u/dizzyblueberries

There's a severely developmentally delayed child in my 2.5-3yo room who spends most of the day trying to do unsafe things and screaming, hitting, kicking, and biting me when she is not allowed to do them. She is nonverbal and requires 1:1 attention to prevent her hurting herself or others. Redirection to other toys or sensory activities, even similar to what she wants, does not work. Instead she continues screaming for up to 50 minutes at a time and has to be physically blocked from engaging in unsafe activities, all the while hitting, kicking and biting me. I have scars on my arms from her.

I am the only one in my classroom, meaning the rest of the kids are not adequately supervised. Whenever I leave her to go deal with the resulting conflicts or injuries of other chileren, I cannot physically prevent her from doing what she wants. This has included covering herself, another child, and the bathroom with pee from a toilet a child had just gotten up from, throwing herself down the stairs to the loft, throwing books or toys across the room or our of the loft, eating crayons, slamming her head into the ground, going into the storage closet and dumping out bins of toys, ripping all the decorations off the walls and eating them, removing covers off the vents and swinging them around, taking papers off the counter, and getting into the laundry basket to suck on used mop pads. Repeatedly. Every time I turn my back.

After 35+ incident reports over two weeks, a corporate "behavior specialist" came to observe. For the last several weeks, i have been running the over ratio but I was suddenly magically in ratio for the observation. Wow!!! Amazing right??!??

The "behavior specialist" allowed her to play with the circle time book which is one of the few materials in the room that's only for teachers, as she destroyed the one in her last classroom.

Because it was new to her, she sat by the behavior specialist and played nicely with it for 20 min while everyone else did art (for the first time in months bc i can't do any curriculum with her in the room by myself). By the end of the time she was throwing the book.

The behavioral specialist had two suggestions to fix her behavior:

✨️🎊🎀🎉💓 "GiVE hER a BuCkEt of WaTeR to PlAy in So shE doEsn'T plAy iN thE tOiLeTs" ✨️🎊🎀🎉💓

OMG. WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT???‼️🤯

Oh wait!! I did!!!! 😱🤯

I've tried it before, and she dumped the entire goddamn bucket all over the fucking floor and herself and her friends while I was changing a diaper, then ran to play in the toilet. I can't exactly leave a kid alone on the changing table, so toilet playtime it is!

Also, let her play with the ONE SINGLE BOOK she's not allowed to. let go of another boundary! Sure, why not??!??

Anyway, I'm quitting.

This is so detrimental to all the other kids, to me, and to the classroom environment. The amount of injures I've gotten from her is ridiculous, and she's starting to harm other kids as well. I feel bad for her. She needs significant intervention, speech and occupational therapy, and support. She won't get it here, let alone in a room that's chronically over ratio.

I'm sure others have dealt with situations like this and I'd love to hear it because I'm so exhausted and burnt out and miserable, i feel like a failure for quitting, and I need to hear I'm not alone.

We got a new assiatant director recently, who I really tried to like and give the benifit of the doubt, but I'm so overwhelmed. A lot of staff have left because of her behavior, and now we're severely understaffed. They haven't been able to hire anyone and the people who start don't stay.

Context for the quote above, which happened about two weeks ago: the 1yo to younger 3yo rooms have to stay in the same room in the morning until we get "the plan" from the director or assistant director about where we're supposed to move kids and who is going where. That morning they did not give us a plan, and three staff would have been significantly over ratio if we had moved into our own rooms. We called to check with them but there was nothing until 8:45 (we'd been combined since 6:30).

She came in and told two of us to go to our rooms. After we were gone she said that to the rest of the staff, because we hadn't "figured it out" or just gone to our rooms. Several people quit within the next couple days because that was the last straw for them.

The way she communicates things is frequently passive aggressive, like talking to the kids about things we're doing wrong instead of us. She keeps changing things that decrease the quality of life of the kids, and she keeps pulling my just turned 3yos into the room where 4-5yos and school age kids go, there are ~25 kids in there. Some of my kids are so anxious they talk about their tummies hurting all day, not knowing where they'll go. She is in that classroom now because all the teachers for that age group left, and someone told me that one child I dropped off sobbing and having a panic attack cried all morning and she snapped at him to stop whining.

I understand that we have no staff, and she's stressed out, and that's why they are moving kids but who's fault is that? It's so unfair to these kids and it breaks my heart. I don't cry easily but on Friday I did twice at work because I love them do much and I don't want them to be living in this state or constant anxiety.

I also found out I'm still going to be running a 3yo ratio despite half the kids they're moving up to me being 2yos, so that's overwhelming to think about too.

I can't report to corperate because they love her and would never fire her, and I would face repercussions. Staff that have been there for 10-30years are worried to question her decisions that are harmful to kids or staff, because people who question her get fired. I'm already worried someone I know will find this post, but I feel like I'm going crazy and need to hear from other people in the field.

I don't want to go in tomorrow but I have no choice, because I live in a rural area and there are few other options. I loved my job before last week, I love my kids so much and it brings me joy to watch them grow and develop but I'm not sure I can take much more of this. I'm just so tired, I can't stop crying all weekend because I just want these kids to have ay least a decent quality of care but there aren't any other centers nearby these families can go to.

I just need to say this to someone who might understand because no one in my life really does. If you read this and have thoughts or advice thank you so much.