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Why I’m Not Ready for School to Start

Restraint and seclusion of special ed children in our schools

Kristin DeMarr
18 min readAug 9, 2019

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I love when I see those memes going around Facebook saying that kids at school should be recorded so their parents can see how they behave at school.

I can guarantee you, those parents have seen that behavior at home.

I also imagine that these memes were what prompted my youngest son’s special ed teacher to record him at the end of a considerable episode that landed him in the school’s “quiet room.”

I imagine she thought I needed to see how “badly” he was behaving. How out of control he was. How awful he was.

What I saw in the video she sent?

Terror.

Trauma.

It broke my heart.

I am brought to tears every single time I watch the video.

I berate myself for continuing to send him to school. I berate myself for letting this torture at school go on for this long. I berate myself for not standing up to the school more, or more effectively. I berate myself for not knowing this is what had been going on. I berate myself for sending him back to that school for another school year after seeing this video. I berate myself for allowing the safety of all other…

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Kristin DeMarr
Kristin DeMarr

Written by Kristin DeMarr

Single mom of 4 kids with exceptional needs. Trying to write and keep my shit together. Click to help support me! https://kristindemarr.medium.com/membership

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