It appears that most of the interactions on this blog involve younger children, but if anyone has information relevant to teenagers, high school and college application, I would much appreciate it. Thanks.

Thanks
Dave

If your son is younger than, say 2nd grade, then the teacher’s message is pretty damning, honestly. The question may be why he was allowed to wander “away from the pack” and why there isn’t an appropriate supervisory ratio for children in the school at all times. Is the teacher aware of his needs?

While it’s hard to speak against teachers in general because of the service that they do provide, not all of them are always considerate of every child’s needs, especially if they are not aware of them or ill-equipped to deal with them. Not so surprisingly, a simple majority of teachers are not trained in managing special needs – that’s why schools are required to have a support staff.

Most children with a full intellectual palate and some awkwardness in other areas – typical of ASD children and often found in kids with “mild” flavors of autism – can cope with a regular classroom and its paces, rigors, stresses, friends, and happy moments. What I have set up for my own son is through an IEP; he is in the classroom all day except for 3 hours a week, which he splits time between a social skills group and a pragmatic language growth session (speech-language pathology because he is bilingual and ill-diagnosed as having a speech delay, but he likes the class).

So, my response to the teacher – and sorry it’s a roundabout discussion to get to this point – would be to take the high road and try to work out the details with the teacher. Why don’t the kids have a buddy system to get to the bus – seems like a perfectly logical solution. If you get nowhere with the teacher, I’d talk to the child find program or the principal about the details and see what can be put in place to protect your son. As a parent you are equally entitled to be in control of what happens to your son on school grounds.

I was struck with what Joanna said: “The piece that is tricky with Asperger’s is that most people DO think that he is NT. And people think they are being nice and helpful to me when they say that–”He seems normal to me.” Which then leads them to think that he is just undisciplined, lazy, or has parents who are a little nuts. This has been difficult for me to deal with on a regular basis.”

My son’s teacher seems to have the same opinion of him. He actually is mild on the asperger’s scale so he seems “normal” to folks. He can hold eye contact and has a sense of humor but has a really difficult time in non-structured environments such as the playground, cafeteria, and the gym. For example, I got the following e-mail this morning from his teacher:

“He took quite a detour on the way to the bus yesterday and was caught in the wrong place by another teacher! We walked to the end of the playground by the bus driveway – very out of the way from the path to the cafeteria. He told her it was because he saw something shiny. He knew it was wrong but went there anyway. He will lose some recess today because of that poor choice. He is supposed to walk with one teacher and about 50 kids to the cafeteria. He does what he wants to do, not always what is expected, but at least he wants to do mostly good things.”

I’m not sure how to approach this line of thinking with her. I am not a bit surprised that he wandered away from the group of 50 kids to go look at something shiny. It’s not the first time he’s wandered away from a group. I see it as an aspergery thing to do. She, on the other hand, sees it as poor decision making. Am I wrong to think that there probably wasn’t much thinking on his part before we wandered toward the shiny object.

How would you respond to her e-mail?

To start with, I am wondering, what is an “NT kid”? I caught AS and even BP in the above comment, but I was unable to guess what NT stood for.

Thanks,

Mark

I don’t think any diagnosis is harder or easier–just different.

It’s not just the autistic community. In a job environment there is always the “our department is more important than their department”; in a writing community it’s “my genre vs your genre”.

It’s a human thing. We need to feel more important, more sympathy-worthy, more “valid”. Anything that threatens this, we react to in some way. We as a species need to work harder on that li’l human flaw!

There’s an expression someone brought up on an email support group that I think we could all stand to remember before we make thoughtless comments such as the one you report:

“Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.” – Unknown

(I think it’s a spin off of “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” attributed often to Plato and Philo of Alexandria)