T.K.'s and my place at the table

Well, I wasn't holding out much hope, and sure enough, Behaviour Consultant showed up (late) with a fully-developed plan in hand (again). The first page was a summary of the stuff that T.K.'s hardworking teacher and I are already doing. Ummm, thanks. The second page was a detailed discussion of what to do if T.K. leaves school property (which he has never done). There was a lot of verbiage about repeatedly paging him to return to a safe place, then of following and not chasing him through the neighbourhood while attempting to contact me by phone, as if he was going to go on some kind of murderous rampage or something. I suspect it was a cut and paste from some other kid's plan. On top of that she got my name wrong.

A fuse somewhere in my head went, "fzzit!" and I listened to a clear, controlled voice (hey, whoa, is that ME??) saying, "This is precisely the situation I was hoping to avoid with the phone calls I made to you last week, hoping to discuss the plan, which you did not return. Now I'm in the position of having to read, digest and respond to the plan all simultaneously, when the meeting is already in progress." She could have saved it by an apology, but instead she turned bright red and tightly said, "Yes, that's... hard." So I stopped the whole meeting and however many dollars of School Board time and expertise (tally up: one principal, one special education teacher, one teacher, one social worker) and cooled its heels while I leafed through the thing... and then chucked it aside. We then went on to have quite a productive meeting (enjoyably enhanced by the sullen silence of the Behaviour Consultant), although my husband remarked later that it was a very FEMALE meeting, with everyone dancing around everyone's feelings with exaggerated deference.

"What, you didn't think I was too pushy?"

"No, you were the only one trying to get specific problems and specific solutions on the table. Yeah, you slapped that one woman down, but she deserved it. I think they're a little scared of you now."

Wow.

Bottom line? I'm sure you'd get a wide variety of "takes" on that meeting depending on who you ask. But for me it was a breakthrough. I found my voice, and it wasn't shrill or defensive or ingratiatingly passive. I have a place at the table, and a role in this process, and you don't have to agree with me but you do have to listen. My son's a six-year-old who sometimes does good things and sometimes does bad things and sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails; he's not a rabid dog. If you're not prepared to keep thinking and keep problem-solving with him, and with me, then why are you in this job? Or did you only sign on to deal with the "easy" kids, the ones who line up in neat rows and do precisely what you expect?