Meeting ED

Today Rayne and I met with the special ed director of her school. She (I'll just call her ED) tried to get Rayne to test with her like she had done with the teacher a month or so ago. Is it possible it could have gone worse than the initial test? Apparently so.

I suppose in fairness Rayne did tell me she wasn't going to do it and I should maybe just be glad she went with me without putting up a fight. But she demonstrated very aggressive behavior. I literally had to hold onto her to keep her from kicking, punching, scratching ED. And boy can my girl give some mean, threatening looks! Lately she does this mean face and holds up a fist like she's threatening to hit you. It was awful.

ED was very kind and patient. She has experience with this stuff! I felt like it was a good conversation to have had and that I learned something but by the time we got to the car, I felt like crying and I didn't even know what the conversation was about.

ED said that in a traditional, "brick and mortar" setting they take aggressive behavior very seriously. Hitting a teacher would not be tolerated at all. Rayne would probably be put in a special class and they would have to do things like a safety plan for her to participate in field trips. It was all very depressing. This is my beautiful, brilliant girl they are talking about! The alternate setting would be very structured and address behavior and maybe in a year or two, Rayne could assimilate into the regular classroom.
As for their school, an online school, there isn't a lot they can do because they aren't the ones dealing with it face to face everyday. They can come up with a behavior plan and it would be mostly teaching me how to implement it all. She said "it is exhausting."

I am exhausted. There are days when I hate school. There I times when I guiltily wish I could send her to someone else and have them deal with it. Maybe it would snap her out of it or something. I feel like a failure because I don't know how to fix it, I haven't fixed it already, it exists at all.

ED is going to call Rayne's teacher tomorrow morning and then they will contact me to talk further.

I talked to Jeff for a bit tonight (he's at work). He is very much against sending Rayne to the brick and mortar school. I think even more so after what I told him ED's recommendation would be. He was always in "resource" (I don't know if that's the PC word but that's what he calls it so it's the term I'll use) for behavioral issues, not a learning disability. That's exactly how ED explained it. There isn't an intellectual problem, it's behavior. But, according to Jeff, he had to work at the level of people who were mentally challenged, learning disabled etc and so he was never challenged, never learned anything and got bored so he'd act out more.
This is good to know. That's not what I want for my girl. The whole reason we are doing school at home is because I want to feed her intellectually even though we don't know what to do behaviorally.

So I guess I'll see what ED and teacher say tomorrow and go from there. It would be good to have the help in helping Rayne. To know some tools and how to approach things.
Still, thinking in terms of "aggression" I feel a bit more able to see what I need to do just because we put that label on it.

Sigh. I am so tired. I really want to go to the library. Maybe I could read and learn how to help "aggressive" behavior and Rayne and Caius could just learn from reading. It's not a bad idea...