Mrs. Readingteacher to Krissa

Robin has done pretty good this week in reading. Wed. she told Aaron to SHUT UP as she was leaving class.  She used an angry tone. I have them on opposite sides of the room. I believe she continued using Shut Up in other classes as the day progressed. Robyn needs to work on tolerence and understanding of others if she wants to be understood. Thurs I reminded Robyn that Shut Up was not acceptable.  She stormed into the room and said, "I still don't have any friends."

I remember once reading a story in middle school about a girl who wanted friends.  It wasn't until she helped people and thought more about others than herself that friendship developed. Robyn will need to be a friend long before she can make friends.

I noticed that she needed paper in class. She wanted to go to her locker, I asked if someone would give Robyn paper. When a student gave her the paper she took it but did not say thank you.

Robyn got a 100 on her reading test today. 

She has a beautiful smile when she shows it. We want to help.

Welcome home.

Krissa to Mrs. Guidancecounselor

I got this message from Mrs. Kendall today. I found this upsetting for two reasons. First, it's upsetting because Robyn's behavior is unacceptable. Second, it's upsetting because Mrs. Kendall feels that it would be helpful for me to know that "Robyn needs to work on tolerance and understanding of others if she wants to be understood." That's not helpful for me, and it will not help me help Robyn, because I already know this and I've known it for a long time. I've given Robyn countless lectures on this very theme.

Krissa

Krissa to Mrs. Readingteacher

Thanks for the welcome home, though I haven't made it back yet. I delayed setting out on my trip so I'd be able to see Robyn's report card.

Thank you so much for letting me know what happened. I know you all want to help. I appreciate that very, very much. I am writing this e-mail in the hopes that knowing a bit more about Robyn will help you understand her (and me) better. I do hope you have the time to read it.

Robyn is a very sweet child, but she has a very hard time understanding things. She is also stubborn in a way that goes beyond any stubbornness I have ever encountered in a child. It takes the equivalent of a nuclear bomb to change Robyn's mind. She also has a difficult time with the pragmatics of life.

I have given Robyn countless lectures on the theme of being tolerant of others, and being a friend to have a friend. I do not allow her to use the words "shut up" and we do not use those words at home. I have always been very strict with Robyn. I have consistently disciplined Robyn for bad behavior at school and elsewhere. I have never felt sorry for Robyn (until, maybe, this year, a little bit) and I have never, ever allowed her to think that angry and irritable behavior was OK.

Robyn's behavior has been a source of frustration and grief to me since she was an infant.

When Robyn was an infant, beginning with her second day of life, she fussed constantly. She refused a pacifier. She had abnormal feeding and sleeping patterns.

When Robyn was eight months old, she started having tantrums that had no apparent cause. These tantrums were the kind of thing you might see in a 2-year-old. She continued to have multiple tantrums daily until she was five years old. I never let her think the tantrums were OK. I sometimes had to hold her so she wouldn't hurt herself. Otherwise, I put her in a safe place, ignored the behavior, and imposed reasonable consequences later. I tried numerous types of consequences. None ever seemed to make a bit of difference. But I imposed consequences anyway. When Robyn was not tantruming, I was as affectionate and loving with her as she would tolerate.

When Robyn was a toddler she refused to make eye contact with people. She played with toys by lining them up or stacking them. She repeated her words over and over and over again. Instead of responding to people, she mimicked them. She used language atypically. She screamed "I'm not Robyn, don't call me Robyn" if anyone addressed her by name. If I put a shirt on her that had buttons, she grabbed front of the shirt and held it away from her body all day without releasing it so that the inside of the shirt would not touch her body. She made an odd humming noise most of the time.

When Robyn was three, the doctor noticed that her behavior was odd. He did some tests. For example, he showed her a card with a picture of a bicycle on it. He asked her what it was. Robyn said, "It's a wheel, it's a wheel, it's a wheel, it's a wheel, wheel, wheel, wheel." (That's how she talked in those days.) Instead of identifying the entire bicycle, you see, she picked out a single part.

After a series of tests, the doctor said she was autistic but high functioning.

I took her to a psychologist. The psychologist said she has Pervasive Development Disorder, which just means she wasn't yet old enough to get a real diagnosis. The psychologist said she had an extraordinarily high intelligence and would therefore be able to "work around" her disability. She said Robyn would function more or less normally but that her social development would be very slow. She also noted that Robyn had slowed gross motor development.

I got Robyn a speech therapist. The speech therapist taught Robyn to nod her head "yes" and shake her head "no." She taught Robyn how to use pronouns properly, so, for example, she would say "I don't like" instead of "you don't like" or "we don't like". She taught Robyn the meanings of various question words, so that Robyn would stop asking, say, "who" questions with "where" answers.

We moved to Ithaca, NY when Robyn was 4 years old so that I could pursue work on my doctorate in American History at Cornell University. Shortly thereafter, I had to get occupational therapy for Robyn. She needed this therapy because she would not wear a coat, no matter what anyone did. And it's cold in Ithaca. No matter how many times anyone put a coat on her, she would unzip it and wear it around her elbows as soon as she got out of reach. The only way to keep it on her was to stand next to her and hold the zipper so she wouldn't unzip it.

The occupational therapist used brushes on her arms and body. She rolled her up in a mat and squished her. She did other things to desensitize Robyn, who, she said, was "hypertactile." After three months of treatment, Robyn wore her coat without any problems. (She still won't wear buttons.)

But she continued to have problems with social issues. Robyn has seen several counselors. She made friends over the years, but they were tolerant friends. One of these girls is still Robyn's best friend, but she lives in Ithaca.

Robyn taught herself how to read when she was four. (I swear, I had nothing to do with it.) When she was in Kindergarten, she and another little boy who knew how to read and write passed notes to each other. Robyn has been keeping a journal since that time. She has a large stack of about 25 notebooks filled with writing. The grammar and mechanics are nearly perfect. The vocabulary is impressive. Pragmatically, Robyn's writing is quite weak. She makes sense on the sentence level, and there is an odd continuity, but her stories go nowhere. (I am a writing instructor and spend 30 hours a weak diagnosing writing problems, so this is easy for me to see.)

Robyn's step-dad, Dean, got her a Basic computer programming tutorial. 6 hours later, with no help from Dean, Robyn began writing a long and complicated computer program in Basic. The next day she had finished it. It works perfectly. It's a game -- it takes you through a series of imaginary environments in which you must use logic and trial-and-error to figure out what forms of various bodily functions are allowed in each environment. I find the game offensive. I have not raised Robyn to think about such things. I also find the game astonishing in its complexity -- I could not write a program of that complexity within hours of learning my first programming language. The point is, she is very bright and applies her intelligence to no pragmatic purpose whatsoever.

Robyn has an appointment with a counselor on Monday. Also, the West Valley school psychologist is going to do an assessment. I hope these things lead to something productive.

This counselor, Robyn's fifth grade teacher, and a wide array of other qualified adults have all said this looks like the girl form of Asperger's Syndrome. Personally, I don't care whether we have a label or not. Still, I hope it will help you understand Robyn better to visit this website:

http://www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger/aspergerscaleAttwood.html

Robyn does, indeed, have most of these characteristics.

I'm not making excuses. The behavior you have described is unacceptable. I have imposed consequences on Robyn for her misbehavior at school. I've taken away her computer and imposed an 8pm bedtime. I'll have another long discussion with her when I get back into town. I am very sorry that you have had to deal with Robyn's inappropriate behavior in your classroom.  Anything you can do to convince Robyn to be more tolerant and friendly, I will appreciate. If we keep working on her, she'll at least try to reign it in. When she does not reign it in, she must be removed from the classroom immediately. I advocate removing her at the first and smallest sign of irritability on her part.

The most important thing you can do, though, is to tell me every time Robyn misbehaves in your classroom. If Robyn knows I'm watching (standing there, holding her zipper so she can't take off her coat), she'll try harder to control herself.

At the same time, I am myself going through a difficult and painful process of realizing and trying to accept that Robyn will never see the world the way the rest of us do. Her brain doesn't work the same way our brains work. If we could be firm, yet sympathetic (which is, I do feel, the tone you have taken with her thus far) I think it would be best. We may not get far towards getting Robyn to be more tolerant of others, but we should keep trying. She can be, really, very sweet. She's terribly lonely right now, because she used to have friends, and then we moved, and now she doesn't have friends.

Sincerely, from a broken-hearted mother,
Krissa