Been There Done That

Weaponizing Child Protective Services

Euphemistically, The Boy is "special needs".

Accurately he's mentally retarded.

Yes, we're not supposed to say that any more, but as we get ever more sensitive and woke, we lose the ability to accurately describe psychological maladies.  Even to the point that we cannot refer to many disorders as disorders.

Even the diagnosis of general mental retardation isn't accurate.

He's got The Boy Syndrome which is completely unique to him and his situation.

It became clear, very early on, that the public schools weren't going to be able to deal with his problems because he doesn't fit within any of the three paradigms they can actually work with.

He's not high functioning enough to do a normal, but simplified, curriculum.

He's not physically disabled, but still capable of doing the simplified curriculum.

He's not so disabled that you can drug him to compliance and dust occasionally.

When he became violent at school and their after-school daycare, they had no means to deal with it and "zero tolerance means zero flexibility" and giving him out of school suspensions didn't affect him a whit.  All his pets and toys were at home.

A couple years of this and I said, "fuck it," because I was between jobs anyway as The Lovely Harvey's career was just taking off to the point of supplanting our old combined incomes.

So we pulled him out of school and I made a game attempt at home schooling.  For the most part, I succeeded, for many things I was out of my depth but there was nothing I could do to change it.

Then CPS shows up a few years later demanding to know why he's not enrolled.

"Because I drop him off at 0800 Monday, get called to come get him for violence by 0830 and you suspend him for three days, then I drop him off on Friday at 0800, get called to come get him for violence by 0830 and you suspend him for three days..."  It's not worth my time to bother driving him in for an hour of school every week.

"He has to be enrolled!"

"Or what?"

Paraphrasing, "Criminal charges unless you can shit a doctorate degree in psychology, masters in education and tens of thousands of dollars in certifications."

So we enrolled him.  We got two years of excellent progress from an excellent teacher who really cared and took the effort to individualize what she was doing.

They.  Fired.  Her.

Then they moved the special education school to the extreme Northwest corner of the county, I live in the extreme Southwest corner, to a brand new school.  We were assured that the best teachers had been hired and they were totally qualified to teach our special kids.  See?  Look at all the credentials!

"What about experience with kids like this?" we asked knowing that our teacher was not the only one fired from the special education department.

"CREDENTIALS!" they explained.

His outbursts returned.  Then they pulled transportation.  Then the total of an hour in class per week returned...

CPS started visiting regularly because outbursts are a sure sign of abuse and neglect...

In normal children, you idiots.  The Boy doesn't work that way and you steadfastly refuse to listen to us or his doctors about what to do about it.

Two fucking years of this before the school finally admitted defeat and released their funding to the Adult Training Center he's attending to this day.