Autistic child sent home from Layou Government School

by Lyf Compton

Tamisha Cupid, the mother of an autistic child, is calling on Ministry of Education and Layou Government School officials to rethink the expulsion of her child.

Cupid, from Layou, is the mother of five-year-old Lancelot Junior Douglas.

She said on Wednesday, September 6, she was asked by the Ministry of Education to remove her child from the Layou Government School and seek schooling for him at the School for Children with Special Needs at Fernside, Kingstown.

Cupid explained that on Monday, September 4, she took her son to his Grade One classroom and as she was leaving, he ran after her. She said a teacher then held on to the boy and handed him over to his class teacher Keziah, John.

She said Lancelot had a toy car in his hand and when he began struggling with the teacher, the metal car flew out of his hand and struck his class teacher on her face.

His mother said on mornings, she would usually help the kindergarten teachers to settle the children and was on her way to do that when the incident took place.

“I was right there…she was making noise saying she can’t deal with he and she can’t teach he, and if he come back in the class, she not going to teach him and she wouldn’t have anything to do with him,” said the disappointed mother.

She said when Lancelot was in Grade K, she helped him get ready for the day’s work, because she knows that he is autistic. She said despite his condition, he managed to pass his examinations to move on to Grade One.

“They had told me at school that they would have helped him out by putting a computer in Grade One, so that when he finished his work, he would use the computer to prevent him from being distracted,” said Cupid, who noted that her son was not the only autistic child at the school.

She is of the opinion that the summer vacation messed with her son’s routine and all he needed was time to readjust.

“…So, I told the teacher that I do not mind coming to school with him until he is settled back in, so she told me to go outside, because he has to be a good boy and behave and that is when he run out the class behind me,” Cupid explained.

She added that when her son was in Grade K, he and some other children would at times run out the class and write on the walls.

“I used to go and assist them with him and the others,” stressed Cupid.

She said her son and the other students were recently assessed by two specialists and examined by medical personnel.

“They said that they were bright children and I asked if they needed to go to a special school and they said no and on another occasion, they brought another specialist and I asked again and the woman said no,” said Cupid, who claimed that a woman who has a child who goes to the school once referred to the autistic children as “crazy”.

“People telling her that they are not crazy and on another occasion, a woman came from Jamaica and spent a day with them and she said not to hit them, just allow them to be active and they will settle down,” revealed Cupid, who said the directive of the Ministry of Education to take her son to the School for Children with Special Needs is not right.

“I want him to go back to a primary school, but only one in Layou and they don’t want him there,” said Cupid, adding, “They (the Layou Government School) did not have to call the Ministry of Education because he did not throw it (the toy car) at her; it flew out his hand; it wasn’t no spiteful thing.”

Yesterday, a Ministry of Education official told SEARCHLIGHT that Lancelot was not expelled, but the Ministry requested that he be sent to the School for Children with Special Needs for principal Nazeem Smith to “look at him.”

The Ministry official said that they were told that the child threw a cellular phone at the teacher and chopped her in her head and they have also had other reports.

“We asked her to register the child with special needs in Kingstown, so that Nazeem Smith can say how we should proceed. We did not expel the child,” said the official.

Smith said on Thursday that she did, in fact, receive a call from the Ministry, but the child and his mother never turned up.

Smith, however, noted that not all persons who have been diagnosed with autism are unable to function in a normal school environment, as some persons with autism have social issues, others have behavioural issues, but the majority are highly intellectual.

She said in her opinion, many students are robbed of their education, because a teacher may not want to spend the time with that child in a classroom, once a certain label has been placed on the child.

Autism is described as a neurobehavioural condition, present from early childhood, characterized by difficulty in communicating and forming relationships with other people and in using language and abstract concepts. Because of the range of symptoms, the condition is now called autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

According to WebMD, children with autism have trouble communicating. They have trouble understanding what other people think and feel. This makes it very hard for them to express themselves either with words or through gestures, facial expressions, and touch. A child with ASD who is very sensitive may be greatly troubled – sometimes even pained – by sounds, touches, smells and sights that seem normal to others.