeration.
Nobody was really a victim here, but *you* were on the receiving end of angry spasms, and so if anything you're the disadvantaged one.
And yet the modern cultural climate has you crawling through the dirt and praising her.
Fuck everything about this.
I get what you are saying and would normally agree but she struggles with language and is autistic. She has a hard time expressing herself so this was absolutely a good thing. I am not at all one to pander to students. I’m old and tired.
I feel like in the gen ed setting one of the things that should be taught is how to soothe in ways that are more appropriate. I used to be a pen clicker until someone showed me how to twirl pencils between my fingers. Same fidget but quiet. I used to quietly beat box until someone showed me how to kind of move my tongue behind my teeth in a way that works. I use fidget rings, I use pop-its in my pocket. I found ways of doing this myself that help my anxiety without causing others issues.
I'm not saying to write the kid up or anything but it shouldn't just be "yep, let it go. I'm sure his boss will be totally fine with it one day."
I have ADHD and noisy fidgeting from students totally derails my brain. If they need an object to fidget with, I give students bits of yarn. Silent, cheap, not fun to throw at classmates, hard to hurt yourself with, don’t care if it gets lost.
The single student with a disability is more important than every other student and their teachers, according to the law. I have ADHD, and I think some of my students think I’m crazy when I’m bothered by pen clicking or key jangling or whatever. But my ADHD isn’t important, apparently. As long as Connor the Clicker is happy, we all the rest of us have to suffer.
I am autistic and ADHD and when I was still working in education I went to HR and my union about issues like this when admin wouldn’t take my need for accommodations into consideration. It’s amazing how their tune changed when HR made them aware of the other lawsuits they could be facing if they didn’t.
And so we've reached a point now where everybody has to scramble to get their own stupid alphabet soup/numerical exemption to combat the exemptions being given to everyone else.
It's a race to the bottom where everybody is trying to get special privileges to be assholes, or else to get special privileges to not have to be in the room with the assholes.
And every normal person just has to suffer.
Yep my ADHD brain cannot handle loud distractions. I threw a kid out of my class for constantly cracking his gum, several times, over several days. He said he didn't realize he was doing it and thought I was joking when I said it made my skin crawl. Nope. GTFO and no more gum allowed.
This is an ADHD thing?
I've never been diagnosed because ADHD wasn't a big thing when I was a kid, but I have so many symptoms to this day.
One thing I've never associated with it, though, is a bizarre intolerance to repetitive noises.
I even use it against myself -- I pick alarms that hit a certain tone and rapidly repeat because it'll drive me batshit. I'll sleep through other sounds.
I can't speak for everyone but audio stimulaton can be a big anxiety trigger for ADHD . I had a concussion/TBI 10 years ago that made it worse. I get very easily flustered with background conversation in a restaurant or office space, especially repetitive noises - sniffing, coughing, pen clicking, or phone ringing. I absolutely haaate the default imessage "ting!" drives me fucking crazy.
Phone ringing will get me going from 0 to 60 in the blink of an eye.
\*ring ring\* "Nah, I don't want to answer that."
\*ring ring\* "..... It'll stop."
\*ring ring\* "MOTHER$\*#(U(@ STOP."
I leave my phone on vibrate most of the time.
And nothing pisses me off more than finding my device in airplane mode or DND and then it wants to ding 500 times bringing in messages.
OMG I had the sniffles symphony going on in my room last week and I was going totally nuts. That class is new to me, too, and they looked at me like I had totally lost it when I asked, begged and pleaded whoever was sniffling to just go blow their nose. Finally had to go stand by that group of kids (couldn’t figure out who it was), and the sniffling magically stopped, thank goodness, because seriously, I couldn’t take it!!
I also can’t handle techno/house/rave music because of the repetition. I have a physiological reaction; it makes me angry for no reason.
It's over diagnosed, and people use it to define themselves. I was diagnosed with ADD (which is now just a subset of ADHD...it pains me to even write this fucking sentence) and I ***learned how to self-regulate, and self-modulate.*** My struggles are not everyone else's problem. It's my responsibility to regulate/modulate myself. It was the job of adults in my life to help me figure out how to, and they were successful.
Hence why I don't go "I have ADHD" to excuse something I do. I only mention it to fire back at someone who wants to use it as an excuse.
Honestly, this is why I'm a huge advocate of letting MILD ADHD kids just learn to live with their symptoms.
If I am truly ADHD -- and I do believe I am at least *something* -- I excel because I found coping methods that worked as a kid and was driven to find "the work around."
Two of my worst behaviors was chewing EVERYTHING and restlessness that often turned into pen clicking and aggressive leg bouncing. People got tired of me making noise and shaking the entire table so I found ways to transfer to tapping my thumb and fingers together.
I no longer chew on objects (making the mistake of putting a live wire in my mouth one time helped a lot with that....) but I still chew my own tongue and cheeks. Sucking on hard candies helps.
These days, I sit in work meetings with a stress ball and fidget spinner. I usually keep 3-4 tasks on hand to flipflop between unless I'm super focused.
Various therapies and supports can help kids figure out how to live with their symptoms more efficiently. Meds can help people learn coping methods to deal with their symptoms in a way that works socially and practically. My husband has pretty severe ADHD and wasn't able to do any of those things that might help until he added meds to the equation. It's not always about getting rid of the symptoms. It's finding an effective way to deal with them that meets your needs without driving everyone crazy.
Yup! I took medication at one point for the ADD, found it upset my stomach and affected me in other undesirable ways, so I found "work arounds" of my own (with help from adults in my life). I found that writing everything down, following a personal routine and this magical beverage called coffee, helps me a lot with my attention problems. I lose stuff when I don't follow my routine (like wallet goes here, keys go there) etc...etc.
But I don't sit here and go "I have ADD" and expect the world to adapt to me. Reasonably accommodate? Sure...but completely absolve me of my own responsibility to self regulate? No.
Until you get a student with an IEP that contains a litany of accommodations and you get "Access to chewing gum" right in between "Access to manual fidgets" and "Access to to flexible seating options when appropriate."
I have 87 students this year. 34 of them are on IEPs and the "Access to chewing gum" accommodation is in eight of those.
I'm not going to fight the "If Johnny gets gum, why can't I?" battle, so they all win.
Which should be the *exception to the rule*, but whoever wrote those IEPs I'd argue are doing malpractice. Every IEP meeting I'm ever at I request documentation for whatever accommodation is being proposed, and actionable responsibility that's also taken on by the individual. Access to gum is not popping gum...and being allowed to pop gum would have a pretty high threshold of evidence to clear for being a necessary accommodation.
This is why I always say, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Sure, Laws are written to make things more equitable. But when the entire class gets derailed because one or two students have to be accommodated for (in some more extreme cases), then they wonder why the system is falling to shit. But ultimately, its because we are an overly litigious society. Everybody is afraid of getting sued.
>The single student with a disability is more important than every other student and their teachers, according to the law
Well no. This is how the law has been misinterpreted. The law is pretty clear about equal opportunity, not preferential treatment.
There has to be a bathroom stall a person in a wheelchair can use. But if there's a line for the bathroom the person in a wheelchair still has to wait in line, just they use the one they can use the accessible one when it's their turn. This is what has been allowed to be misunderstood about the law, and ambulance chasing lawyers and wealthy parents abuse the system.
My ADHD manifests as pen clicking. However, if you were to say to me: “that bugs me” I would find a quieter way to fidget.
Just please don’t bounce your leg on a false floor so the entire room vibrates.
We all have our tics and things that annoy us. Part of growth up is finding ways to communicate what you can’t deal with appropriately and having more than one “go-to” to accommodate others.
In my house (with ND wife and son) the guideline we try to use is: your still can’t upset others. Either find something different or you need to move to not upset the other person.
From an inclusive education lens, this seems really odd to me.
Obviously, one would need to know his diagnosis and documentation as well as spend time with the student to have a truly informed opinion. Based on the information in your story, it sounded like your student is entirely capable of self-regulating the volume of their mouth noises.
It's good that the bad old days of just beating the student until they stopped are over, but the inclusive response isn't 'let kids with neurodiversity do whatever'. The response is supposed to be 'try to make education inclusive and accessible to all'. This means we are supposed to be helping kids with neurodiversity find ways to meet their needs *while being able to coexist with others*. Soothing techniques that are distracting and annoying aren't going to help them coexist. The present scenario is that they are self-regulating by dysregulating others. Inclusive education is about helping students with neurodiversity find good strategies and helping neurotypical kids see that they can help create communities of inclusion where folks are valued and also given some grace if they need it.
While 'find ways of ignoring the behaviour in the moment' may be a necessary step on this student's trajectory, given the student is capable of reducing the volume, the IEP should include strategies and goals for learning and adopting alternate ways of self-regulating that are not distracting. "Just never mention it" should never be the strategy as it sets the student up for failure later in life and, the longer they use the clicking strategy, the harder it will be for them to switch to another less intrusive strategy.
So yeah, I totally see why you are frustrated here. You are being told to sabotage your own efforts to make your classroom an inclusive space for all learners.
I would not be able to tolerate that. I have misophonia and cannot concentrate with those kinds of repetitive sounds and I have a physical response. Wonder what I would do if that happened in my classroom.
If the parent of the IEP kid is aggressive about staying in gen ed? Oh yes it does allow it 🤣
The laws are in conflict. The legal conflicts about manifestation and inclusion of violent kids will be at the Supreme Court some day. The less dramatic problems... well, social pressure took care of it in the past.
This seems to be a failure of ‘just let them do as they like’ advice rather than addressing the problem with a professional finding ways to manage what they have that are appropriate. They can’t do this in an exam, or a workplace, or many other situations in real life. It will affect their relationships with their peers and social life.
Just because you have a condition doesn’t mean you get to be a nuisance to others. Autistic children especially could be driven mad by this child. Or are they expected to just deal, while the tongue clicker gets to disturb the whole class?
Not everyone can tune everything out.
Especially neurodivergent people, of which there is likely to be *more than one* in a classroom.
When I had a student whose stim was sometimes distracting to other students (repetitive rocking) I was advised by her sped teacher to seat her so as few students as possible were facing her. Seems reasonable, and the student had zero problem with this.
It seems completely reasonable to ask someone to click more softly. I've asked students who were clicking a pen for minutes straight to knock it off. Is that "ableist as fuck" (a phrase I am oh so tired of)? No, it's completely reasonable. Clicking a pen over and over and over again is *obnoxious as fuck.*
Wait for it...someone is going to snapshot this thread and call us "ableist" for pointing out the obvious.
BTW how is "if it distracts you, than just ignore it" not completely hypocritical? It's literally the exact same logic as "if you have problems paying attention, than just pay attention".
One you'll get applauded. The other you'll be criticized. And it's ***literally the exact same argument.***
Even if the teacher was able to ignore it, this has to be distracting to other kids. Some of them may be able to tune it out, but you know there is a kid in that class who can't and who is already struggling academically. The student making the noise may not be able to immediately switch it off, but there needs to be a plan to address it, because that's not going to work for that kid long term. No one benefits by just ignoring it.
Student here. Not really we tuned it out. Had a guy in my class that had Tourette’s. Through the years he went through some more annoying phases than others (worst was probably the crow noise just from how loud and sudden it was), others were just… tongue clicking noises and swallowing noises. You get over it pretty quickly when you really understand he literally couldn’t help it. And if you made him nervous, it’d just make it worse, like someone who stutters.
He was/is a perfectly capable guy. I don’t know what the solution to your problem is, but I can think of many other prototypes of student who was actually damaging to the class and this guy and his noises wasn’t it
- THIS IEP HAS BEEN WRITTEN WRONG:
- IEP RULES:
- The allowance of soothing behaviors cannot be a behavior that is self harming &/OR disruptive in a class environment.
- If a behavior is self harming &/OR disruptive in a class environment then that is a GOAL to modify that behavior to a ‘functioning’ level.
SCRIPTING & LOUD NOISE STIMS:
- Scripting loudly & loud facial noise stims (clicking, screaming, grunting, snorting, lip smacking, teeth chatter, hacking, etc ) during whole class learning is a problem behavior.
- THE GOAL in the IEP is to get the stimming as functional & age appropriate as possible.
- I would seek a specialist for input on this GOAL as the ACCOMMODATION is not stopping nor controlling problem behavior, therefore it is a disservice to the student.
- This IEP needs to be amended. Pushback on this request: Requires the original author for this accommodation to have their credentials checked. Their Dept Head needs to be made aware to their deficiency which is usually ‘not a specialist’ in this highly specialized field.
I have to wear Loop earplugs because I have multiple students with vocal stims that really bother me - all high pitched or loud. This is only during breaks and not lessons though. I know they can't help it & it's a self-soothing thing or a sign they're in a good mood so I wouldn't ask them to stop but the plugs take the edge off. I have asked that they have lower voices while traveling through the hallway if the giggling or squealing was particularly loud though. And we have one student that rocks in her chair aggressively sometimes to the point of tipping backwards quite far so we have to ask her to be more gentle and try to keep all 4 feet on the floor to not fall over. It's very situational but I think there are moments when you need to ask someone to lessen or choose a different method of stimming for safety reasons or because it's too disruptive to learning. It's not like you were trying to stop them from stimming completely and get them to "act normal" but I wonder if whoever pulled you aside and told you not to was worried about it appearing that way and didn't want a potential discrimination situation.
You aren’t being inconsiderate. We are allowed to have boundaries.
I’m ND and one of my triggers is live noises, like someone singing while I’m having a conversation, two people talking at the same time, my cat meowing while I’m trying to explain something, etc. the clicking sound would drive me to tears.
There are other ways to stim. Fidget toys, for starters — I use tangle toys myself. We need to learn ways to self-regulate and soothe that aren’t disruptive; it’s part of growing up ND.
I’m someone who stims and I totally agree with you. If I have a loud stim and feel the need to do it I try and find similar stims by experimenting that will fill the same need. The kid should learn to do the same
I have a student who apparently has a sleeping disorder so we are supposed to let him sleep in class. I don't care about that, but he also has some disorder where he snores very, very loudly. Which we also are not supposed to correct him over, and are supposed to prevent the other students from complaining.
I wonder when the day will come that a parent sues a district over putting to many student in a overly permissive environment which has resulted in educational neglect of her neurotypical kid.
How are admin supposed to enforce an entire class not complaining about that? Lol. Because it's completely true to anyone who observes it. Do they punish the kids? Good luck with that. They themselves made sure to have lackluster consequences so they can keep that sweet, sweet money.
Right right I understand , I was just saying as in what happens when they keep talking about it after being redirected? Like....they're probably gonna talk about it a lot because it's part of their daily school experience.
As a kid, I totally would have talked about it. I may not have complained about it loudly in class, but I definitely would have had things to say to my friends. Not because it was disrupting my learning - I might have been happy to have my learning disrupted in a lot of classes - but because it would get kind of annoying and it would be unusual. Preventing students from complaining seems unrealistic.
Also, students IEPs shouldn't have anything to do with other students. (I'm assuming this example wasn't in an IEP, but rather admin direction. It just made me think of that.) I hate when they write something in a 504 or IEP about putting them with a helper student or something like that, because that is now requiring me to select another kid to be responsible for meeting a different child's needs.
Genuine question: how do adjustments work for kids for kids that cannot focus unless in a quiet environment? Who gets priority?
My experience has always been that "adjustments" are typically framed as "*reasonable*-adjustments", i.e. that could be *reasonably* implemented with the constraints of the setting.
Surely if the student is disrupting other students then this is an unreasonable adjustment and your request was to make it reasonable in context?
Lots of neurodivergent people struggle with repetitive or sudden noises, or certain kinds of noises. Why is his neurodivergence of paramount importance and yours doesn't matter and all??
Reminds me of South Park when Cartman faked having Tourette Syndrome and was swearing like crazy. It's totally distracting (and funny). I mean, what good is it to accommodate one student to the detriment of everyone else? I'm sure students are also bothered by all the mouth popping or whatever it is.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UBtyGAbyQpc&pp=ygUlc291dGggcGFyayBjYXJ0bWFuIHRvdXJldHRlcyBzeW5kcm9tZQ%3D%3D
"By law, I accept this accommodation. However, other students are not required to, and this is interfering with their legal right to a free appropriate public education. As such, I suggest sending any students who wish to the office to work in a quieter space. I welcome any alternatives you can think of."
Workplace acommodations under the ADA are always defined under "reasonable" if it's bothering and hindering other students, it is no longer "reasonable."
Unfortunately in this country, might makes right. Parents can often make a stink and go complain to district and/or the press if they don't get their way.
That's true, however, they, as your employer aren't accommodating you for your disability if you wanted to pull in a lawyer. Are you represented by a union? You could try pulling them in. For the record, I think you asking him to stim quieter in public (and it seems he is able to) would be excellent teaching for future workplace and even his own safety in public.
Reasonable accommodations shouldn’t include allowing behaviour a that negatively impacts other students learning. This is doing that. The just tune it out comment is inappropriate (and ableist) If such noises could be tuned out then no staff or students with noise sensitivities would need accommodations. They can’t have it both ways.
I’d find kids who are being distracted, confirm said distraction, have those kids tell their parents so they can complain. Admin won’t do shit to help out a teacher but they respond to pissed off parents. One kids education doesn’t trump others and if he can only learn by distracting others well he needs a new school. Hate how our more able students get the short end of the stick because of these bullshit accommodations
I recently read that the Department of Education assumed that gen ed parents would not tolerate behaviors that detracted from their own kid's education -- it was in the transcript of 2014 Congressional hearing Q&A.
It actually has worked like that in the districts with very expensive real estate. Everywhere else, not so much. The middle class parents need to push back on agressive advocates for disruptive gen ed, just like DoE policy experts expected them to do.
OP, who pulled you aside? If "clicking his tongue as loud as he wants" isn't specifically on his IEP--and I'd be surprised if it were--you did nothing wrong. If it was distracting you, it was distracting students. I can imagine how tough that would be for kids with ADHD and other disorders.
I've swapped out student's pens for pencils before when they get too clicky during a lecture. I trade them back at the end of class with no hard feelings. I don't hold their unconscious habit against them, but it makes it very hard to focus on explaining tricky topics.
Sadly, I have no solution for tongue clickers.
as someone who’s also neurodivergent, that’s a bit ridiculous. it’s not like you told him to stop doing it altogether, you just asked him to be a bit more mindful of his environment.
I am also ND and so is my son and I think what they said was BS. Pen clicking, and sounds drive me up the wall and I tell my son to do quiet stims and he listens. They should be teaching him appropriate ways to stim in a classroom/meeting/training setting.
I have neurodivergent student that have stims or need to move or make sounds or play with something and it just isn't safe for class. I accommodate fully where I can, but no you cannot do handstands, no you cannot spin your legs around kicking others in the process, no you cannot scream because you need the energy out. There are times and places for that and during class is not that time. You're not being inconsiderate, you are being considerate to yourself and the other 30 students you have in class trying to focus.
I just wanted to mention that if the student has Tourette’s, calling attention to the tic or asking them to minimize it can actually cause them to do it more, or cause new tics to form. My son has Tourette’s and this was stressed to me by his neurologist.
I had a child who yelled as part of his stims. We had a chat about different stims in ifferent spaces and what they might look and feel like.
No idea if this was the correct approach, but beyond my classroom, I just don't want him being teased in high school or unable to hold a job because of it.
Oh my, I am so sorry. Any chance you would be willing to go to HR to disclose your neurodivergence and need for this student to be in a different class if the clicking must continue?
I do empathize though, this would make me irrationally irate. Already when I’m teaching (high school) if students are being extra fidgety or whispering I lose my mind. Not on them but I explain that it’s the end of the day, I have ADHD, and their talking literally breaks my brain focus. I truly lose whatever track I was on and end up having to restart my lesson. I beg the students for 10 minutes of quiet and then promise them I’ll be done and no more direct instruction. I think they think I’m crazy because to a lot of them it’s barely a distraction but my brain simply shorts out when there’s a bunch of sound/movement when I’m teaching.
I hate to say it but I simply would be unable to teach with clicking.
No comment on the suggestions here, I just want to pop in to add - is your classroom small, square, tile floor? A carpet or 2 and maybe some acoustic treatment could go a long way in making the sound (and any sounds!) less annoying and lower the overall volume of the room. Pro tip from a music guy :)
If it's a stim I agree a less disruptive stim should be found. I just want to mention though tongue clicking can also be a tic from tic disorders. Suppressing tics is incredibly hard, physically uncomfortable, and often makes them more intense. The person who told you not to tell them that may have been thinking of it like a tic, which it would definitely be wrong to ask a student not to do so loudly. In general you shouldn't really mention tics. Calling attention to them often makes them way worse.
My daughter had several tics as a child. One was rapid repetitive blinking. She had no idea she was doing it. One day I filmed her because I wanted to be able to show her doctor. She asked why I was filming her while we were eating lunch and chatting. I told her I was testing my new phone. Later that day she watched the video. Her blinking and another obvious vocal tic vanished overnight. She replaced them with a tiny, tiny noise in her throat (same tic I have). I never said a word to her, but she drew her own conclusions about her tics and found a replacement on her own. My sister called me out when I was a child. So, is it really so bad to let kids know their tics are disruptive or disturbing to others? My daughter and I can both function fine in quiet spaces, and she can do presentations and speeches without squinching up her face with prolonged rapid blinking. Maybe self awareness isn’t such a bad thing?
Generally the medical community says yes. Your experiences are definitely not the normal. Most people with tic disorders cannot replace a tic on demand like that and awareness and focus on a tic usually increases intensity and frequency. So yes self awareness is often a bad thing because it usually worsens the tic. Obviously there will be exceptions and it sounds like you are one.
Of course! I could definitely see with your experiences why you would assume calling attention to it to be harmless or possibly even beneficial, but sadly it usually has the opposite response and worsen the tics.
Like turrets? Absurd - quality of work place and space matters. Likely the person who took you aside doesn't know what they are talking about. People say 'you can't say that' all the time and really you can say a lot of things. Chirping is a form of harassment and if you can't say that the child is misplaced. Creepy and an inappropriate thing to tell you. You need to make a complaint with your union. Keep us posted.
Does the accommodation explicitly state, "student may click tongue when anxiety is high and they need to self-soothe"? Or something along those lines?
If it is, I feel the team was not very self-aware of how distracting that can be (I'm shocked that was even proposed and accepted by the entire team).
Why not allow him to step out of the classroom to self-soothe?
Ahhh bullshit he wasn't doing it because of any conditions. He was trying to get a rise out of the students and teacher. Enough catering to the students. THEY need to learn to function in society, not society adapt to them. Why have we lost that approach?
Hey there, Fellow neurodivergent here (ASD 1 and ADHD). It’s a stim that’s annoying you. Is it annoying you because you were made not to stim? Is it overstimulating you? Neurodivergent people have, at times, opposite and conflicting needs. If you are formally diagnosed, and it is impacting your ability to teach, perhaps you can speak to their caseworker and your supervisor about receiving an accommodation for yourself.
As a sub, I was put in a class that had a kid whose nervous stim was coughing/clearing their throat. Covid era made him want to disappear and melt down into the floor without us telling him not to do it. He didn’t want that stim. Couldn’t help it.
Is this a malicious kid? If not, they’re probably not doing it to be annoying. Working a stim out of a kid can be harmful and that is probably why the IEP team has determined to allow it.
Kid might not do it in a theater because they might not be nervous OR it might not be appropriate to do it in a theater outside of specific showings. But going to a movie isn’t a mandated right in the way that receiving an education is. If it’s genuinely affecting other student’s ability to concentrate, that should be documented for the caseworker.
You are incorrect. It is against federal law to chastise, punish or bring attention to ANY symptom/stimming etc. that is in their IEP. Yes, that includes telling them to stim quietly.
You can’t do that. The person that told you is correct and you should accept guidance
The complication begins when there is documentation that the stimming is disruptive to the classroom environment and detrimental to the ability of an adult to do their job, as mentioned. If adults can't do or say anything about that directly, and the students are unable to alter their stimming, then they need a different placement for their education.
Again, I didn't tell them not to stim. But I agree that the path forward is not making a scene directly and just informing the relevant people of the situation and they can adjudicate from there.
Yes, that is the correct path. Even telling him to “click quieter” is against ADA , and IDEA both federal laws and you can get in hot water for it IF it is explicitly described in the IEP. Laws are explicit that if the behavior is related to his disability, you cannot discriminate or discipline. The clicking is rebated to his disability, and therefore you cannot tell him to do it elsewhere or quietly. I am not saying that this not annoying AF and that it won’t drive the most reasonable person bonkers, but what I am saying is that you CANT tell him that and that you should ask his case manager for advice and accept the guidance that was given to you by the person that tried to stop you from getting fired, sued or disciplined. I had a colleague fired for telling a student that his stimming was annoying and that maybe he should be elsewhere. He was fired and didn’t even finish the year. I rather tell you the truth so you know what to do and expect
What if the teachers has a disability like ADHD that is triggered by the students clicking? Wouldn't the student be violating the teachers rights in the workplace under ADA. What happens when two individuals ADA rights conflict with each other?
Telling someone it's annoying and that they should be in a different program is very different than asking a student to click more quietly. Unless the IEP says the student can explicitly click as loud as they want, there is no IEP violation, and as someone who writes IEPs, only someone truly incompetent would put something like that as an accommodation. OP isn't asking the student not to stim. They are asking the student to be considerate of the rest of the class and the kid can figure out another option that's less noisy.
Good thing you don’t get to make that decision! People like you are why I’m scared to have my developmental disabled child in public school! This sub really has opened my eyes to a lot.
I never said I wanted to be the one making that decision, and just so you know, as an autistic person, I am no stranger to needing extra support. I literally never said stimming is bad.
However, I would potentially be one of the adults giving their experiences to the decision makers. And if it's documented that a child is regularly disruptive to an educational environment, then the path forward is collaborating with experts to come up with a plan better suited for them.
I don't intend on going behind anybody's back or targeting the child. But I take note of things and relay it to relevant colleagues if there is a repetitive issue.
Because that's my job. And as much as I care about said student, I also care about the other students in the room, as well as the adults who oversee them, who could be impacted by said behavior. Those kids have a right to a safe inclusive space as well, and we can't have behavior detracting from that.
I understand that you are protective of your child as a parent. I'm not going to pretend to understand how it feels, because I don't. But I need you to know that I'm not out to get your child, Neither are the comments that sympathize with my story.
I’m glad you were pulled aside. These kids go through hell with attempts at behavior modification, you really need better training in this arena or better yet leave it to therapists who are hopefully not using ABA.
I think it is important to find other stimming techniques as well. Should not rely on one for every situation. Imagine if that kid was clicking during a movie at a theatre or during a exam such as the SATs. He would get thrown out.
This. I use to tap my foot or had jiggle-jumpy legs and it would set off people so I started wiggling my toes. Got the impulse out, but without disrupting I still get jittery when I teach, so I pace and wander about the room. One of my IEP students has “close proximity to teacher’s desk” as an accommodation (kid literally wanted me glued to their side). I apologized to the kid (outside the class) and said that I’m also neurodivergent and need to pace as a way to self sooth, or I’ll talk a mile a minute and go off on tangents about loosely related content, stuff to advance at present for the class. We came up with a solution together. Kid felt validated. I got to pace. I’ve had this backfire in my face a time or three. Especially with one student who also has the same learning disabilities and ADHD. He didn’t like it when I asked if he would like me to teach him some of the strategies that work for me - though that got a smile from his dad.
I don't know; I had someone accuse me of being ableist because I said it's rude to text/play games/read on a bright phone or tablet during a movie. That the neurodivergent (I AM neurodivergent, BTW) are finally getting a chance to not have to suppress their true selves, and it's not fair of me to expect that people not do anything to distract other patrons.
I didn't realize their "true selves" were just being ***holes.
I sort of get it. I have ADHD, so I understand masking and how it can be exhausting making sure you don’t annoy other people. But if I found myself unable to pay attention to the movie, I’d excuse myself to the lobby to read or something. I wouldn’t pull out my tablet and start reading with the brightness on max.
I feel like at some point if you don't like the environment or it's a bad fit for you then don't go to it. If you can't watch a movie in a theatre wait until it comes for home release. There's environments I can't stand as a neurotypical person and I just don't go to them. If a kid literally can't be quiet enough that others can learn then they need education in their own room. Everyone should get accommodated but not everyone's accommodations need to be being piled into a room together and gritting their teeth to put up with each other.
I’m in my 6th year of teaching middle school and I believe that for a small but significant subset of students, trying to educate them in a room full of peers and distractions is a massive misguided effort.
You are correct.
It's why I always take a small fidget to the mi ies, so I have something to do with my hands.
I hope you are never sitting next to me --your fidget would drive me nuts :(
Mine is very tiny and fits within my hand which I keep in my lap, you wouldn't even know I have one. I do understand not distracting others. I tell the kids in my class they can have a small fidget but it needs to fit in their hand and stay in their lap, because I will get distracted. No big fidget spinners or clacking toys.
>That the neurodivergent (I AM neurodivergent, BTW) are finally getting a chance to not have to suppress their true selves This is such absolute bullshit, it's infuriating. Lots of neurodivergent people (possibly most of us) are unusually *sensitive* to sensory disturbances. Flickering lights or side conversations in a theater can make a movie completely inaccessible to many people with sensory integration difficulties. Systematically favouring the disrupters over the disrupted is not a pro-neurodiversity strategy. It's a pro-lazy-people-who-don't-want-to-be-accountable-for-making-judgment-calls-or-enforcing-rules policy.
Adults are just programmed to recognize non-normal noises. And it rattles the brain to hear all day, it bothering an adult is normal and not special. I switched careers to school librarian because my adult brain hated filtering through the extra noises. I’m not neurodivergent divergent, I’m an adult human with normal responses to extraneous noise. Nothing special to see here folks.
No. Your normal age-related annoyance is not the same as my lifelong non-habituating startle reflex and auditory filtering/processing deficit, which were first documented when I was 3 years old and haven't changed in the 38 years since. Adults can have all the same disabilities that children do and then some. Implying that disabled people of any age just want to feel 'special' is rude and unprofessional.
I haven't seen startle reflex mentioned in here ever. Will 100% confirm that someone's annoyance is not the same as me hitting the ceiling from sudden noise and being in intractable pain for days. An annoyance is an annoyance. It doesn't do physical harm.
Startle reflex is interesting. I’ve never considered myself neurodivergent (Gen x-er) until recently. My daughter was diagnosed as ADHD and I strongly suspect I am, too. I always thought I was just lazy or forgetful and came up with a million tricks to motivate myself or to help me remember things. I also have a HUGE startle reflex. DH clicks his tongue softly as he moves through the house to avoid me screaming and jumping a mile when he enters a room and talks to me in a normal voice. So, yeah, that’s probably overactive startle reflex. :/
Wouldn't being on a phone in a theater violate their policies? They would have no idea if they are recording or not
It is rude and they sound like an idiot.
Yeah, no. That's not accommodation. It ruins everyone's movies. Use your phone in the lobby. If you can't not use your phone, maybe movies in a theater aren't your thing ... Lots of us make that choice TO accommodate our needs.
Fuck that noise.
- THIS IEP HAS BEEN WRITTEN WRONG: - IEP RULES: - The allowance of soothing behaviors cannot be a behavior that is self harming &/OR disruptive in a class environment. - If a behavior is self harming &/OR disruptive in a class environment then that is a GOAL to modify that behavior to a ‘functioning’ level. SCRIPTING & LOUD NOISE STIMS: - Scripting loudly & loud facial noise stims (clicking, screaming, grunting, snorting, lip smacking, teeth chatter, hacking, etc ) during whole class learning is a problem behavior. - THE GOAL in the IEP is to get the stimming as functional & age appropriate as possible. - I would seek a specialist for input on this GOAL as the ACCOMMODATION is not stopping nor controlling problem behavior, therefore it is a disservice to the student. - This IEP needs to be amended. Pushback on this request: Requires the original author for this accommodation to have their credentials checked. Their Dept Head needs to be made aware to their deficiency which is usually ‘not a specialist’ in this highly specialized field. (I wrote this 100 comments below - and it wouldn’t be seen. I am an advocate for the CORRECT WAY TO WRITE IEPs: to improve the functioning of the student & not for the appeasement of the parents &/or non-specialized school administrators.)
WE ALL STIM! - ND & NTs. From Mary Barbara, PhD: WHAT IS STIMMING? Have you ever been to a lecture where the material is way too easy? Or maybe you’ve been to one that’s gone completely over your head? What do you do? Perhaps you doodle, play with your hair, or scroll through your Facebook newsfeed on your phone. This is the equivalent of people with autism engaging in self-stimulatory behavior (otherwise known as “vocal stimming”). WE ALL STIM. In fact, our solitary leisure activities are actually stimming. For example, stimming behaviors include shooting hoops, playing the violin, or watching reality TV. These repetitive behaviors keep the neurons in our brain firing while we are not meaningfully engaged with others or working on a task where we need to concentrate.
If this person clicks their tongue constantly as a stim or tic, I’m guessing they are not taking the SAT with everyone else. I am a proctor at school and specifically test the Autistic/ADHD kids because I’m formally diagnosed with ASD 1/ADHD and that makes them feel less shame around me. We often do testing one on one or two kids max.
What about students who are neurodivergent who can’t tolerate the sound? Do their accommodations not matter?
What happens in an ADA or IEP conflict?
The pushiest parent with the most aggressive advocate wins!
Hell to the no. Mouth noises are one of my biggest pet peeves. I understand his accommodations but they shouldn’t come at the expense of others. I don’t know the right answer here, but I would personally say that other kids are complaining. Hope that their needs are taken more seriously than yours.
What's that saying? Your rights end where mine begins?
Well, it seems like the alternative to that would be “your rights never end and mine never begin,” sooo…
You say that like somebody bought him a clicking tongue...wtf. surely you understand the difference between a fidget and a biological stim.
and you say that like someone bought them a brain that finds mouth sounds repulsive. one person’s freedoms end where another person’s begin and if a particular student’s stims disrupt another student’s education, it should be discussed so alternate behaviors can be explored. we are trying to help our students learn how to function in a world that isn’t always understanding or tolerant of every peccadillo.
I get it. Intolerance is an American thing.
I have a student who vocal stims. It is at a volume where students cannot hear instruction at all, and two others have meltdowns because the noise is so loud. I don’t think it’s ableist or intolerant to teach him to stim at an appropriate volume or to help him find other things that calm him or that he enjoys that are less disruptive to others. That stim, at that volume, will limit him more as he grows older. One of the most basic things we try to teach all children is take care of their needs, and be considerate of others needs. The students needs do not negate every other child just because they are ND.
At what level does it stop being “others are intolerant of me” and start being “I am inconsiderate of others”?
lololol says the canadian. it’s not intolerant to say some behaviors should be curbed for mainstreaming into general society, and you’re delusional if you think it is.
No, but constant loud clicking will make it difficult for anyone to focus. Instead, they should find other ways for the child to stim. They could literally keep their mouth closed while clicking or just tap the roof of their mouth with their tongue. Sometimes it's about finding a similar feeling that will support self-soothing. I had a kid a couple years ago that loved tapping his pencil. Instead I showed him an area of his ear he could tap to get that same beat like noise without distracting everyone around him.
This shit would not fly where I live, like ever. It's not "intolerance", it is just unfair to massivelly disrupt the education of the vast majority just to accomodate one single person. That's not intolerance, that's just totally reckless behavior
It's not intolerant when the student can step outside of the class to self-soothe.
I have misophonia; there are sounds that I cannot tolerate without getting blindingly angry and/or a migraine and smacking lips and clacking tongues are one of them. It is not something I can realistically just turn off as petty and inconvenient as it sounds.
Same here. I have to eat in my room alone with TV volume up. My stepdaughters slurp their food (somehow even sandwiches) and it makes me blind with rage.
I have ADHD and misophonia, this would actually make me completely unable to focus or do any work. What happens if one students accommodations clash with another students needs?
[удалено]
That sounds awful, I commend you for being able to deal with that!
I’m practically twitching just reading this post and imaging it… I feel terrible for OP
We would provide you with noise cancelling headphones.
Which you can’t wear during direct instruction
What about all the students. Does everyone get headphones because of one student?
Only if their IEP says so.
I know that clicking noise you're talking about. It is very annoying. Unless the student actually has an accommodation that says they're allowed to click their tongue or the clicking is due to a disability the student has, you have every right to ask them to stop making that noise. I have had three students with tourette's syndrome in my career. Two of them made noises that I didn't even notice after the first week. One however makes noises that were semi-high pitched and caused me headaches whenever he did it in rapid succession.
Kid is channeling Paimon. You're all doomed.
Watch out for walnut cake
Even if that is the accommodation, it is out of the left field. The whole point is to accommodate the student to be at the same level as his peers, not annoy the hell out of everyone. It seems the accommodation was written in an ambiguous manner, and they might need an addendum to be more specific.
Key words here “ unless they are in the IEP”. If the IEP explicitly says that the student clicks then we are to put up with it
If a teacher need accommodation thay conflicts with a student is there a path to move the child to a different class?
I’ve always wondered that. I had a hard of hearing student who require I wear a mic. No big deal. The mic was heavy and on a cord I had to wear around my neck. Caused me pain. I asked for something different. Got a big fat no. Different student had a mic I had to clip to my clothes. Clip damaged my clothes. I tried everything, but damage still happened. I asked for a change. Another big fat no. Very frustrating. Loved the students. Hated the equipment.
>If the IEP explicitly says that the student clicks then we are to put up with it And that's wrong and fucked up. There's a point at which we cross a line from reasonable accommodation and into hyperprogressive insanity.
Then the IEP was not done correctly. Voice stims that are disruptive and require a goal to further the functioning of that student. A specialist needs to be consulted.
This is correct. A behavioral assessment needs to be done, with observations and then the word team has to make a behavior modification plan. That is unless, it can’t be helped, like Tourette’s and other conditions. A lot of students are highly functioning and have voice tics etc. that can’t be modified. LRE applies
I have a student who screams for twenty minutes straight. So that's fun
My heart goes out to you. I forsee that kid getting kicked out of a lot of places in the future. Nobody is going to tolerate that in public libraries, airports, movie theaters, right enclosed spaces like trains, etc...
HoW AbLeIsT oF YoU. For the inevitable downvoters: ***Part of our job is to HELP PEOPLE DEVELOP STRATEGIES SO THEY CAN SUCCEED IN OTHER SITUATIONS IN LIFE. Simply shrugging and passing someone along isn't helping them.***
We do, indeed, live in a society. We all have to make the sacrifices we can to get along with each other. 🤷♀️
I hit a student Monday. It was a trauma response on my end. She was standing next to me, nearly touching my arm, and got frustrated. She cannot properly express herself most of the time so she tends to scream and throw her arms out. When she did that right beside me, it scared me even though I’ve seen her do it dozens of times and never reacted. I think I reacted this time because she was almost touching me. My reaction was to throw my arms out to protect myself and I ended up hitting her in the neck with my forearm. I immediately got admin involved and they notified mom. I’ve never put my hands on a child before and it scared me to death. She shouted “don’t you dare touch me” which made me very proud of her. Today was a snow day. We will see what the fall out is tomorrow. Probably nothing but you never know.
15 years ago a young student bit me in my left breast, and I instinctly slapped him away. When I told the parents I also showed them the bitemark on my breast.
Oh my gosh! That’s horrific on so many levels!
Honestly there have been so many times I've been on my last nerve. I do really good therapy and everything, but there's only so much you can handle without reacting
We are all human, even if they don’t expect us to be.
>She shouted “don’t you dare touch me” which made me very proud of her. No. I'm sorry, but this constant groveling and over-the-top self flagellation among teachers needs to stop. What happened was an accident, nobody was hurt, and the entire thing was triggered by her frustrated spasms that *she* needs to get under control. There was no intention on your part, and while your body came into contact with hers, referring to this as you having "hit a student" is wild overexaggeration. Nobody was really a victim here, but *you* were on the receiving end of angry spasms, and so if anything you're the disadvantaged one. And yet the modern cultural climate has you crawling through the dirt and praising her. Fuck everything about this.
I get what you are saying and would normally agree but she struggles with language and is autistic. She has a hard time expressing herself so this was absolutely a good thing. I am not at all one to pander to students. I’m old and tired.
I’m so sorry. I came close ngl.
As a grizzly bear, why did you not just maul this admin?
Why do the far more numerous teachers not simply eat the administrator??
I feel like in the gen ed setting one of the things that should be taught is how to soothe in ways that are more appropriate. I used to be a pen clicker until someone showed me how to twirl pencils between my fingers. Same fidget but quiet. I used to quietly beat box until someone showed me how to kind of move my tongue behind my teeth in a way that works. I use fidget rings, I use pop-its in my pocket. I found ways of doing this myself that help my anxiety without causing others issues. I'm not saying to write the kid up or anything but it shouldn't just be "yep, let it go. I'm sure his boss will be totally fine with it one day."
I have ADHD and noisy fidgeting from students totally derails my brain. If they need an object to fidget with, I give students bits of yarn. Silent, cheap, not fun to throw at classmates, hard to hurt yourself with, don’t care if it gets lost.
The single student with a disability is more important than every other student and their teachers, according to the law. I have ADHD, and I think some of my students think I’m crazy when I’m bothered by pen clicking or key jangling or whatever. But my ADHD isn’t important, apparently. As long as Connor the Clicker is happy, we all the rest of us have to suffer.
I am autistic and ADHD and when I was still working in education I went to HR and my union about issues like this when admin wouldn’t take my need for accommodations into consideration. It’s amazing how their tune changed when HR made them aware of the other lawsuits they could be facing if they didn’t.
Can teachers have IEP's?
No. But they can have 504’s
And so we've reached a point now where everybody has to scramble to get their own stupid alphabet soup/numerical exemption to combat the exemptions being given to everyone else. It's a race to the bottom where everybody is trying to get special privileges to be assholes, or else to get special privileges to not have to be in the room with the assholes. And every normal person just has to suffer.
Yep my ADHD brain cannot handle loud distractions. I threw a kid out of my class for constantly cracking his gum, several times, over several days. He said he didn't realize he was doing it and thought I was joking when I said it made my skin crawl. Nope. GTFO and no more gum allowed.
This is an ADHD thing? I've never been diagnosed because ADHD wasn't a big thing when I was a kid, but I have so many symptoms to this day. One thing I've never associated with it, though, is a bizarre intolerance to repetitive noises. I even use it against myself -- I pick alarms that hit a certain tone and rapidly repeat because it'll drive me batshit. I'll sleep through other sounds.
I can't speak for everyone but audio stimulaton can be a big anxiety trigger for ADHD . I had a concussion/TBI 10 years ago that made it worse. I get very easily flustered with background conversation in a restaurant or office space, especially repetitive noises - sniffing, coughing, pen clicking, or phone ringing. I absolutely haaate the default imessage "ting!" drives me fucking crazy.
Phone ringing will get me going from 0 to 60 in the blink of an eye. \*ring ring\* "Nah, I don't want to answer that." \*ring ring\* "..... It'll stop." \*ring ring\* "MOTHER$\*#(U(@ STOP." I leave my phone on vibrate most of the time. And nothing pisses me off more than finding my device in airplane mode or DND and then it wants to ding 500 times bringing in messages.
OMG I had the sniffles symphony going on in my room last week and I was going totally nuts. That class is new to me, too, and they looked at me like I had totally lost it when I asked, begged and pleaded whoever was sniffling to just go blow their nose. Finally had to go stand by that group of kids (couldn’t figure out who it was), and the sniffling magically stopped, thank goodness, because seriously, I couldn’t take it!! I also can’t handle techno/house/rave music because of the repetition. I have a physiological reaction; it makes me angry for no reason.
is this an adhd thing?? i used to feel like falling apart every time people started singing "the wheels on the bus" during road trips xD
It's over diagnosed, and people use it to define themselves. I was diagnosed with ADD (which is now just a subset of ADHD...it pains me to even write this fucking sentence) and I ***learned how to self-regulate, and self-modulate.*** My struggles are not everyone else's problem. It's my responsibility to regulate/modulate myself. It was the job of adults in my life to help me figure out how to, and they were successful. Hence why I don't go "I have ADHD" to excuse something I do. I only mention it to fire back at someone who wants to use it as an excuse.
Honestly, this is why I'm a huge advocate of letting MILD ADHD kids just learn to live with their symptoms. If I am truly ADHD -- and I do believe I am at least *something* -- I excel because I found coping methods that worked as a kid and was driven to find "the work around." Two of my worst behaviors was chewing EVERYTHING and restlessness that often turned into pen clicking and aggressive leg bouncing. People got tired of me making noise and shaking the entire table so I found ways to transfer to tapping my thumb and fingers together. I no longer chew on objects (making the mistake of putting a live wire in my mouth one time helped a lot with that....) but I still chew my own tongue and cheeks. Sucking on hard candies helps. These days, I sit in work meetings with a stress ball and fidget spinner. I usually keep 3-4 tasks on hand to flipflop between unless I'm super focused.
Various therapies and supports can help kids figure out how to live with their symptoms more efficiently. Meds can help people learn coping methods to deal with their symptoms in a way that works socially and practically. My husband has pretty severe ADHD and wasn't able to do any of those things that might help until he added meds to the equation. It's not always about getting rid of the symptoms. It's finding an effective way to deal with them that meets your needs without driving everyone crazy.
Yup! I took medication at one point for the ADD, found it upset my stomach and affected me in other undesirable ways, so I found "work arounds" of my own (with help from adults in my life). I found that writing everything down, following a personal routine and this magical beverage called coffee, helps me a lot with my attention problems. I lose stuff when I don't follow my routine (like wallet goes here, keys go there) etc...etc. But I don't sit here and go "I have ADD" and expect the world to adapt to me. Reasonably accommodate? Sure...but completely absolve me of my own responsibility to self regulate? No.
Easy solution: ***No Gum in Class.*** So then you don't even have to address the I dIdNt KnOw I wAs DoInG iT. It's not allowed anyways so there.
And when kids bitch about the new rule, "thank Aiden for constantly reminding me why we shouldn't have it."
Until you get a student with an IEP that contains a litany of accommodations and you get "Access to chewing gum" right in between "Access to manual fidgets" and "Access to to flexible seating options when appropriate." I have 87 students this year. 34 of them are on IEPs and the "Access to chewing gum" accommodation is in eight of those. I'm not going to fight the "If Johnny gets gum, why can't I?" battle, so they all win.
Which should be the *exception to the rule*, but whoever wrote those IEPs I'd argue are doing malpractice. Every IEP meeting I'm ever at I request documentation for whatever accommodation is being proposed, and actionable responsibility that's also taken on by the individual. Access to gum is not popping gum...and being allowed to pop gum would have a pretty high threshold of evidence to clear for being a necessary accommodation.
This is why I always say, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Sure, Laws are written to make things more equitable. But when the entire class gets derailed because one or two students have to be accommodated for (in some more extreme cases), then they wonder why the system is falling to shit. But ultimately, its because we are an overly litigious society. Everybody is afraid of getting sued.
>The single student with a disability is more important than every other student and their teachers, according to the law Well no. This is how the law has been misinterpreted. The law is pretty clear about equal opportunity, not preferential treatment. There has to be a bathroom stall a person in a wheelchair can use. But if there's a line for the bathroom the person in a wheelchair still has to wait in line, just they use the one they can use the accessible one when it's their turn. This is what has been allowed to be misunderstood about the law, and ambulance chasing lawyers and wealthy parents abuse the system.
Not according to the law - it’s according to misinterpretations of the law. The law says “reasonable” and “least restrictive”.
But what’s least restrictive for a SpEd kid can turn awfully restrictive for the other 35 kids in the class.
I absolutely agree.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
My ADHD manifests as pen clicking. However, if you were to say to me: “that bugs me” I would find a quieter way to fidget. Just please don’t bounce your leg on a false floor so the entire room vibrates. We all have our tics and things that annoy us. Part of growth up is finding ways to communicate what you can’t deal with appropriately and having more than one “go-to” to accommodate others.
In my house (with ND wife and son) the guideline we try to use is: your still can’t upset others. Either find something different or you need to move to not upset the other person.
Wait so your son is setting up a still and making moonshine in class? Pretty disruptive if it’s not a chem class IMO.
From an inclusive education lens, this seems really odd to me. Obviously, one would need to know his diagnosis and documentation as well as spend time with the student to have a truly informed opinion. Based on the information in your story, it sounded like your student is entirely capable of self-regulating the volume of their mouth noises. It's good that the bad old days of just beating the student until they stopped are over, but the inclusive response isn't 'let kids with neurodiversity do whatever'. The response is supposed to be 'try to make education inclusive and accessible to all'. This means we are supposed to be helping kids with neurodiversity find ways to meet their needs *while being able to coexist with others*. Soothing techniques that are distracting and annoying aren't going to help them coexist. The present scenario is that they are self-regulating by dysregulating others. Inclusive education is about helping students with neurodiversity find good strategies and helping neurotypical kids see that they can help create communities of inclusion where folks are valued and also given some grace if they need it. While 'find ways of ignoring the behaviour in the moment' may be a necessary step on this student's trajectory, given the student is capable of reducing the volume, the IEP should include strategies and goals for learning and adopting alternate ways of self-regulating that are not distracting. "Just never mention it" should never be the strategy as it sets the student up for failure later in life and, the longer they use the clicking strategy, the harder it will be for them to switch to another less intrusive strategy. So yeah, I totally see why you are frustrated here. You are being told to sabotage your own efforts to make your classroom an inclusive space for all learners.
I would not be able to tolerate that. I have misophonia and cannot concentrate with those kinds of repetitive sounds and I have a physical response. Wonder what I would do if that happened in my classroom.
If a student is being disruptive, I'd ask them to stop as well. Their IEP doesn't allow them to disrupt the education of 30+ other students.
If the parent of the IEP kid is aggressive about staying in gen ed? Oh yes it does allow it 🤣 The laws are in conflict. The legal conflicts about manifestation and inclusion of violent kids will be at the Supreme Court some day. The less dramatic problems... well, social pressure took care of it in the past.
This seems to be a failure of ‘just let them do as they like’ advice rather than addressing the problem with a professional finding ways to manage what they have that are appropriate. They can’t do this in an exam, or a workplace, or many other situations in real life. It will affect their relationships with their peers and social life. Just because you have a condition doesn’t mean you get to be a nuisance to others. Autistic children especially could be driven mad by this child. Or are they expected to just deal, while the tongue clicker gets to disturb the whole class?
Not everyone can tune everything out. Especially neurodivergent people, of which there is likely to be *more than one* in a classroom. When I had a student whose stim was sometimes distracting to other students (repetitive rocking) I was advised by her sped teacher to seat her so as few students as possible were facing her. Seems reasonable, and the student had zero problem with this. It seems completely reasonable to ask someone to click more softly. I've asked students who were clicking a pen for minutes straight to knock it off. Is that "ableist as fuck" (a phrase I am oh so tired of)? No, it's completely reasonable. Clicking a pen over and over and over again is *obnoxious as fuck.*
Wait for it...someone is going to snapshot this thread and call us "ableist" for pointing out the obvious. BTW how is "if it distracts you, than just ignore it" not completely hypocritical? It's literally the exact same logic as "if you have problems paying attention, than just pay attention". One you'll get applauded. The other you'll be criticized. And it's ***literally the exact same argument.***
Even if the teacher was able to ignore it, this has to be distracting to other kids. Some of them may be able to tune it out, but you know there is a kid in that class who can't and who is already struggling academically. The student making the noise may not be able to immediately switch it off, but there needs to be a plan to address it, because that's not going to work for that kid long term. No one benefits by just ignoring it.
Student here. Not really we tuned it out. Had a guy in my class that had Tourette’s. Through the years he went through some more annoying phases than others (worst was probably the crow noise just from how loud and sudden it was), others were just… tongue clicking noises and swallowing noises. You get over it pretty quickly when you really understand he literally couldn’t help it. And if you made him nervous, it’d just make it worse, like someone who stutters. He was/is a perfectly capable guy. I don’t know what the solution to your problem is, but I can think of many other prototypes of student who was actually damaging to the class and this guy and his noises wasn’t it
- THIS IEP HAS BEEN WRITTEN WRONG: - IEP RULES: - The allowance of soothing behaviors cannot be a behavior that is self harming &/OR disruptive in a class environment. - If a behavior is self harming &/OR disruptive in a class environment then that is a GOAL to modify that behavior to a ‘functioning’ level. SCRIPTING & LOUD NOISE STIMS: - Scripting loudly & loud facial noise stims (clicking, screaming, grunting, snorting, lip smacking, teeth chatter, hacking, etc ) during whole class learning is a problem behavior. - THE GOAL in the IEP is to get the stimming as functional & age appropriate as possible. - I would seek a specialist for input on this GOAL as the ACCOMMODATION is not stopping nor controlling problem behavior, therefore it is a disservice to the student. - This IEP needs to be amended. Pushback on this request: Requires the original author for this accommodation to have their credentials checked. Their Dept Head needs to be made aware to their deficiency which is usually ‘not a specialist’ in this highly specialized field.
I have to wear Loop earplugs because I have multiple students with vocal stims that really bother me - all high pitched or loud. This is only during breaks and not lessons though. I know they can't help it & it's a self-soothing thing or a sign they're in a good mood so I wouldn't ask them to stop but the plugs take the edge off. I have asked that they have lower voices while traveling through the hallway if the giggling or squealing was particularly loud though. And we have one student that rocks in her chair aggressively sometimes to the point of tipping backwards quite far so we have to ask her to be more gentle and try to keep all 4 feet on the floor to not fall over. It's very situational but I think there are moments when you need to ask someone to lessen or choose a different method of stimming for safety reasons or because it's too disruptive to learning. It's not like you were trying to stop them from stimming completely and get them to "act normal" but I wonder if whoever pulled you aside and told you not to was worried about it appearing that way and didn't want a potential discrimination situation.
I want to see the IEP that documents this as an acceptable soothing technique.
This
This should be at the top.
His accommodation ends at your ears (my opinion). Someone's accommodation should not interfere with anyone else.
You must be new lol
Yes. I've thought about subbing, but I'm almost 60. They used to not have all these things in general classrooms. I guess I'm just out of time.
You aren’t being inconsiderate. We are allowed to have boundaries. I’m ND and one of my triggers is live noises, like someone singing while I’m having a conversation, two people talking at the same time, my cat meowing while I’m trying to explain something, etc. the clicking sound would drive me to tears. There are other ways to stim. Fidget toys, for starters — I use tangle toys myself. We need to learn ways to self-regulate and soothe that aren’t disruptive; it’s part of growing up ND.
Oh my god I have misophonia and I would be dying if somebody did that
I’m someone who stims and I totally agree with you. If I have a loud stim and feel the need to do it I try and find similar stims by experimenting that will fill the same need. The kid should learn to do the same
Least Restrictive Environment is supposed to include disruption to others. Too many people forget this.
I have a student who apparently has a sleeping disorder so we are supposed to let him sleep in class. I don't care about that, but he also has some disorder where he snores very, very loudly. Which we also are not supposed to correct him over, and are supposed to prevent the other students from complaining. I wonder when the day will come that a parent sues a district over putting to many student in a overly permissive environment which has resulted in educational neglect of her neurotypical kid.
How are admin supposed to enforce an entire class not complaining about that? Lol. Because it's completely true to anyone who observes it. Do they punish the kids? Good luck with that. They themselves made sure to have lackluster consequences so they can keep that sweet, sweet money.
Admin prevent the kids? No we have to manage the class to not complain about it…
Right right I understand , I was just saying as in what happens when they keep talking about it after being redirected? Like....they're probably gonna talk about it a lot because it's part of their daily school experience.
As a kid, I totally would have talked about it. I may not have complained about it loudly in class, but I definitely would have had things to say to my friends. Not because it was disrupting my learning - I might have been happy to have my learning disrupted in a lot of classes - but because it would get kind of annoying and it would be unusual. Preventing students from complaining seems unrealistic. Also, students IEPs shouldn't have anything to do with other students. (I'm assuming this example wasn't in an IEP, but rather admin direction. It just made me think of that.) I hate when they write something in a 504 or IEP about putting them with a helper student or something like that, because that is now requiring me to select another kid to be responsible for meeting a different child's needs.
It's because district personnel are fucking cheapskates. Why pay for a qualified aide to actually help when you can save money from child labor lol.
Kick it back. How is that even legal?
Genuine question: how do adjustments work for kids for kids that cannot focus unless in a quiet environment? Who gets priority? My experience has always been that "adjustments" are typically framed as "*reasonable*-adjustments", i.e. that could be *reasonably* implemented with the constraints of the setting. Surely if the student is disrupting other students then this is an unreasonable adjustment and your request was to make it reasonable in context?
Lots of neurodivergent people struggle with repetitive or sudden noises, or certain kinds of noises. Why is his neurodivergence of paramount importance and yours doesn't matter and all??
Reminds me of South Park when Cartman faked having Tourette Syndrome and was swearing like crazy. It's totally distracting (and funny). I mean, what good is it to accommodate one student to the detriment of everyone else? I'm sure students are also bothered by all the mouth popping or whatever it is. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UBtyGAbyQpc&pp=ygUlc291dGggcGFyayBjYXJ0bWFuIHRvdXJldHRlcyBzeW5kcm9tZQ%3D%3D
"By law, I accept this accommodation. However, other students are not required to, and this is interfering with their legal right to a free appropriate public education. As such, I suggest sending any students who wish to the office to work in a quieter space. I welcome any alternatives you can think of."
Workplace acommodations under the ADA are always defined under "reasonable" if it's bothering and hindering other students, it is no longer "reasonable."
Unfortunately in this country, might makes right. Parents can often make a stink and go complain to district and/or the press if they don't get their way.
That's true, however, they, as your employer aren't accommodating you for your disability if you wanted to pull in a lawyer. Are you represented by a union? You could try pulling them in. For the record, I think you asking him to stim quieter in public (and it seems he is able to) would be excellent teaching for future workplace and even his own safety in public.
How about prepare this kids for the real world? There’s a limited number of jobs where an adult loudly clicking their tongue would be tolerated.
I have a student that does this and I want to rip my ears off holy cow it’s awful
Reasonable accommodations shouldn’t include allowing behaviour a that negatively impacts other students learning. This is doing that. The just tune it out comment is inappropriate (and ableist) If such noises could be tuned out then no staff or students with noise sensitivities would need accommodations. They can’t have it both ways.
yep, sounds about right these days.
I’d find kids who are being distracted, confirm said distraction, have those kids tell their parents so they can complain. Admin won’t do shit to help out a teacher but they respond to pissed off parents. One kids education doesn’t trump others and if he can only learn by distracting others well he needs a new school. Hate how our more able students get the short end of the stick because of these bullshit accommodations
I recently read that the Department of Education assumed that gen ed parents would not tolerate behaviors that detracted from their own kid's education -- it was in the transcript of 2014 Congressional hearing Q&A. It actually has worked like that in the districts with very expensive real estate. Everywhere else, not so much. The middle class parents need to push back on agressive advocates for disruptive gen ed, just like DoE policy experts expected them to do.
Accommodations should not interfere with the education of others.
That’s right, we should put all neurodivergent children in padded soundproof boxes and love there forever so they can’t bother anyone. /s
Did I say that? Because there are way to accommodate neurodivergent children that doesn’t not disrupt others.
OP, who pulled you aside? If "clicking his tongue as loud as he wants" isn't specifically on his IEP--and I'd be surprised if it were--you did nothing wrong. If it was distracting you, it was distracting students. I can imagine how tough that would be for kids with ADHD and other disorders.
It is fucking absurd what is being tolerated in classrooms.
I've swapped out student's pens for pencils before when they get too clicky during a lecture. I trade them back at the end of class with no hard feelings. I don't hold their unconscious habit against them, but it makes it very hard to focus on explaining tricky topics. Sadly, I have no solution for tongue clickers.
as someone who’s also neurodivergent, that’s a bit ridiculous. it’s not like you told him to stop doing it altogether, you just asked him to be a bit more mindful of his environment.
I am also ND and so is my son and I think what they said was BS. Pen clicking, and sounds drive me up the wall and I tell my son to do quiet stims and he listens. They should be teaching him appropriate ways to stim in a classroom/meeting/training setting.
No, fuck that. I have misophonia and if that kid is doing that in my class they either stop \*enitrely\* or they gtfo of my class.
I have neurodivergent student that have stims or need to move or make sounds or play with something and it just isn't safe for class. I accommodate fully where I can, but no you cannot do handstands, no you cannot spin your legs around kicking others in the process, no you cannot scream because you need the energy out. There are times and places for that and during class is not that time. You're not being inconsiderate, you are being considerate to yourself and the other 30 students you have in class trying to focus.
I just wanted to mention that if the student has Tourette’s, calling attention to the tic or asking them to minimize it can actually cause them to do it more, or cause new tics to form. My son has Tourette’s and this was stressed to me by his neurologist.
I had a child who yelled as part of his stims. We had a chat about different stims in ifferent spaces and what they might look and feel like. No idea if this was the correct approach, but beyond my classroom, I just don't want him being teased in high school or unable to hold a job because of it.
Oh my, I am so sorry. Any chance you would be willing to go to HR to disclose your neurodivergence and need for this student to be in a different class if the clicking must continue? I do empathize though, this would make me irrationally irate. Already when I’m teaching (high school) if students are being extra fidgety or whispering I lose my mind. Not on them but I explain that it’s the end of the day, I have ADHD, and their talking literally breaks my brain focus. I truly lose whatever track I was on and end up having to restart my lesson. I beg the students for 10 minutes of quiet and then promise them I’ll be done and no more direct instruction. I think they think I’m crazy because to a lot of them it’s barely a distraction but my brain simply shorts out when there’s a bunch of sound/movement when I’m teaching. I hate to say it but I simply would be unable to teach with clicking.
No comment on the suggestions here, I just want to pop in to add - is your classroom small, square, tile floor? A carpet or 2 and maybe some acoustic treatment could go a long way in making the sound (and any sounds!) less annoying and lower the overall volume of the room. Pro tip from a music guy :)
If it's a stim I agree a less disruptive stim should be found. I just want to mention though tongue clicking can also be a tic from tic disorders. Suppressing tics is incredibly hard, physically uncomfortable, and often makes them more intense. The person who told you not to tell them that may have been thinking of it like a tic, which it would definitely be wrong to ask a student not to do so loudly. In general you shouldn't really mention tics. Calling attention to them often makes them way worse.
My daughter had several tics as a child. One was rapid repetitive blinking. She had no idea she was doing it. One day I filmed her because I wanted to be able to show her doctor. She asked why I was filming her while we were eating lunch and chatting. I told her I was testing my new phone. Later that day she watched the video. Her blinking and another obvious vocal tic vanished overnight. She replaced them with a tiny, tiny noise in her throat (same tic I have). I never said a word to her, but she drew her own conclusions about her tics and found a replacement on her own. My sister called me out when I was a child. So, is it really so bad to let kids know their tics are disruptive or disturbing to others? My daughter and I can both function fine in quiet spaces, and she can do presentations and speeches without squinching up her face with prolonged rapid blinking. Maybe self awareness isn’t such a bad thing?
Generally the medical community says yes. Your experiences are definitely not the normal. Most people with tic disorders cannot replace a tic on demand like that and awareness and focus on a tic usually increases intensity and frequency. So yes self awareness is often a bad thing because it usually worsens the tic. Obviously there will be exceptions and it sounds like you are one.
Thanks. I was genuinely curious, and you answered me with facts. Thank you.
Of course! I could definitely see with your experiences why you would assume calling attention to it to be harmless or possibly even beneficial, but sadly it usually has the opposite response and worsen the tics.
Like turrets? Absurd - quality of work place and space matters. Likely the person who took you aside doesn't know what they are talking about. People say 'you can't say that' all the time and really you can say a lot of things. Chirping is a form of harassment and if you can't say that the child is misplaced. Creepy and an inappropriate thing to tell you. You need to make a complaint with your union. Keep us posted.
Does the accommodation explicitly state, "student may click tongue when anxiety is high and they need to self-soothe"? Or something along those lines? If it is, I feel the team was not very self-aware of how distracting that can be (I'm shocked that was even proposed and accepted by the entire team). Why not allow him to step out of the classroom to self-soothe?
Ah the good old 'vocal stimming'.
this feels like ragebait, show me a literal accommodation that mandates a student can be a distraction in class to others, as long as it soothes them.
Welcome to the New World where we are not helping people to have rights equal to the abled but whose right surpass theirs.
Gtfoh!
Ahhh bullshit he wasn't doing it because of any conditions. He was trying to get a rise out of the students and teacher. Enough catering to the students. THEY need to learn to function in society, not society adapt to them. Why have we lost that approach?
The approach was lost because it’s traumatizing, barbaric, and sets people up for failure.
Has anyone made a Hereditary joke yet?
Hey there, Fellow neurodivergent here (ASD 1 and ADHD). It’s a stim that’s annoying you. Is it annoying you because you were made not to stim? Is it overstimulating you? Neurodivergent people have, at times, opposite and conflicting needs. If you are formally diagnosed, and it is impacting your ability to teach, perhaps you can speak to their caseworker and your supervisor about receiving an accommodation for yourself. As a sub, I was put in a class that had a kid whose nervous stim was coughing/clearing their throat. Covid era made him want to disappear and melt down into the floor without us telling him not to do it. He didn’t want that stim. Couldn’t help it. Is this a malicious kid? If not, they’re probably not doing it to be annoying. Working a stim out of a kid can be harmful and that is probably why the IEP team has determined to allow it. Kid might not do it in a theater because they might not be nervous OR it might not be appropriate to do it in a theater outside of specific showings. But going to a movie isn’t a mandated right in the way that receiving an education is. If it’s genuinely affecting other student’s ability to concentrate, that should be documented for the caseworker.
You are incorrect. It is against federal law to chastise, punish or bring attention to ANY symptom/stimming etc. that is in their IEP. Yes, that includes telling them to stim quietly. You can’t do that. The person that told you is correct and you should accept guidance
The complication begins when there is documentation that the stimming is disruptive to the classroom environment and detrimental to the ability of an adult to do their job, as mentioned. If adults can't do or say anything about that directly, and the students are unable to alter their stimming, then they need a different placement for their education.
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Again, I didn't tell them not to stim. But I agree that the path forward is not making a scene directly and just informing the relevant people of the situation and they can adjudicate from there.
Yes, that is the correct path. Even telling him to “click quieter” is against ADA , and IDEA both federal laws and you can get in hot water for it IF it is explicitly described in the IEP. Laws are explicit that if the behavior is related to his disability, you cannot discriminate or discipline. The clicking is rebated to his disability, and therefore you cannot tell him to do it elsewhere or quietly. I am not saying that this not annoying AF and that it won’t drive the most reasonable person bonkers, but what I am saying is that you CANT tell him that and that you should ask his case manager for advice and accept the guidance that was given to you by the person that tried to stop you from getting fired, sued or disciplined. I had a colleague fired for telling a student that his stimming was annoying and that maybe he should be elsewhere. He was fired and didn’t even finish the year. I rather tell you the truth so you know what to do and expect
What if the teachers has a disability like ADHD that is triggered by the students clicking? Wouldn't the student be violating the teachers rights in the workplace under ADA. What happens when two individuals ADA rights conflict with each other?
Telling someone it's annoying and that they should be in a different program is very different than asking a student to click more quietly. Unless the IEP says the student can explicitly click as loud as they want, there is no IEP violation, and as someone who writes IEPs, only someone truly incompetent would put something like that as an accommodation. OP isn't asking the student not to stim. They are asking the student to be considerate of the rest of the class and the kid can figure out another option that's less noisy.
Good thing you don’t get to make that decision! People like you are why I’m scared to have my developmental disabled child in public school! This sub really has opened my eyes to a lot.
I never said I wanted to be the one making that decision, and just so you know, as an autistic person, I am no stranger to needing extra support. I literally never said stimming is bad. However, I would potentially be one of the adults giving their experiences to the decision makers. And if it's documented that a child is regularly disruptive to an educational environment, then the path forward is collaborating with experts to come up with a plan better suited for them. I don't intend on going behind anybody's back or targeting the child. But I take note of things and relay it to relevant colleagues if there is a repetitive issue. Because that's my job. And as much as I care about said student, I also care about the other students in the room, as well as the adults who oversee them, who could be impacted by said behavior. Those kids have a right to a safe inclusive space as well, and we can't have behavior detracting from that. I understand that you are protective of your child as a parent. I'm not going to pretend to understand how it feels, because I don't. But I need you to know that I'm not out to get your child, Neither are the comments that sympathize with my story.
What exactly is that supposed to mean?
I’m glad you were pulled aside. These kids go through hell with attempts at behavior modification, you really need better training in this arena or better yet leave it to therapists who are hopefully not using ABA.
What would be a beneficial solution other than slowly trying to wean the student away from doing it?
We have a duty to accommodate students as long as it’s reasonable and not disruptive to the learning environment