Things I've learned about parenting today:

1. Without consequences, we cannot learn.

We have a student who has been nothing short of difficult since the first day of school. If anything is expected of him or he is asked to do anything at all, he throws a complete fit. It starts out just whining and yelling, but when he doesn't get what he wants, he very quickly escalates into throwing things (not little things, but like computers, phones, etc) and hitting anyone he can get to. The best part is that his mother has issued a hands-off policy with this student, meaning if he hurts other people, we cannot restrain him or put him in a time out room. Today, as soon as he got here, he was spurting out things that his mom had apparently been saying about us over the weekend. He has autism. That's what he does -- repeats everything he hears. He is a smart kid and can recognize when there is tension, so already he knows that there is tension between his mom and the people at school. So, whose side is he supposed to take? It got to the point where the school administration had to be in there, taking away everything he could use as a weapon and separating him from the para he'd been beating on all morning. Then, they called his mom to come in, where she began to give him ice for his self-inflicted pain and stroke his hair, telling him everything would be okay. That calmed him down for a little bit, but that is after a para had to go to the hospital with 2 black eyes, a migraine, and many bruises, etc, phones and computers were broken, and the rest of the classroom got cheated out of a morning of learning. He has had no consequences for his actions, so how will this cycle end? Everything we try to accomplish at school is contradicted at home, as well as the integrity of our work being questioned, so how does she expect her son to ever succeed?

That's all I have time to write for now, but as you can see, it's been a long day.