Further exploration of the death of an autistic boy who had been wrapped in a weighted blanket has yielded much food for thought:

1. The school staff apparently used the blanket to restrain little Gabriele Poirier as a punishment for being too loud. This was not an attempt to calm him - it appears more likely it was done out of anger or spite, or to put the fear of the staff into the child.
2. The blanket used weighed almost 40 lbs - not much less than Gabriele’s own 53 lbs. Did these people not realize he would have trouble breathing with it wrapped around his body and face at least four times?
3. The staff set a timer for 20 minutes and walked away, leaving the restrained child alone. But after his death the school lied to Gabriele’s parents and said he had hidden under the blanket himself. People in situations like this one lie because of one thing: they know they are responsible for something very bad happening, and they don’t want to get caught. If they were untrained in how to use the blanket, they sure found out fast enough that what they did was an abuse. Otherwise they’d have nothing to hide.

What has come to light with this case is that this kind of inappropriate restraint is forbidden by law in our health care facilities, but there is no law that prohibits it in Quebec schools.

Poirier said his lawyer has contacted Minister of Education Michelle Courchesne to request a law be put in place restricting the use of restraints in schools. He said he would also like to see better teacher training. (”Autistic child suffocated in therapeutic blanket: Quebec coroner” (CBC)

(Education Minister Michelle Courchesne can be contacted at ministre@mels.gouv.qc.ca or consult this page for other modes of contact.)

The parents of Gabriele Poirier are filing a claim for compensation from the school board, after the coroner ruled that their son’s death was a violent one which could have been avoided.

Let’s hope we also see disciplinary action taken against any staff who took part in the “punishment” and the later attempts to cover up the truth of what happened. There have been a whole pack of excuses given for these people - they were ignorant, untrained, etc. - but it seems pretty clear to me that no primary aged student should be left in a school unsupervised for a period of 20 minutes, much less a special needs child.

It also doesn’t take much imagination to figure out that when you wrap a child from the tips of his ears to his ankles in a blanket that weighs almost as much as he does, then place him on his belly and walk away from him, he’s going to have trouble breathing. Isn’t that just common sense? Didn’t these folks sit up and pay any attention when kids in Ontario group homes started dying due to improper use of restraint several years back? It’s not as though this is a new issue.

My son is home safe from yet another year in public school, and I am breathing one huge sigh of relief. Even though I know the staff at his school are considerably better trained and supervised than the buffoons at the so-called specialized school that killed little Gabriele, many days I still hold my breath and worry until he gets home. All it takes is a power tripping adult with a little bit of privacy, and all sorts of things can happen to our babies…

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!

From the CTV evening news:

Report into child’s death

A coroner has ruled that a school south of Montreal acted improperly when it wrapped an autistic boy in a heavy blanket, leading to the child’s death.

Gabriel Poirier, 9, suffocated at a school for handicapped children in April.

Teachers had wrapped him inside a blanket sometimes used to calm autistic children.

In the dark

For a long time, his parents thought their son died accidentally at Ecole Marie Riviere in St. Jean-sur-richelieu after he had become agitated.

But a coroner’s report revealed the boy was wrapped inside the 39-pound blanket four times with his head inside and his arms pinned to his side. He was also left unsupervised.
When his teachers went to remove him from the blanket 20 minutes later, his face was swollen and blue. He died the next day in hospital.

Fallout

So far there have been no criminal charges but the family plans to launch a civil suit against the school. The Commission Scolaire des Hautes Rivieres, which oversees the school, has ordered all its facilities to stop using the blanket until it gets clear directives from the government.

For those readers not familiar with the concept of a weighted blanket, it helps some people with sensory integration disorder (common in autistic kids) to settle down. These kids often have trouble to feel where their bodies are in space, and some crave weight or pressure. They will bump or crash into things (or people) throw themselves to the floor, hit themselves, etc. Sitting under a weighted lap pad or blanket, wearing ankle weights or a weighted backpack, moving around heavy objects, etc. are often therapeutic.

That being said, these are measures usually prescribed by an occupational therapist and people using them should be trained by the OT in their safe and appropriate use. Wrapping anyone up with both arms restrained and face covered falls far short of anything even vaguely therapeutic. Leaving a restrained person alone unsupervised is just plain negligence.

Yes, autistic kids do like to get rolled up in the “kid burrito.” Maybe even a couple turns of the blanket or rug. But one would never wrap a child four times in a 39 lb blanket and then walk away from him. He needs to be able to get free if he becomes uncomfortable.

Fortunately, my son’s OT is the salt of the earth. We’re finishing up our school year, and she’s already planning for his activities & therapies for next fall. The Bug gets great OT care at his school, and we know that nobody lays so much as a finger on him without being properly trained by the therapist. She is ultra-careful, and sets an example the folks at this St-Jean school would do well to follow.

Dojogirl has been bugging us to buy her a cell phone, for going on two years now. Pretty much every adult I know has one of these devices, and a good number of the teens now have one as well. Cell phones have gone from being an expensive item used mostly by adults who needed them for business, to a fairly affordable device without which most people over age 13 won’t leave home.

As cell phones have become more sophisticated we’ve seen increasing costs related to things like text messaging, and there is also the need to replace a phone frequently in order to keep up with the latest technology. Besides the question of whether we want to encourage our children to create this kind of negative environmental impact, there is also the financial burden which is generally borne by parents. Teens can easily fall into expensive usage patterns that they will later be unable to afford, rather than learning moderation with their first phones.

When we started seeing kids bring their phones to school a whole other can of worms: Students using cell phones to cheat during tests. Bullies using picture phones to take inappropriate photos in bathrooms and locker rooms - and subsequently distribute them so as to humiliate other young people. Teachers reporting that cell phone use was distracting their classes.

So it wasn’t surprising when schools banned cell phones. Some schools and districts simply banned their use during class time. But much of the inappropriate use can take place outside of class, and cell phones are now the item most often lost or stolen at school. It doesn’t take a genius to see why some districts have banned bringing cell phones to school altogether.

New York City is one place where all schools have banned cell phones completely. The move was made in 2005, and the issue is still being dragged through the courts. In April 2008 New York Supreme Court Justice Angela Mazzarelli ruled in favour of the ban, but it is likely this decision will be appealed by angry parents who feel their children need the phones with them at all times, in case of emergencies. In the meantime, students are apparently smuggling phones into school or paying bodega (that’s “dépanneur” for my Québecois readers) employees to “babysit” them - a practice which resulted in at least one case where the employee absconded with both the money and the phones…

I tell you, the debate just gives me one more reason to homeschool my kids - right through the high school years! My way of looking at the safety issue is this: if I can’t trust my children’s own behaviour, or if the world has become so unfriendly since I was their age, that I don’t want them to be out unsupervised then the best place for them is with their family. No cell phone is going to take care of them better than their parents can. In fact, that phone might just give us all a false sense of security.

I’d rather my kids were prepared for life in the world by a few more years of spending time with family, and being not only supervised but having the opportunity to discuss potentially risky situations and behaviours as the opportunities arise in daily life. This is something you will never get in a school group, whether private or public, because as soon as you’ve got one adult supervising more than 5 or so kids you’ve become institutionalized and you have to take special precautions to compensate for the fact that one adult really isn’t equipped to watch that many kids.

Schools have buddy systems, name tags or uniforms, younger kids holding onto ropes, checklists and travel by chartered bus, locked schools where kids are kept within the gates and walls, and even a parent with legitimate business must sign in and get a hall pass in order to gain access. While I do not at all deny these measures are important to the safety of such a large group of children in the care of a handful of adults, the fact is that this is not preparation for the real world. It might be preparation to be part of other institutions, but it isn’t going to do an adequate job of teaching anyone’s kids to behave on the street, in the library, at the park or the grocery store or the city hall - well, except in those instances when we need to stand quietly in a line or raise our hands and wait to be called upon before we speak.

Institutions tend to take both choice and responsibility away from anyone, young or old. Be it a school, a long term care hospital, a prison, etc. an institution involves a large group of clients and a significantly smaller group of staff. Routines and regulations are made chiefly with the goal of keeping order, with being fair and giving the same treatment to everyone - rather than with giving each client the things he or she needs. This kind of system can actually encourage abuses such as cheating, because the clients (like high school students) sense its rigidity and frequently feel they do not have a say in making the decisions that affect them on a daily basis. So while on the surface an institution is supposed to promote respect, order and ethical behaviour it is not unknown for it to also teach coping skills like lying, cheating and plagiarism to at least some of its clients - probably a large number if the rules and procedures are perceived as especially unfair.

I’ve rambled quite long on this one, but I just wanted to leave my readers with one last thought about school/public safety and cell phones. Many parents who felt that the cell phone ban was unconstitutional remarked that they wanted to know where their children were at all times, and they particularly mentioned concerns over school shootings and terrorist acts. Indeed, in some recent cases it was a call from a cell phone that was the first alert to 911. In the case of an event that knocks out school wide communications this could mean help would reach the school promptly. However, it is important to keep in mind that if every person in a school of 1000+ students got on their cell phone at the same time - whether to report the emergency to authorities, to communicate with parents or check on the safety of friends, or perhaps simply out of boredom during a lock down or evacuation - networks could easily be overwhelmed.

This is what happened after the fall 2006 shooting at Montreal’s Dawson College. I don’t think it made a very big difference to the delivery of emergency services in this case, as police happened to be already on the scene and were able to bring in all the required services by radio rather than cell phone. But I imagine that a number of families were disturbed when they couldn’t reach the students who were evacuated and needing help to get home. If there is one time when I do think we should fall back on institutions, it’s during an emergency. Especially in large cities with so many strangers to coordinate, the best equipped people to deal with communication and logistics are the emergency services providers. It’s something to think about…

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!

If your introduction to autism came from Dustin Hoffman’s groundbreaking performance in the 1988 film Rainman, you’ll catch the play on words. This young man has autism, and he runs to raise money to help raise awareness and make the world a better for autistics.

I first came into contact with Alex’ Mom, Janet (jypsy) when our Bug was waiting for his diagnosis. She and I corresponded only a couple of times, but she left a lasting impression on me. Seeing how Alex had been much like my son when he was younger, and seeing how far he had come over the years, gave me hope at a time when daily life was truly a struggle.

My Bug has gone from a non-verbal whirling dervish who ripped every book and paper he could get his hands on, to a thoughtful and expressive child who at age 8 is learning to read. I have every hope that he will continue to blossom, much as Alex did. In the years to come I can see him taking class trips, getting his high school diploma, and discovering his purpose in life.

Thanks so much to jypsy and the Run Man for their inspiration!

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!

This week a little girl died in Laval, while playing and watching TV on her bunk bed. A piece of her clothing got tangled up in the bed, and she was strangled. She was six years old.

Sadly, she’s not the first child to die this way. And there are many other children injured on bunk beds every year. The Montreal Children’s Hospital treats about 50 children a year for injuries relating to bunk beds.

If you have a bunk bed please be sure it meets safety regulations, especially for the distance between the railings on the top bunk. Always use a mattress of the proper thickness. Cut or tie up the cords of window blinds so kids can’t reach them. It is important to place the beds away from light fixtures and ceiling fans, and most especially, windows.

Children under six years should never use the top bunk, and only one child should be on the top bunk at a time. Be sure your kids know never to jump on or from the bed. In fact, they really shouldn’t play on the bed at all.

It probably seems really obvious, or maybe just overly cautious. But I’m sure you’d rather be a little bit of a stick in the mud, than to be making burial arrangements for your child.

Here are some links for bunk bed safety information:

• CBC Marketplace on Bunk Beds
• Health Canada Consumer Product Safety: Bunk Beds
• La sécurité et les lits superposés (French version, Health Canada)

This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

Excerpts copyright quoted authors. Please visit their sites to read more, and respect the terms of their copyrights. Thanks!