| Volume IX, Issue 1 | March, 2002 |
Medical Conference PostponedWe sorry to announce we've had to postpone our medical conference which had been planned for March 2. We were recently alerted that one of our speakers had double-booked himself, and was unable to do his presentation. Unfortunately, we were not able to secure another speaker soon enough to keep our March conference date. We are also having difficulty being able to rebook our speakers anytime soon. Having a medical conference remains a high priority for our board, and we are working hard to either find new speakers or find a date that will work for all of them. We appreciate your patience! |
by Carroll Frye
One of the goals for the Washington State TSA chapter in 2001-2002 is to provide education and awareness about TS to various groups in Washington. One specific target area is to provide training for PAVE staff and volunteers in our state. Each state has what is known as a parent training information center. Ours is Washington PAVE (Parents Are Vital in Education). This parent-directed organization exists to increase independence, empowerment, and future opportunities for students with special needs, their families and communities, through training, information, referral and support. They are an excellent resource should you have any questions or concerns about your child and special education. For more information, you can visit their website at www.washingtonpave.
Org or contact them at 1-800-55-PARENTS. Since PAVE is often called upon to advocate for children in the schools and at IEP meetings, our chapter wanted to make sure they have good information regarding TS. So, we will provide several training sessions for PAVE staff during the spring and summer of 2002. We worked with Washington PAVE before (early 1990's) to provide education and training about TS and its impact on education for our children. We believe some of the new educational materials from national TSA will be very helpful in training PAVE staff and volunteers. It is critical that we help everyone recognize TS and provide timely, helpful advice to affected children and parents.
We encourage our readers to visit the Washington PAVE website and check out the wonderful information. We also encourage you to be an active advocate for your child and others as often as possible.
We've been reporting in prior issues of Connections about the IDEAS Conference held in Spokane for school personnel who serve special education students. This year we were fortunate to be able to bring a speaker from national TSA to Spokane to give a presentation to the conference participants. Jacqueline Favish gave a 2O hour talk entitled "Understanding Tourette Syndrome and Associated Disorders - Successful Strategies." She spoke to a group of 83 people which included teachers, nurses, social workers, administrators, psychologists, parents, paraprofessionals, doctors and a government representative. Besides speaking about the challenges that students with TS+ face, she handed out a lot of informational materials, including helpful strategies and techniques, and was able to answer questions regarding specific concerns school personnel had about their TS students.
As we had done for the past two years, we also had an informational table at the conference. Chapter members Noreene Bailey, Pam Mancheni and Tonja Faraca volunteered their time over two days to sit at the table, handing out brochures and answering questions from conference participants. Noreene also assisted Jackie during her presentation. We are very grateful to these ladies for helping us in this way. Maybe someone from your child's school heard Jackie's presentation or picked up materials from our booth. It's a very direct way to raise awareness of TS in the schools and to provide useful information to the people who serve our children.
We recently added the following items to our lending library. Items may be checked out by contacting our librarian, Sue Bream, at (206) 283-0575 or sue.bream@topnetwork.com.
The Complete IEP Guide: How to Advocate for Your Special Ed Child, by Lawrence M. Siegel, Nolo Publishers, 2001. This comprehensive book will help you navigate through the maze of special ed regulations to ensure you are able to be a partner in the development of an IEP which meets your child's needs. Chapters include information on: special ed law; determining eligibility for special ed; assessments; writing goals and objectives; how to keep yourself organized; preparing for and attending IEP meetings; resolving disputes through due process; and filing a legal complaint. Templates of special ed forms and sample letters for corresponding with school personnel are also included.
Teaching Teens with ADD and ADHD: A Quick Reference Guide for Teachers and Parents, by Chris A. Zeigler Dendy, M.S., Woodbine House Publishers, 2000. Problems with attention, organization, executive functioning and challenging behaviors plague many TS students. This book is an excellent guide for both teachers and parents. It describes the neurologic basics of ADD & ADHD; academic and learning issues; executive function and organizational skills; the federal laws IDEA, Section 504 and ADA; medication issues; and classroom management and challenging behaviors. It has loads of practical, concrete suggestions for ways to modify classwork and homework to accommodate these student's special needs, and discusses how teaching strategies can affect behavior. In the appendix section, many blank forms are included which can visually aid the student in keeping track of his/her homework responsibilities and getting started with writing assignments.
We currently have 937 people on our state chapter mailing list. Of that group, only 81 have current TSA memberships. That's less than 9 percent! For every $45 you contribute to an annual national TSA membership, $12 returns to our chapter for use in local programs. This is the main source of our yearly income. We could receive over $11,000 every year if all the people on our mailing list were dues-paying members. That is close to our annual budget amount. Some chapters will not put a person on their chapter mailing list if they are not a member of national TSA. Our board's philosophy has been to not limit the information and awareness we can disseminate to people via our chapter newsletter and other mailings we send out. But we need to do better than 9 percent. Please consider starting or renewing your membership to TSA. Besides supporting your chapter, your money also works toward vital medical research via the grants that TSA makes every year. Contact them at (718) 224-2999 or ts@tsa-usa.org. Thank you!
The Tourette Syndrome Foundation of Canada's national conference will be held June 7-8, 2002 at the Fairmont Hotel in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Speakers will include: Ross Greene, Leslie Packer, Sheryl Pruitt, Anton Scamvougeras, and Duncan McKinlay, all well-known names on the TS scene. Some of the topics covered will be: understanding difficult behavior, executive dysfunction, social competence, sensory integration dysfunction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, teasing and bullying, and optimizing the treatment of TS and associated disorders. The cost will be $255 (Canadian) for two days. Contact 1-800-361-3120 or tsfc.org@sympatico.ca for more information.
Here are some of the chapters in the Red Book:
Council of Parent Attorneys & Advocates
This is an independent, nonprofit, tax-exempt organization of attorneys, advocates and parents established to improve the quality and quantity of legal assistance for parents of children with disabilities. Their website gives a variety of resources for parents who need to know what their child's legal rights are under the IDEA and Section 504.
Some of the information includes:
by George Lynn
"To see the angel in the malady requires an eye for the invisible, a certain blinding of one eye and opening of the other to elsewhere." Dr. James Hillman
The French word "blesser" for "to wound" is the root of the word "blessed." Throughout human history people have told stories about how heroes were wounded and how dealing with the wound was the source of the growth in their capabilities and contributions. From the ancient Greek stories of Hercules, the Biblical story of Jonah and the whale, through the Arthurian legends, to the modern genre of movies such as "Schindler's List" and "Star Wars," the heroes could not have achieved greatness without the wound.
A person may be wounded as a result of physical injury, psychological trauma, social deprivation (such as growing up in poverty) or possession of a physical disorder. Dr. Alfred Adler, one of Freud's inner circle, was the first psychiatrist to suggest that genius may be a response to a wound. His study of famous artists and musicians revealed that 70 percent of the art students who he studied had optical anomalies and that there were degenerative traces in the ears of many famous musicians to include Mozart, Beethoven, and Bruckner.
A wounding may crush the spirit of a person or it may be the crack that gives home and nurturing to the emergence of his spirit in such a way that the world is greatly benefited. The life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is especially interesting in this regard. If Mozart had lived today, he may have been diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome with comorbid depression, Attention Deficit Disorder, and possible psychotic ideation. He had a vocal tic, his writings showed evidence of coprographia, he "heard" musical themes in his head (the psychotic ideation), he was impulsive, and he lacked life skills. For as much money as he made, he could not keep any of it and died a pauper. Add to this wounding of growing up with a severe and unforgiving "stage father" and you have the makings of someone who our mythical neurologist would probably say was profoundly impaired and a likely candidate for psychiatric hospitalization. If Prozac had been available in the 18th century, would Mozart have taken it to deal with his affective issues? If Tenex and Risperdal were available, would he have taken these for his tics and auditory hallucinations? Chances are the answer is yes. His writings tell us that at times he was miserably unhappy.
But he would have not stayed on "meds" for long if these medications did anything to limit his ability to compose music. His music seemed to be driven as much by his neurology as by his unequaled skill in composition. There is a wild and joyful feeling to it that was appealing to all musical tastes in his time. Being wild in this way was part of Mozart's genius, his gift, and his destiny. And it was part of the way his brain functioned.
The quality of wildness seen in Mozart's persona is seen in many children with Tourette Syndrome. They stand out and may appear to "glow" with energy as a result of it. Many are drawn to the outdoors and are natural ecologists. Perhaps this is a result of the play of the limbic brain - known as the "animal" brain - in TS. John Hilkevich, co-author of the book Don't Think About Monkeys describes his sensitivity as a person with TS to the natural ecology:
"Out of my pain came visions of interconnectedness with the earth and sky and a profound feeling in both my body and soul of being animated by the same Spirit whom the universe cannot contain. With the same intensity of a Tourettic tension, I can feel in my body the hop of a rabbit or the surrender of a hawk in flight to the winds. I physically and emotionally feel the life force gushing from the wound of an injured animal or leaking from a plucked tomato, and so I pray my gratitude as I take life, with mixed feelings, to feed my own. How thin and transparent are the boundaries of life and death."
Dr. Oliver Sacks has written in depth about the interplay of the limbic system in TS, and referred to the rage seen in Tourette Syndrome in his book An Anthropologist on Mars, as "the blind fury the neocortex." Frightening as this description is, it speaks to the presence of great energy and animation in the condition. This energy may be very disturbing to people, especially to teachers who require uniform response and obedience to their instructions. In many ways, it is the requirement to attend school that most brings out the woundedness of TS. A child who cannot sit still and attend, who may be troubled by tics, or mood swings, or obsessionality, is not a good candidate for success in this setting.
But Mozart's wounds are the wounds of our children, and it is through these wounds that our kids will realize their genius. To help the Tourettic child, we must befriend his wounds and his wild side and move with him to help him express the gifts that these characteristics bring to his personality.
The three wounds of Tourette Syndrome
The wildness of TS is expressed in three powerful wounds of the condition. These characteristics are wounds because they cause the child to experience loneliness, failure, isolation, and, at times, physical and psychic pain. A change in perception of these wounds by caregivers to depathologize them opens the door to their enlistment into the child's healing process. We are confronted with the formidable task of helping the child's limbic brain sit as an equal partner with his cortical brain and to the extent that we are able to do this, he will experience a sense of wholeness and expression of his greatly animated intelligence.
1. Enormous counterwill
The first wound is counterwill. Dr. Gordon Neufield, a Vancouver developmental psychologist, has coined the term "counterwill" to denote the automatic resistance of children with an incompletely developed sense of self. Counterwill is a reflexive and unthinking opposition to the will of the other. Neufield considers the existence of counterwill to be an intrinsic aspect of being human. In his view, it is as much a part of us as our immune systems and plays a similar protective function: it gives us the ability to automatically resist control of others so that we can have the time to build our own sense of self and respond with our own personal resources. Dr. Gabor Mate, a Vancouver physician, who writes about counterwill in his book Scattered Minds, A New Look at the Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder, contends that counterwill is so pronounced in ADHD because of the sensory openness of the ADHD child to stimulation. Many children diagnosed with TS also show a powerful co-morbidity with ADHD and it is this reason that they may be so intensely reactive to attempts to discipline them or gain compliance with directives.
My experience confirms Dr. Mate's thesis that to manage counterwill, caregivers must become attuned to the child: they must become so highly trusted by him that they are able to help him develop a sense of self. As his sense of self-support and personal confidence grows, his counterwill diminishes and cooperation increases.
2. Perseverant intensity
The second great wound of Tourette Syndrome is seen in its intensity and perseverance. Every action is supercharged. Everything is done at maximum intensity. This sense of hyperarousal is expressed in the tics, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and mood disorders that often accompany TS. It is as if all stimulation, be it from affective, cognitive, or behavioral domains, is received with great signal strength and expressed just as strongly. Dr. Sacks points out that many Touretters only experience relief from this intensity when they are in a state of relaxed, intense, focus. Medication can calm this hyperaroused state but the sensitivity of Tourettic children to meds often means that they become zombie-like on the medication. Medication may diminish the disturbing presentation of the Tourettic child by dampening the "blind force of his subcortex," but it also hides the gifts related to hyperarousal seen in his physical quickness, emotional intensity, and auditory intelligence.
If hyperarousal is seen as a gift, organic ways to use the energy become apparent. Activities which draw of this energy and which permit the child to achieve excellence include exercise programs, track and field training (Touretters are not good candidates for team sports), participation in martial arts, and involvement in music. Other natural vocations include the arts, especially sculpture, and the performing arts. Sculpture is natural because it utilizes the high tactile sensitivity and deep interest in experience that characterizes TS. The performing arts are highly suitable venues for the Touretter to use his ability to portray the raw energy of people, to include the 'animal" aspects of human character in the screen play.
The obsessional pursuit of perfection in sports and great bursts of speed that TS children are capable of, makes them candidates for success in these activities. Involvement in music or any activity that requires powerful auditory intelligence is also a natural fit for them. It is no surprise that many of them like to drum. Drumming is repetitive, earthy (it brings up the earth energy, what the Spanish poets call the "duende," (the gnome), and it is physically exciting.
3. Love of Extreme Experience and the Taboo
The presence of coprolalia, echolalia, coprographia, copropraxia, and scatological reference are partially diagnostic of Tourette Syndrome. The exercise of these behaviors is shocking to many people and contributes to the disturbing reputation of the disorder. In my psychotherapy practice, I have also seen several cases of cross-dressing in pre-pubescent TS children. These manifestations of the condition were probably the reason that people with TS were thought to be possessed by the devil in ancient times. Tourettic children seem to enjoy fracturing taboos and changing form. And many of these children love extreme experience. They like their food very hot and spicy. They like to go from a very hot Jacuzzi to a snow bank. They like to run in the cold of the night. Everything is done to the extreme. Again we see the voice of the limbic brain in the personality. Expressed directly in TS, these behaviors are evidence of the presence of the animality in all of us that our cortical brains would just as soon deny. They are the signature of wildness in Tourette Syndrome that give an earthy, real-life quality to the condition. They show the joy of young animals in just being alive and the disdain for being caged or controlled by culture.
Medication may be partially useful in controlling these behaviors, but once again, there is a price to pay in terms of the loss of energy, spirit, and soulfulness with its use. What price the gift?
There is an axiom in psychology that all behavior, as weird as it may seem, fulfills a function for the person. I hypothesize that these taboo behaviors fulfill the need of the Tourette child's limbic brain to experience the limits of sensation and corporeality. Performance of coprolalia, for example, brings the child head-to-head with cultural mores and creates a great and interesting disturbance. Though the child's cortical brain may recoil in horror and embarrassment from what he just said, his limbic brain jumps with delight at it. That is not to say that the "copros" are intentional, any more than other behavior associated with the limbic system, such as OCD, are intentional. It is to say that a very powerful aspect of human nature is being activated and we ignore or suppress this aspect at peril to the child's health. The blessing that these behaviors hold for the human race are seen in the message that they bring to all of us: that we are (to quote Kierkegaard), "worm food." And that it is in acceptance of animality that we will avoid the horrors of civilization to include war and the tireless rape of the environment.
On an individual level, I have seen that these impulses are assuaged by helping the child follow natural power in the creative arts and sciences. Be it the power of water, or electricity, or computers, or Shakespeare, these kids love to ask the "what if" questions that frame the joy of experimenting and finding out. They should be encouraged in these pursuits for it may be their gift in unconventional perspective, that one day creates a solution for a social or environmental problems that cannot be conceived by more conventional minds. TS makes people disturbing. But human systems need disturbance in the same way that the earth needs great storms to move things around. This power to move things is ultimately the genius of TS. I don't think Mozart would have chosen the great pain that he experienced in life if he could have made the choice as a boy. Who wants the kind of trouble he experienced? But it was his destiny to feed the spirit of the world in this particular way.
The story of Mozart's life informs us that he may have lived longer and given us till greater gifts if his father had loved him and accepted him unconditionally. It is this unconditional acceptance of all aspects of the child with TS, to include all his unruliness, irreverence, and wild behavior, that creates the soil in which his gifts will flower to their potential magnificence.
George Lynn, M.A., C.M.H.C., is a psychotherapist from Bellevue who has pioneered the use of counseling interventions to help children and adults with attention differences: ADD, Tourette Syndrome, Asperger's Syndrome, and the mood disorders. He is the author of the popular guide for raising children with extreme behavior issues, "Survival Strategies for Parenting Your ADD Child: Dealing with Obsessions, Compulsions, Depression, Explosive Behavior, and Rage" (Underwood Books, 1996). He may be contacted at GeorgeLynn@aol.com or through his website: www.childspirit.com.
by Judy Simon
Editor's note: Special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) are no longer available once a student graduates from high school with a diploma. However, the student can still request accommodations in class- and homework as well as modifications to the classroom environment under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) also applies. Although the following article was written by someone looking at colleges primarily on the East Coast, the methods she used to pick a college are applicable to anyone.
Finding the right college for your child can be an overwhelming, stressful process; if he or she has a disability there are even more factors that you need to consider in your search. I can't profess to have all the answers, nor can I conclude that there is a right or wrong way to go about it, but I can relate the steps we went through looking for a college that would be a good match for our son Andy, who has TS, OCD and ADD. Hopefully, our experiences will help others who will be going through the college search process.
Our earliest concerns were whether a child who was so dependent on parents, teachers, resource room and guidance counselors for his day-to-day survival would ever function well enough on his own to be able to go to college. We worried that, although Andy was very intelligent, his lack of social skills, emotional control and organizational skills would prevent him from ever matriculating in college at all. We didn't realize that his social, emotional and organizational development would continue throughout high school, and now, as a senior in high school, he looks nothing like the child he was at 10 or 11 or even 15 or 16 years of age. Students use the PSAT and SAT scores to help identify a college that will be a good match for them academically; typically, they don't take these tests until the 11th grade. Although some of them may be thinking about college long before that, not until that age can they seriously zero in on those schools that would be appropriate for them. It is the same with social development; you may be considering a range of potential schools from community colleges and small colleges with intensive disability support systems to large state universities, but not until your child is in 10th or 11th grade can you gauge his/her social and emotional development well enough to be able to narrow down the selection to a smaller set of appropriate schools.
We started our search by accumulating information on colleges, keeping them on two separate lists: the first included schools that were a good academic and social fit and the second included those with disability support services. We added and eliminated schools from the first list based on information we found in the standard college guides, such as those by Edward Fiske, Loren Pope, The College Finder by Steven Antonoff, the Princeton Review, Peterson's Guides, the Insider's Guide and the USNews and World Report rankings. All of these can be found in public libraries and bookstores, and much information can also be found on the internet at sites such as www.collegeboard.com and www.usnews.com. Also, colleges have detailed information on their own websites. The kinds of information we got from these sources included, size, location and cost of attending the school, average SAT scores and proportion of applicants admitted, proportion of students who return after freshman year and who graduate within six years, proportion of students in fraternities and sororities, extra-curricular activities, whether the school tends toward liberal or conservative, diversity, and how accepting the school is of students who are different. At this stage we had to think about whether or not Andy would live at home and go to a local college, live in the dorms at a local college or go away to school, and if so, how far away. Would he be more comfortable at a small liberal arts college where he could get a lot of individualized attention or a large university where he wouldn't stand out as being the kid with the disability? Would he rather go to a college in a city, suburb or rural area? Andy had strong opinions on some of these variables, on others he didn't know what his preferences were, and on some he didn't care.
We obtained information on disability support from several sources also. It required considerable investigation. We started with the K. and W. Guide and Peterson's Colleges for Students with Learning Disabilities or Attention Deficit Disorders. Both are available at libraries and bookstores. These guides provide a general overview of finding a college for a child with a disability and suggest specific accommodations. They also identify many schools with disability support and classify the level of support from partial to comprehensive. The school with the most comprehensive services we found was Landmark College in Vermont. It is a fully accredited college designed specifically for students with learning disabilities and ADD. Although colleges and universities are legally not allowed to discriminate against persons with disabilities, in practice the level of support ranges from zero to comprehensive. Our goal was to find the intersection of the two lists of schools - those that were a good social and academic fit and those with disability support. A key aspect of the search was determining how committed these schools are to supporting a student with TS.
Most colleges expect students to seek college information on their own and contact the schools themselves. This is an unrealistic expectation for many students with TS (as well as many without). Whenever we found that a school was insistent on limiting the parent's role in the college search, we felt this college did not understand neurobiological disorders and would not be a good match for our son. While some of the schools didn't respond to our request for information on disability services at all, some of them, including Brown University, New York University and University of Rochester responded eagerly.
How do you determine the level of support a college is willing to give to students with disabilities? We did not have the time, nor did Andy have the patience, to visit many schools to fined out in person. While other families were doing the spring, summer and fall trips stopping at five or six colleges per trip, we were doing our search in the library, on the Internet and on the telephone. Once we had limited the choices to five or six schools, we could visit the top two choices. Then, if Andy wasn't accepted at either of those, we could visit the rest.
We were able to find a tremendous amount of information on the USNews site and on each college's own website. On the USNews website, if you click on "education," then on "colleges," look at the rankings and click on any individual college, then click on "disability" you can find much specific information. For example, following this procedure for Washington University in St. Louis, you find that Wash U provides note-taking services, oral testing, readers, tutors, talking books, reading machines, tape recorders, videotaped classes, untimed tests, learning center and extended time for tests. You can find the colleges' own websites in some of the college guides mentioned above or by doing an Internet search. Often we had to read between the lines and interpret what was and was not included on the website. If the disability support office and services were easy to find, that was a good first step. When there was no disability information on the college's website, it gave us the impression that the college was not interested in attracting students with disabilities. We didn't eliminate the college from our list because the omission could have been an oversight, but we were more likely to follow up on a school that was proud to be in compliance. Even better were those colleges which listed the specific supports they offer. You can figure out from the accommodations whether they are more geared toward students with physical than neurobiological disabilities. Thought none of them mentioned TS, a good barometer of a school's willingness to provide accommodations for a student with TS is whether or not it lists accommodations for students with ADD. Any questions you have can be followed up by an e-mail or phone call to the college.
Often included on the school's website is the procedure for requesting accommodations, and some even have a request form that you can download and print. Typically, the student doesn't apply for services until after s/he is accepted to the college. Some schools consider it the student's responsibility to notify professors that s/he has a disability while other schools will notify the professors for the student. However, no school will notify professors without the student's written permission. We thought it was a good idea to limit our search to colleges that make the commitment to notify professors and follow up in the case of non-compliance. One of the colleges we identified (Brown University) will notify professors, intervene in the case of non-compliance and offers self-advocacy classes and mentors for students with disabilities. Colleges such as Brown - and there are many others - that systematically provide preventive services and teach self advocacy are providing support and a safety net while helping the student become more independent.
Medium to large universities generally have an office designed for coordination of services for students with disabilities with a coordinator or director and several staff members. I would be wary of a university with more than 3,000 students that doesn't have such an office. We found that some universities, such as Carnegie Mellon University, include the student disability services within the Office of Equal Opportunity Employment for staff and faculty. The services are nearly entirely devoted to staff with physical disabilities. This was clearly not appropriate for our son.
Another thing to watch for is how many staff members work in the disability support office, and if the number has increased or decreased over the past few years. If the office has only one or two part time workers and the director leaves, there may be no coordinated support services when your child enrolls. Johns Hopkins University has a student disability office, but when I called I found out that the director had retired; her position wasn't filled and she was going to be continuing on a part time basis until they found a replacement. She assured me that her staff could run the office without her. As of my last phone call, there was still no replacement. Though JHU may well provide accommodations, I wasn't sure who would go to bat for Andy if, for example, one of his professors refuses to let him take tests in a distraction-free location.
Small liberal arts colleges do not usually have a separate office for students with disabilities. Instead, there is a dean or assistant dean who is assigned the job of disability support coordination. Sometimes you can tell by the website if the school welcomes students with disabilities or not. If there is ample information on accommodations, you can assume that the school's position officially is favorable. If there is little or not information, either it is an oversight or the school really is not interested in attracting students with disabilities. Again, any questions can be cleared up by a call or e-mail.
For all of you who are or will be taking this exciting journey, I wish you a fruitful search. We found it heartening that so many schools are committed to delivering a first class education to students with a disability. Our search had a happy ending; Andy was accepted to his first choice school, Brown University.
Judy Simon is Treasurer for the Long Island Chapter of TSA and a social worker in private practice. This article was reprinted with the permission of the Long Island Chapter of TSA.
by Waring R. Fincke, Attorney at Law
Editors Note: Training of police departments in issues relating to TS is a goal of our chapter this year. We are obtaining a curriculum that the Pennsylvania chapter has successfully used and hope to schedule presentations with various police departments in our state. If you are interested in assisting in this effort, or if you have had experiences with police where there has been misunderstanding because of your or your child's TS, we would be interested in hearing from you. Contact Bernadette Witty at (206) 780-5361 or bwitty@qwest.net.
After almost twenty years of defending citizens accused of crime. I offer what everyone needs to know in order to protect themselves when talking with the police.
It is important to remember that the reasons the police are dealing with you may end up being explained to a judge or jury in a courtroom. Police officers are trained to write down what people say and to repeat what they have heard later from their notes and reports. Most people do not write down what goes on between them and the police and they're at a disadvantage when it comes time to recall who said what several months or even years later.
So how do you deal with the officer who comes up to you on the street and says "hold on, I want to talk with you?" Your first response might be, "How can I help you?" or if might be 'What do you want?" The first example sets a better tone with the officer and lets her know that you are willing to talk, at least at first. The second example is more hostile and will be taken as a challenge to the officer's authority. The first response might very well lead the officer to say, "We're investigating a burglary that just happened down the street and want to know if you saw anything." The second response may make the officer say, "Turn around and put your hands on the wall," followed by a pat down search where the officer searches your clothing for weapons which may be used to harm her or others. That will be followed by, "What's your name and let's see some identification?" How you respond will often determine what happens next.
The basic rules after your first contact with an officer depends on what you might have done (which you know about) and what the officer thinks you have done (which you may not know about). If you get the sense that the officer wants to talk with you because he thinks you might be involved in criminal activity, then it is important to remember that the officer does not have to warn you of your constitutional rights unless she arrests you and intends to ask you questions.
The famous Miranda warnings go like this, "You have the right to remain silent and not say anything which might incriminate yourself. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You can stop answering questions I ask you at anytime. You have the right to have a lawyer with you when you go to court or during questions. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you.
"Officers do not have to give these warnings unless you have been arrested and they intend to ask you questions. This means that anything you might say or write, before you are arrested, can be used against you in court. Many people have received lengthy prison terms because of what they said or wrote before their arrest. Many people have talked with police and admitted to criminal activity while on the street and paid the price for their ignorance of the law with a long stay in prison.
The advice contained in the warnings applies to all police-citizen contacts. If approached by an officer, you do not have to answer any questions she may ask you, even if you are not arrested. You are perfectly within your rights to say to the officer who asks to speak with you, "Officer, I do not want to speak with you. Good bye." At this point you should be free to leave the officer's presence. The officer may not like this and may challenge you with words like, "If you have nothing to hide, why won't you speak to me?" Just like the first questions, you do not have to answer this one either.
If you refuse to answer the officer's questions, she might take the next step by saying, "You will have to stay here and answer my questions" or "You're not leaving until I find out what I want." If the officer restrains you by words or actions, such as putting you in a squad car or in handcuffs, then she must give you the Miranda warnings, if she intends to ask you questions. If she just wants you to sweat, she may not give you the warnings at all and just take you to the station, just to show you who is the boss.
If you are not free to leave, you have been arrested, whether or not you are taken to a police station. If the police have arrested you, that means that they have enough information to believe that you are at least a suspect in criminal activity. Under these circumstances, you should follow the advice of the warnings and refuse to tell the officers anything unless you are provided with a lawyer. After telling the officer your name and date of birth, you should say, "I will not answer any more questions until I have a lawyer present." This may mean that you will spend a little bit longer time in jail until you can call a lawyer, but it will be worth the wait. You will not be able to successfully talk your way out of police custody, once you are arrested, without a lawyer's help.
Sometimes the police arrest people on suspicion, hoping that they will confess or make a statement which can be used against the person. Often, the police will tell the arrested person that cooperation with them is best and it will go better for them if they cooperate by talking. Remember, talking and writing are the same and you do not have to sign a written statement because it can be used against you.
Officers may promise shorter sentences and other deals for statements or confessions. The police cannot legally make deals with people they arrest. The only person who can make a deal that can be enforced is the prosecutor, and he should not talk with you without a lawyer present who represents you.
It is legal for the police to lie to you about what they know or suspect or what other people have said about you. The police might try these or other tricks to get you to talk. Police often do not tape record or videotape interviews with those they arrest. If you talk with them, it will be your word against the officer's word about what you said. You should refuse to talk without a lawyer present to represent you, no matter what the police say. A weekend spent in jail waiting for a lawyer is better than a lengthy prison sentence spent because you talked to the police without a lawyer to help you. Trying to talk your way out of the police station by telling the police what they want to hear or by telling a lie will always do much more harm than good to your case.
The only exception to this rule is if you are arrested for drunk driving. Then, you will need to figure out if you want to take a breath or chemical test, as required by law. If your refuse to take such a test, after being arrested for drunk driving, your driver's license can be revoked for a year or more for refusing to take the test.
If you have been arrested for just drunk driving, it may be advisable to take the test. If you were involved in an accident where people were killed or seriously injured, it may be advisable not to take the test and suffer the revocation rather than give the police evidence of your possible intoxication. In either event, the police do not have to let you speak with a lawyer before taking the test. If you tell them that you will not take the test without a lawyer present, they will treat your comment as a refusal and so will the court.
Remember, in most situations you are under no obligation to talk with the police. If you are arrested, then you should immediately ask to have a lawyer present and you should not say anything to the police until a lawyer who represents you is present.
Reprinted with permission from the Pennsylvania TSA chapter newsletter, January 2002 issue.
FEDERAL NEWS
President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education
Some of the concerns of students with disabilities are being addressed at the federal level. In October 2001, President Bush created a commission to find ways of improving the educational performance of students with disabilities. The President's Commission on Excellence in Special Education is made up 19 members who will attempt to find what methods are most effective for educating students with special needs. In addition to reviewing research and local special education programs, the commission will hold meetings around the country and welcome input from the public at large. The areas they will be focusing on include improving results, early intervention, cost-effectiveness, teacher quality, and funding methods. The commission can be contacted online at: http://www.ed.gov/inits/commissionsboards/whspecialeducation/index.html or at (202) 208-1312.
IDEA Reauthorization
The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act is scheduled to be reauthorized by the US Congress in 2002, an exercise which takes place about every five years. During the debates on H.R. 1, the No Child Left Behind Act (reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act), two IDEA amendments (full funding and discipline of students with disabilities) were debated by members of Congress. Because of this, it is likely that all sections of IDEA will be closely scrutinized during the 2002 IDEA reauthorization schedule.
Some of the key issues will include monitoring and enforcement; full funding; discipline; and eligibility and over-representation of students from culturally diverse backgrounds. Education Secretary Rod Paige wrote in an op-ed piece, "Serious challenges remain in providing students with disabilities the free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment to which they are entitled by the IDEA. For example, according to data from the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, black children are almost twice as likely to be identified as emotionally disturbed as white children and more than twice as likely to be identified as mentally retarded. Our system fails to teach many of these children fundamental skills like reading and then inappropriately identifies some of them as having disabilities. Not only does this hurt those children who are misidentified, it also reduces the resources available to serve children with disabilities. However, we must be careful that students are not wrongfully excluded for the sake of saving money."
This is your opportunity to let our federal government know how important it has been to your child to have the legal safeguards afforded by this Act which allow children with disabilities to receive a free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. Each time the IDEA comes up for reauthorization, there are many senators and representatives who try to amend the Act in ways which would seriously erode the rights your child has. We can't assume that this law will stay as written. It must be constantly defended by the people who benefit from it most.
To voice your opinion, contact the following as soon as possible:
Email - It is preferable to send your comments by email to Comments@ed.gov. You must use the term "IDEA Reauthorization" in the subject line of your electronic message.
Surface Mail -
Thomas Irvin
Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services,
U.S. Department of Education,
400 Maryland Avenue, SW.,
Mary E. Switzer Building,
Room 3086,
Washington DC, 20202-2570
Mental Health Parity
Congress once again failed to pass legislation which would require large companies to provide parity in insurance coverage for mental health treatment. The Senate passed legislation to this affect, but final passage was defeated by House Republicans. In a letter to co-sponsor Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), President Bush said that he is "committed to this important priority and looks forward to working with Congress on it next year." With Congress back in session, you can let your representatives know that you are counting on Congress to enact a strong mental health parity bill this year. Members of the authorizing committees in the House of Representatives (the Committees on Energy & Commerce, Education & the Workforce, and Ways & Means), should also be contacted. The chairmen of these committees pressured their colleagues to reject the Senate-adopted parity amendment because it had bypassed their committees.
Mental Health Parity
The subject of parity for mental health insurance coverage was reintroduced in January. HB 1080 and SB 5211 would be a step in the right direction. These bills would require that mental health benefits for children suffering from certain mental health problems including obsessive compulsive disorder, be covered by insurance plans and also that certain catastrophic mental disorders in adults be covered.
Bullying in Schools
SHB1444, which would require schools to implement policies to prevent bullying, harassment and intimidation at school, on school grounds and school events has been passed by the House, with a hearing in the Senate scheduled for late February. Governor Locke has voiced support for this type of legislation also. Last session it was blocked by a few members of the legislature, but as of this time its passage looks promising.
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