Rough Week

    So the *Eddie* situation continues to be both weird and delightful, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about today.  Ok, I might mention it once or twice, but it’s not the focus.
    I’ve said before that I work at an after school program, and I think I’ve said that the three sites of the program located in my town all combine into one site for vacation weeks.  This past week was a vacation week, so we were all at that one school.  I was put with either kindergartners or first-graders, so I was happy.  I like little kids a lot better than big kids.
    On Wednesday, it rained.  I also had a doctor’s appointment in the morning, and so didn’t have work until one.  I was asked at the last minute to bring my laptop so the kids could watch a movie, which in retrospect I should have said no to.  Nothing happened, but it could have, and then I’d have to pay for it all myself.
    We have a nonverbal kid at our site, and he comes to vacation times.  I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but during February vacation he bit the director of another site, and he’s continued to bite since.  Off the top of my head, he’s bitten my director twice, me twice, and another student once.
    On Wednesday, I caught him trying to wrap the curtain drawstrings around his neck while the movie was on.  There is no way to make that not sound creepy.  So I went over, unwrapped it, and led him back to his iPad.  He did it again almost as soon as I sat down, so I did the same thing, only this time I stood about a foot behind him for a few minutes.  After about ten minutes of me sitting down, he does it again.  So I go over, unwrap him, lead him back to his iPad, and stand a foot behind him again.  He turns around and tries to head butt me.  I see it coming, since he does get violent when he’s told he can’t do something, and I catch his head before it makes contact.  He thrusts out of my grip and right into my chest...where he bites my boob.  It felt like a fucking hole puncher.  It hurt.  I told my director, while I’m still in the throes of trying to restrain him, that he bit me, and she comes over with a staff from another site and they take over.  She tells me to go see if there’s a mark, and there is.  A dark purple mark.  By the time I show her, it’s slightly less dark, but the skin is broken.
    The other director working at the time called his mother to come get him, which is standard procedure, and which my director only does half the time.  The mother comes and he goes home.  I’m given a Band-Aid and that’s it.  When I got home, understandably, my parents were pissed.  And it made me feel better that I wasn’t the only one.  I would’ve said no, but it pissed me off that no one asked me if I wanted to go home.  Or if I wanted a break, which I would have taken.  I wrote a letter to the Program Administrator saying that after all these incidents, the program knew or should have known that this child was a physical threat to both staff and students, and I can’t work with him any longer.  I had a doctor’s appointment for the bite at eleven in the morning on Thursday, and they gave me antibiotics.  The other two directors asked about me, but when I saw my director after coming back from the doctor to make double sure they didn’t need me to continue working, she didn’t really say anything to me.  I gave her a copy of the letter I wrote to the administrator, and later on she texted me that she’s sorry I feel that way about her program, and she wishes she could do something, but all our programs have to be inclusive.
    Well that’s nice, and I understand that, but when a kid starts to be violent, it’s different.  Come to find out, the administrator didn’t know it was the third time this child bit me, which either means she’s behind in checking the paperwork or my director didn’t fill out the incident reports she told me she was.  I didn’t answer my boss at all because I don’t want to get into an argument about with her, I just don’t want to be bitten again.  I wasn’t told it might happen when I was hired (because it wasn’t happening yet), but since it’s not stopping, something needs to be done about it, and she doesn’t seem to feel like doing anything aside from suggesting (not even insisting) that he not come to the program the day after an incident happens.  It floored me when he wasn’t removed from the program after he bit another child.  I can sort of see why staff might be expected to take injuries in stride, but a kid?  Parents leave their children with us expecting us to keep them safe, and if he’s dangerous, which he is, we’re not keeping them safe.  Every day he’s there and no one gets hurt, all we are is lucky.  He bit the child because he doesn’t like loud noises (though he makes plenty of them himself), and she is an Autistic child whose soothing noises and general speech are at a raised level, and she was being too loud.  The other times he’s bitten are when he is generally freaking out, which happens because he was told not to do something, like go into the kitchen area of the cafeteria where my program is set up.  Or not hang himself from the curtain drawstrings.  We are sadists, I tell you, wanting children not to do things that could be harmful for them!
    I’m getting transferred to another one of the sites in my town, and I start there on Monday (I had yesterday off anyway).  The director of this site was actually the one most concerned about my general well-being, which was nice, and cast my director in a very bad light in comparison.  My one mention of *Eddie* in this post will be that when I told him what happened, he said, “Jeez, that kid should be put down.”  And he doesn’t have feelings for me. >_< Riiiiight.  I know he was joking, but it’s kind of like, I can’t fucking believe he’s still in the program.  Inclusion at the expense of others’ physical well-being isn’t helping anyone.  I guess when his mother came she was all, “We don’t bite people...you don’t even understand what I’m saying, do you?”  If she legitimately thinks that, she shouldn’t be leaving him with a group of people who are not certified teachers, and only one of whom has specific special needs training and experience.  There’s also an after school program at his school, which is about forty minutes away from my town, but you gotta do what you gotta do.  The administrator also told me before that his family makes too much money to qualify for a one-on-one paid for by us, which means she had this conversation with them and they just decided he didn’t need a one-on-one.  Even before the biting, he definitely did.  I can’t fathom that level of not giving a fuck.  My brother is nowhere near that severe, and my parents declined to put him in after school because they didn’t think it was fair to make a bunch of “young kids” (their words, not mine) take care of him.  So my mom stayed home and my dad worked a shit ton.  This kid’s mom is a teacher, so maybe she just needs to go get him when her bell rings instead of doing whatever she does afterward, or maybe she needs to make the forty minute trek to his school.
    The administrator said she’s meeting with his parents next week, and my dad said not to be surprised if I get a call at the end of the week saying he’s out of the program and asking me if I’ll go back to my old site.  I’ll say yes, unless this week goes swimmingly, because I already miss my kids.  I’m kind of glad I didn’t know exactly how it was all going to go down the last time I saw them, because it would have been so hard to say good-bye, especially to my favorites.  Which means it’s going to be so hard when I have to get a full-time job.  Ugh.  But I also think I might not get any such call, and nothing at all might change.  My director is kind of a wimp when it comes to asserting herself with parents, so if she’s at the meeting I feel like no real changes will be made.  I do feel bad, because aside from the kids I genuinely love, I like my co-workers, and we had a rhythm going, but I can’t continue to put myself at risk, and it’s not what I signed up for.
    I hope that, no matter what happens, things settle soon.  I still have to see my director (now my former director) every Tuesday when I do data entry for the administrator, and I hope to God she’s not weird about everything.  This whole thing drove my anxiety through the roof, not only because he bit me but because my skin broke, and I have thing about people touching me especially in private spots, and what if it had been a kid on the receiving end of that?  What if one of my sweeties had gone up to him, as they sometimes do, and he freaked out and did this to one of them?  That’s why I don’t think he should be allowed to come anymore, because inclusion works, but only up to a point.  I don’t think having him in the program is worth the risk to the other kids, and yes, to the staff.