"Chew Food Not People"

This, of course, is good advice for everyone, but it is especially good advice for a certain six-year-old boy with autism who I happen to work with.

The advice (well, it was more like a direction) was given to him by our assistant principal after he had bitten his aide on the arm twice. When we brought him to her office, he was screaming at the top of his lungs that we "don't call dad!!" Screaming and sobbing. When we were finally able to calm him down, our AP told him in plain and simple terms that teeth were for chewing food, not people, and that if he made that choice again, we would be calling dad. When we were sure that he understood the rules and the consequences, we sent him back to class with his long-suffering aide.

About an hour later, I'm walking out of the lounge towards my classroom when I notice our social worker RUNNING down the hall to my room. Never a good sign. It means a kid is having some sort of fit or meltdown, or timeout. It was my little guy again. He had bit his aide again! This time the regular ed teacher and the aide brought him to the office. We called his dad while he was half screaming, half crying, and curled up in a ball against his teachers' chest.

When the aide hung up the phone, she started to discuss with the kiddo what his dad had said. He didn't want to hear any of it, so he flattened himself out like a board (laying across his teacher's lap), closed his eyes, crossed his arms in the shape of an X across his chest, and stuck out his tongue. He was literally playing dead. The sheer unexpectedness of this action (in all of its six-year-old wisdom and logic) was enough to make each of us turn away from him and laugh into our sleeves.

Must... keep... a straight face... for discipline....