Category: Advocacy
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What If We Stopped Asking, “How Do We Stop This Behavior?”
There is a question I have heard many times in my years as a parent, educator, and advocate: “How do we stop this behavior?” It is an understandable question. When a child is screaming, running from a classroom, hitting, refusing to participate, throwing things, or otherwise struggling to regulate, adults need to respond. Teachers have…
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Making Restraint and Seclusion Data Accessible: Introducing Our New Data Explorer
How often are children being physically restrained or secluded in your school district? Which schools report the most incidents? Who is being subjected to these practices, and what questions should we be asking about the numbers? Families, educators, advocates, and policymakers need access to this information. But finding it, understanding it, and using it should…
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The Door Opened but the Trauma Followed: My Life After Restraint, Seclusion and Segregation
My name is Chris Hall. I am an autistic adult from Braintree, Massachusetts. Over the years, I have worked with computers, bicycles, and accessible transportation while trying to create a life and a way of working that fit my abilities. Chris Hall with two RadBurro cargo e-bikes used for transportation, mobile repair work, and community…
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What Happens After the Restraint? The Part We Rarely Talk About
I have spent a lot of time thinking about what happens before a restraint. What happened in the minutes leading up to it? What did the student signal? What changed in the environment? What demands were placed on them? What did the adults do? What warning signs did we miss? But the more I think…
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What Happens Before the Restraint? The 10 Minutes We Keep Ignoring
When a student is placed in a restraint or secluded, the incident report often begins at the moment the crisis becomes impossible for adults to ignore. The student “became aggressive.” The student “refused to comply.” The student “escalated.” The student “became a danger to self or others.” Then comes the intervention: staff responded, the student…
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The Rules Are Changing in Massachusetts. But Are We?
Massachusetts changed its regulations governing seclusion, time-out, and physical restraint in schools on August 17, 2026. The changes matter: the new regulations place tighter limits on seclusion, establish a clearer distinction between time-out and seclusion, and reinforce that physical restraint is an emergency procedure of last resort. Massachusetts has also stated an explicit goal of…
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The Day My Son Came Home in a Police Car
I am the mother of two neurodivergent Latino boys. My youngest was diagnosed with autism around the age of two, and that diagnosis became a passport to supports and services. His older brother, however, went under the radar for far too long, masking his own neurodivergence. Both of my boys have always been described as…
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A Difficult Truth: I May Never Know What Happened to My Daughter
When I read that three former employees from Greensburg Salem School District’s Nicely Elementary School pleaded guilty and received only probation for abusing disabled students, my heart sank. This wasn’t just another news story. One of those employees had been my daughter’s preschool teacher, and another had been her Therapeutic Staff Support (TSS). In this…
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Owning Our Truths to Show Up Authentically for Our Children
We can not meet our children on a level of creating potential if we have no sense of what it means to meet them in their full, unique truth. The truth is: we were taught to move away from our truth. Culture has created and sustained behaviorism, and faith that it would teach us how…
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My Students Understand. Why Don’t Some Adults Get It?
Of those things people recognize me by at this point, yesterday one of my 4th graders pointed at it and asked, “What do ALL those words mean?” Not just one—every single one. So instead of brushing it off, we sat down and talked about it, and honestly, it turned into one of the most meaningful…