I arrived a few minutes before the bell that ends the school day. I realized that one of my friends was trying to get my attention and directing my gaze down the outdoor corridor outside my daughter’s classroom. I saw my daughter walking toward me with another friend of mine – fortunately one that has known her since preschool and still sees us often enough for her to be familiar to my daughter. My daughter was visibly upset, though not frantic. My friend said that she hadn’t been able to get into her classroom and had been trying to figure out where she was supposed to be. Just then the classroom door opened, and my daughter dashed in. Brief explanations were offered. The students hadn’t been dismissed yet, so the door closed again and I stood there trying to process what was going on.
My daughter is pulled out of the last 30 minutes of class once a week for social skills support. Evidently the person who oversees these sessions allowed my daughter to walk back to class with her social skills partner, a neurotypical peer. The girls walked back to their adjacent classrooms together, but the other girl’s room was open and she went in. For some reason my daughter’s classroom had been locked, and she couldn’t get in. She tried knocking, but the hum of classroom work obscured her knocking. I’m not sure how long she stood there before my friend happened along and saw her and got involved. My daughter said another mom had offered to help, but she didn’t know this person as well, so probably didn’t accept the offer. My friend tried knocking to no avail. She walked with my daughter to the science room to see if the class had gone there, and then came back at which point they saw me and you know the rest of the story.
After class was dismissed the teacher and I debriefed with my daughter to piece the whole story together. The teacher was very apologetic. The door shouldn’t have been locked. Normally isn’t. I’ve seen the social skills professional walk her back to class sometimes, but this time having a peer companion had been deemed sufficient. It was a set of random events that combined to something that in the end worked out okay, but the alternate endings have me feeling a bit queasy. Random events just don’t go well with a child that relies on the expected, the familiar, the routine.
Interestingly, she was over it all long before I was. Maybe she can’t imagine the what ifs that I can. What if this had happened significantly before pick-up time when no adults were available to offer assistance? What if she had truly panicked and bolted, no one really knowing her whereabouts or state of mind at that point? What if…
So we have told her what she should do if “something like that” happens again. We told her to walk back to the office and ask them to call her teacher. We labeled this, “The Safest Thing To Do.” I have to hope that in any similar situation she will remain regulated enough to remember this plan. The teacher asked the social skills staff person to walk her back to class from now on, too. So maybe it will never happen again anyway.
What if I’m over-reacting. What do you think?