Hold the phone...

So I've been running around for the last few weeks, trying to keep up and manage a project almost every day, kids who are just going NUTSO 'cause it's almost Christmas (in case you didn't know) and just handling life. I have things to write about but then I get home and I'm tired and I have stuff to do and I go to bed early 'cause I get up at five (have I mentioned that?) and I end up not writing anything down.

Our school has a child who has some serious issues with her temper.

I can't judge how she's being handled/taken care of, I don't know her or her story.

I can tell you that she's really out of control physically and emotionally, based on my own observations.

Three times now she's been in the front office waiting for one of the aides to come get her for school. She's usually screaming loudly and rolling around, trying to knock people over like bowling pins. One of the office staff stands outside the doors and directs people to a different entrance. It's not peaceful.

 I came into work one afternoon a few weeks ago and the big desk phone that sits on my table was gone.

I walked to the office and asked if they had any idea what had happened to my telephone. They told me they'd check into it.

About five minutes later, one of the special education aides came in and got the phone out of a cabinet and gave it to me.

This is one of the aides I know fairly well, so I got a little bit of the story.
The child is physically aggressive and likes to throw things.
For whatever reason, she's fixated on phones.

I've been leaving the parent sign in and out table set up. Paperwork, decorations, tablecloth. I want my presence to be known by any stray educrats who may be wandering around.

Our principal has asked me to put all my stuff away each evening now, he was concerned that when the kid winds up, she's going to destroy whatever I have out. I guess the room we use for our after-school program is really the best place to bring her during her meltdowns, there's a door to close and it's mostly contained, although there is a door to the outside that has to be monitored. I've walked in to find chairs piled in front of it at least twice a week for a month or so now.

I've seen this particular third-grader in action several times. Week before last she was standing on the stairs, one handler above her and one below, trying to talk her down. She was fully aware of the chance to perform and the great acoustics and making the most of it, screaming and yelling and being as obnoxious as possible.

It would be hard to miss her entrance into the building each morning, too.
Her mom pulls up in front like all the other parents, and the fun commences. First, the child refuses to get out of the car. She sits in the front seat, shouting at her mother.

After 5 to 15 minutes of that, she gets out and stands by the van, door open, still shouting and arguing. Eventually she closes the door, then as her mom starts to drive away, she jumps in front of the van, causing her mom to suddenly slam stop.
More yelling. She'll do the suicide hop three or four more times.

This week on one of the days, Mom simply gave up trying to get the child out of the van and left. But she did not leave in an orderly fashion. She floored it, ran the stop sign on the way out of the lot and proceeded up the street, continuing to accelerate. I was glad that no kids were crossing. I get that she's frustrated, but when running over someone's kid is a possibility, she should probably go a little slower.

On the days she'll go in, it takes sometimes a half hour to 45 minutes for her to enter the building, where she does more yelling as she goes to her classroom.

She's fixated on telephones for whatever reason, and likes to throw them after she makes her three-times-a-day phone call to her mom or her dad. That's apparently one of her, what, privileges or conditions or whatever. Those calls are... odd. I overheard one a couple weeks ago.

I came into my little room and she was sitting with an aide at my table, using the phone.

She was using a weird (and LOUD) little baby voice and talking to her mom.  "I wuv you Mommy, see you in a widdle bit, now wet's hang up at the same time, okay, four twee two one," SLAM the receiver down.

She then turned to her handler and said in plain, unaffected words, "What are we going to do now?" No simpering at all.

But.
My understanding is that most days, after her phone call, she does her best to rip the phone out of the wall.

She will swing it by its cord and try to hit the aide assigned to her for the day. She screams, tears things off walls, throws anything that isn't attached and generally makes the immediate vicinity uninhabitable.

She has rampaged through the building, pulling telephones off desks and walls if she can get to one before someone stops her. In the front office, while they're trying to field calls from parents in the mornings, I've seen them leaned over their desk drawers with the handset up to an ear, ready to close the drawer if she comes in.

She hits the adults who are charged with her care.
She hits any children who are foolish enough to get into her general vicinity.
She completely refuses to do any type of school work.

I have never had to advocate for a special needs child.
My heart goes out to the parents and the kid, no one is 'winning' on this one.I'm not sure that school is doing her any good. I know that she's disrupting the education of other kids, that she's not doing school work, and that she's a huge handful for everyone who's tasked with taking care of her. I've mentioned the aides we have who are a little gruff and noticed a couple of them actually working to escalate situations. I don't know if that's happening in this situation, but I would not be surprised to learn that it is. Also very unfair to the child.

There is no conclusion here.
No point to my rambling.
It's a tough situation for everyone involved.