It seems this year, far more than other years, it's been one step forward, two steps backward this spring. Spring has sprung, sure enough, but confusingly so. It's as though the season cannot overcome its initial timidity and hesitates to fully integrate all its elements into an agreement to behave in a manner consistent with spring.

So the step forward is that, albeit tardily, foliage is now leafing out, the naked branches of deciduous trees and shrubs are greening, and the two backward steps is the sun's unwillingness to have a heated argument with the clouds that keep nudging it out of circulation in the great bowl of the sky overlooking this geographic region.

Every time the temperature manages to nudge about 15C, suddenly we're faced with cooler temperatures, heavier wind gusts, and rain, lots of rain. The forest floor has begun to resemble a permanent swamp, up on the flats. Vegetation risks drowning. The trails running downhill are host to thickening rivulets of rainwater tumbling down to the creek.

On the other hand, who cares? It's spring and it will eventually become warmer. The great pools of water will dry up. There have been years when it's been so warm in spates of days at a time at this very time of year, that we've had to put on our air conditioner. Yesterday the high for the day was 9C, with an icy wind, and fully overcast with raggedy grey clouds. The forecast was for a bit of a break in the overnight and morning rain, and then rain again in the afternoon.

So we took advantage of the lull and set off for a morning walk with Jackie and Jillie, all of us clad in raincoats. They were pretty happy to be out, and so were we, with the thought of beating out the rain and not having to forego a hike on the forest trails. Early on our walk we met up with an old hiking friend. Jackie and Jillie were aware of his oncoming presence long before we were, and they were excited in anticipation of meeting up with his dog, a friend of theirs, as well.

Our friend was in between contracts, so he had the same conviction we had; better get out before the heavens opened up again. He told us about his wife, 56, a special needs educator with a local school board, and what her employment has been like for her, lately. Autistic children and other developmentally delayed children have been placed in regular classrooms. Usually a teacher has a teacher's aid such as a special needs educator in the classroom with her, to handle the 'problem' students who often have 'melt-downs', disrupting the entire class.

He told us that just recently a 17-year-old male student had become more belligerent than usual, had backed his wife violently up against a wall in the class, and began to choke her. He wanted his wife to lay charges of assault against the student and his parents. She told him she couldn't, if she wanted to keep her employment. She has 28 years of experience and hadn't planned to retire for a few years yet.

There are younger, stronger child education specialists, both male and female, available to be tasked with the work of looking after these vulnerable young people incapable of governing their responses, mental and physical, to frustrations they experience, and to perhaps cope better than an older woman, and this has led to this family's sense of personal vulnerability; that their right to satisfaction with life in helping whom they can is compromised in this way.

Clearly, the medical-health-science fraternity and parents themselves, unable to cope with the demands and fraught circumstances of caring for and attempting to teach and socialize such young people from elementary school into high school, are glad to hand them over to educators in the general system of educating all youth.

The message is that it's a step forward, in integrating and teaching these youngsters. They have the benefit of interacting with others, and are exposed to the education system in equal measure. Meanwhile, their disruptive and sometimes dangerous behaviour impacts on the well-being and educational opportunities as experienced by others,not hampered by the genetic frailties that make the lives of these young and older children so much of a social problem.

Some of these children are so heavily biased to dysfunction it is doubtful they will ever be able to take their place in normal society.