“Sarah, stop flushing that toilet!” Well, that’s the price we pay when we teach independence!!! Sarah had learned how to flush the toilet. It was a part of her toileting program to teach independence. When she would do something in the toilet, we had taught her how to flush. Now, flushing was becoming a bad habit. At first it was once or twice a week, but then it had become a daily thing. Unfortunately, that was the consequences of having a student who can sit on a regular toilet with an adapted seat. The handle to flush the toilet was right in reach! We were working on ways to prevent that from happening, but so far, Sarah was winning the battle! On this particular morning, I had heard the flush of the toilet… again! “Sarah, stop flushing that toilet!!!”
As I was getting her off, I look at my paras and say, “I could have sworn she was wearing her glasses when she came in!” I was commenting on the fact that Sarah was not wearing her glasses after I got her off of the potty. As my paras indicated the same, we all agreed that we were not really sure whether Sarah was wearing her glasses!!! After all, getting twelve students off of the bus, out of their wheelchairs, toileted, and fed breakfast can sometimes get crazy!!! And, add to the fact that Sarah did not consistently wear her glasses made it even harder to remember if she had even had them on when she came to school that morning. But I did learn at the end of the school day, when I called Sarah’s mom to make sure about her glasses, that she indeed had been wearing them when she came to school that morning. So, here we were looking for her glasses. Where were those darn glasses?!?!
We had looked high and low in the classroom and the bathroom. We hit every nook and cranny. Thoroughly went through Sarah’s backpack, her cubby, and her coat pockets. I asked her bus driver to check his bus to make sure her glasses were not there. I even asked Sarah where her glasses were at, and all she did was walk into the bathroom. “No Sarah, your glasses are not in the bathroom, we looked there already.” In all that searching, still to no avail, we could not find those glasses anywhere!!! Sarah’s mom was understanding, and told us not to worry, but I still felt bad. Where were those glasses!!!
In the meantime, we began to notice that the toilet that Sarah sat on was starting to back up. When flushing the toilet, the water level was beginning to rise higher and higher. I move Sarah to another toilet and put in a work order with my secretary to have the toilet she usually sits on looked at. A couple of days later, a plumber came to the classroom to take a look at the toilet. We finish our students in the bathroom, clear them out, and allow the plumber to get to work.
Flushing the toilet, the plumber responds with, “yep, you definitely have a problem here!” As the plumber works, he goes on to say that, “it looks like there is a blockage… something is preventing the toilet to drain the water all of the way.” He goes on to explain to me what he needs to do to resolve the problem, and if it is ok for him to go ahead and get the job done now. I tell him not to worry, he has the bathroom all to himself. Sometime later, the plumber comes out of our bathroom and tells me he has discovered why the toilet was not flushing all of the way. “After peeling away a couple of layers of toilet tissue, I found these.” In his hands were a pair of dark pink rimmed glasses!!! OMG, is that where Sarah’s glasses had disappeared to? Flushed down the toilet?!?! Yep, apparently so!!! Wow, Sarah did know where they were at all along!!! I called Sarah’s mom, “we found her glasses… and you will not believe where!!!”