School Is Not Supposed to Hurt 3: Against Physical Restraints & Padded Rooms

Update about Lexie Glover, whose body was found in a freezing creek early in January, two days after she had been reported missing by her mother, Alfreedia Gregg-Glover: Today's InsideNoVa reports that, according to a state medical examiner, Lexie died from "drowning and exposure to the cold after being dumped in a creek last month." Lexie's death was originally ruled a homicide; Gregg-Glover, her adoptive mother had been charged with felony child neglect and filing a false police report in her disappearance and will likely now face a murder charge.

Next Thursday would have been, should have been, Lexie's 14th birthday.

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Sometimes I think that I will be saying this till I'm beyond blue in the face: Physical restraints and padded rooms---the use of force and of seclusion---are inappropriate and potentially dangerous when used to "manage" the "challenging behaviors" that a child on the autism spectrum may have. The February 18th St. Louis Today reports that parents of two children are accusing the Francis Howell School District of "abusing and neglecting" students with disabilities by using such padded "timeout" rooms:

Three parents spoke out Wednesday against the use of these rooms. Sharon and Ben VonHarz say their 11-year-old son, who has autism, suffered bruises and emotional trauma after he was repeatedly put in a seclusion room at Hollenbeck Middle School. Ange Hemmer said a seclusion room was used with her son, who has autism and is now 9, when he was in kindergarten at Fairmount Elementary School. They said other parents are afraid to step forward in fear of retaliation from the school district.

"The district had tried to make me believe my child was a monster and that this was the only way to educate my child," Hemmer said.

A padded room seems hardly the "only" way to educate a child and especially a child with disabilities who may not be able to readily explain themselves, or who may not be able to speak at all. My son has never been in a padded room (though there certainly are school districts in New Jersey that have been accused of using them, and of misusing them. When he was younger, special ed teachers used restraints like the basket hold when he head-banged. While they may have stopped this from continuing in the short term, the long-term effects have been deleterious: Let's just say that Charlie's got a lot of fight in him.

Education, not force, has helped Charlie most of all. It's often such a slow, slow process and often it seems that Charlie has to unlearn things as much as learn them. His teacher knows he more than has the capacity not only to learn, but to succeed and make his way in the world, but he needs to be taught.

And restraints and seclusion are not education.

For more information, go to Ange Hemmer's blog, Missouri: Families Against Seclusion and Restraint.

Image from Information Liberation.