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When my daughter was 3, we put her in a special day class for kids with special needs, mainly communication problems. We thought we would give it a try because she was not talking at all.

She hated it. For over 2 months she cried every day. They thought she was choosing to not talk, and they asked me to send her foods that she could not easily open at lunch time. They would only open the food if she asked them to. She never did.

One day, I picked her up and she was hysterical. They left her outside alone with the male janitor after recess because "she wouldn't come inside". She was 3 years old. They could have picked her up and brought her inside. They didn't call me. I have a cell phone, and I lived close to the school. I could have been there in 5 minutes.

My daughter never went back. We found out that she was not a selective mute, but she had severe brain damage. One of the problems was that her mouth muscles are very weak.

We put her in a regular preschool with talking kids. She loved it!!!! We only had 1 discipline problem. She would run to the bathroom and the teacher didn't know where she was. We taught her to go to her teacher and point to her private parts. Problem solved.

We also switched to a great speech therapist who worked on strengthening my daughter's muscles and then taught her to talk.

She's still got a long way to go, but with the right placement and therapy she's doing great.

There are good teachers, and there are bad teachers. There are things a teacher should never do.

I also know of another kid who was mainstreamed into a regular kindegarten class. The parent picked him up one day, and he had been restrained in a chair for a very long time. The school had insisted that the child was ready for kindegarten, and the parent decided to go along with the school (and didn't trust her own intuition). The kid wandered in class and was a total disruption.

Instead of restraining the kid every day, the parents figured out the real solution. They switched him to a preschool class in another school. Now, the child is doing wonderfully. He is not have "behavior problems". In the first school, he was not in the correct environment, and it caused problems.

Teachers need to work with parents to figure out these soloutions. Sometimes, teachers think they know it all (or they just don't care).

I have never said that a kid should not be separated from regular ed kids. Each kid needs to be looked at individually.