Stigmatizing!!! We had a child with a serious heart defect, the parents insisted the child ride a regular school bus instead of the special needs bus. The special needs bus has a driver and an assistant who is trained for whatever medical problems that could arise. Regular ed buses it is just the driver. The parents insisted and the driver was a wreck the entire time worrying should something happen she could not react fast enough. Risk your childs life and stress out an innocent person, just so they won’t perceive being stigmatized.
It is especially stigmatizing to have one’s child picked up in a special ed school bus! Good heavens, what would the neighbors think?
This whole thread interests me because I have a daughter who is developmentally disabled. She was mainstreamed throughout grade school and attends some regular classes now in high school but she functions at a fairly high level and she was never disruptive or violent as this autistic 6-year old is. However, she is also in a program designed for special ed students and is not mainstreamed for all of her classes because that is what is best for her.
I can’t believe that the parents of this 6-year old think that it is a good thing to put him into a regular kindergarten class since he isn’t going to derive any benefit from it and since he is actually a danger to his classmates and teacher. The only explanation can be that they think it stigmatizes a child to put him into a special ed class or school. The truth of the matter is that the other children know that he is different and they aren’t going to treat him as though he were normal whether or not he is mainstreamed.