I’m not saying it is - but, I dunno, maybe I’m old - and I totes feel so as this is the first time I’ve ever said this, but… “in my day” we (the individual) had to take personal responsibility for learning and building our own coping mechanisms - all by ourselves. The world was sharp, pointy and not user friendly - but once adapted, we flourished.
I have a lingering worry that we’re stealing an important part of the youth experience - learning that the world isn’t fair, doesn’t bend to our needs, and certainly doesn’t accommodate us. Are we not better prepared to engage the world in adulthood because of these experiences in school, where - realistically - there is relative safety when we fail?
That actually is a worry of mine. One of the reasons my mom thought I was autistic for a long time was sensitivity to sound. I can still be pretty jumpy about it, but applause isn’t so bad for me. Applause is just sort of a fact of life; I can’t realistically see it going away, so it’s a sound they’ll have to learn to cope with the best they can at some point anyway.
I can see the @MrV system as being not so bad; his kid has a way to reduce noise, but only when he feels the need to.
As someone who went through my teen years and most of my 20s suffering from undiagnosed mental health issues, I wish someone had noticed my struggles and made accommodations for me.
The world certainly isn’t fair, true, but it does accommodate us. We build ramps so students with wheelchairs can get the education they have a right to. In this case the school decided to hold back from applause so a student who is sensitive to noise doesn’t have panic attacks* (which can be horriffic, and certainly physical) which would affect their education just as badly.
And like the ramps, this student knows that they are getting a little help others don’t, but also knows that, like the ramps, others don’t need that same help. And they know that they can’t expect the same treatment from everyone in their adult life, so let’s not begrudge them a little help when they’re still a child.
*I don’t know the specifics, I’m speculating there
Considering the standard “treatment” today is still ABA, yes. One day, they might figure out some therapy that will let me stop hearing the compressor on a refrigerator several doors away. Or some coping strategy or whatever.
Right now we’re not even past the idea that spectrum kids’ entire treatment should be: how effectively can you suppress all of your built-in coping techniques.
I don’t disagree but society needs to meet your son’s needs at least part way. I don’t know if your son is autistic or not but most of what’s out there for ASD right now involves spectrum folks expending all the effort.
I’m not even saying half way. Just some effort at all.
Over the past day or so the Australian media has been getting into a completely unfounded rage about a girls’ school (allegedly) banning gendered language. This is just piggybacking on the theme of “political correctness in Australian primary schools gone mad” while it’s a hot topic.
Schools trying to find fun and creative ways to accomodate students’ medical issues is a good thing.
I had very sensitive hearing as a kid. Somebody riding a dirtbike a quarter mile away was agonizing to me. And it was easy for me to eavesdrop on hushed conversations several rooms away, in part because our house had been built so cheaply.
By the time I was thirty, a decade and a half of loud rock-n-roll seemed to have solved the problem for me. I don’t recommend that solution to anyone.
As for this school, I think I would have liked it. I never particularly liked the sound of applause, and I always hated applauding. Hurts my hands something fierce.
I’m roughly 35 and the high end frequency range of my hearing has more holes than military vets twice my age (the dog frequency apps on phones are great fun for me because I can irritate people of all ages but can’t hear it myself ). If I can still hear faint sounds far far away, no amount of rock and roll will cure me now.
…count me as another Rock-n-Rolla solution user - I distinctly remember putting my head in the back of a cabinet at a live show to help isolate out some sounds. Spending time in a tin shed with just a cabinet & a drum kit also worked wonders for my tolerance levels.
I’ve settled on the fact that the Chinese proverb? “The nail that sticks out gets hammered” is a pretty good way to level ones expectations for what to expect from society. The more you stick out, the more you need to develop tools & coping mechanisms to adapt because if you don’t do it yourself, no one else will.
I always find thoughts of an environment adapting to suit me, as an outlier, to be a pretty utopian thought train.
I’m well old now, but still have outlier issues that I still work on because society will grind me up if I don’t.
I don’t expect people to care, perhaps you do? Maybe that’s the difference on how we approach this sort of thing? Honestly curious.
There’s a kind of liberal/conservative dichotomy at work here, somewhat akin to helping out the least of us vs. expecting folks to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Great Society vs crab bucket. This argument could carry on for centuries.
The conservative view tends to be more simplistic with black and white thinking, such as, all kids should be treated the same (as if they are privileged middle class white kids with stable family situations and sufficient safety nets and support structures in their home life to cope with anything suburbia throws at them). “Different people” are relegated to special programs and alternative classes because it’s supposedly unfair to treat them in the manner appropriate to their needs in the same classes as all the “normal kids.”
And I read “crab bucket” as “crap bucket” and I think that might be a more appropriate term.
I lost six friends in high school to suicide. They’re not around to ask what they think about schools being more sensitive these days to diversity in learning styles and other needs.
Just because most of us lived through the experience doesn’t mean it’s so great that it doesn’t need improvement.
Having a ramp for a wheelchair user doesn’t really affect anyone else or ask anything of them. They can even walk up and down that same ramp themselves. A more analogous solution would be providing earplugs or noise-cancelling headphones to the sensitive kids, not insisting that everyone else dramatically alter their behavior to accommodate them.
We put a lower-height sink and urinal in the bathroom for people who can’t comfortably use the standard ones; we don’t make them all short and force average-height people to kneel.
that.
One day, they might figure out some therapy that will let me stop hearing the compressor on a refrigerator several doors away. Or some coping strategy or whatever.
). If I can still hear faint sounds far far away, no amount of rock and roll will cure me now.
- I distinctly remember putting my head in the back of a cabinet at a live show to help isolate out some sounds. Spending time in a tin shed with just a cabinet & a drum kit also worked wonders for my tolerance levels.
