Chill out rooms

Exactly what it says on the label – it causes chills to occur.  I have a proper issue with time out rooms, chill out spaces and anything else you might want to call them.   I have just found yet another article in Autism Eye on the abuse of chill-out rooms.  It is all so true, yet not a soul seems to do anything about it.  Stardust will tell you how much he despises the places too, he will tell you in such graphic detail that you will be moved beyond words.

We have had endured a slow moving few days and eventually just yesterday we made some headway.  After a meltdown of severe proportions Stardust opened up his heart and soul to me and cried and cried and cried.  He cried so heavily that I thought that half of Newcastle may have gone under water; we had puddles on the floor made from his tears.

.....so two years later we still have to endure the flashbacks of the so called well intentioned staff, the staff that we trusted with the care of our precious child.  The staff that insisted that Stardust was manipulating situations and purposefully being difficult, the staff that told us that Stardust should be given drugs to calm him down, the staff that were only interested in conformity and pushing their philosophy of tough love onto him.  The list could go on and it will in our heads.  Stardust is 9 years old and his life is one huge obstacle, he doesn’t need to be involved with individuals that have a limited understanding, he doesn’t need the added stress. He needs compassion, he needs guidance and he needs people around him that he can trust fully.

I would love for Alfie Kohn to pay the management at that place a visit, he would have so many words and so many clever ways of describing things that the staff would be squirming.  As it happens I could not articulate myself, I could not because my emotions were so charged.  I regret the fact I have not had my say – although it would I am sure have made little difference.  They were adamant that their way is the best and only way and we disagreed.  Stardust stood his ground and fought against it.  He knows what is right and wrong and he knew that he was being bullied by people that should have known better.

He said to me yesterday that he is one of the lucky ones, one of the children who were saved by their Mummy.  He worries about the children left behind, he says to me every now and again that he hopes they have found their voice to tell someone what is happening.   This is the sad reality of what goes through his ever thinking and tick tocking brain.  He is not lucky, he should never have been in that horrendous situation.  

Unless you are a parent who has been through this torment and experience the emotions you feel when you find out facts like ‘yes your child was guided (restrained) 12 x in 9 days’ and ‘yes he sat under a table most of the day’ you can never ever pass comment.  You cannot ever understand however hard you try.  I know because I am a very sensitive and empathic person and the emotions felt and still feel relating to this incident are like nothing else.  They fuel something you cannot describe.  It is inappropriate extortionate abuse and there is no getting away from it. 

Stardust went through this and then was literally dropped like a brick from another planet.  He was left floating in the galaxy trying to find his way through.   I have such a fabulous family, we immediately put therapies into place for him, I ensured he had some support and he had positive people around him.  Along the way I have made mistakes, I have made wrong choices and I have trusted the wrong people.  We all learn and we move on.  Time heals wounds and all that....just sometimes it hurts because time is too slow.