Aspies For Freedom

I posted this within a thread on another forum but thought this was probablyt a better spot.

Background - 13 yr old just diagnosed with Aspergers though it was suspected at age 4.  He went to jr and sr kindergarten, then homeschooled grades 1-5.  Grade 6 and 7 have been in school again.

The IEP.

In 6th grade the psychologist who saw my son clearly was biased against homeschoolers and chalked up all the Asperger's markers as his lack of socialization (don't even get me started on the misinformation about homeschoolers out there - suffice it to say - my son was in karate, cubscouts, and took part in homeschool park days outtings and special interest classes all the time, no amount of my urging found him a peer group. He got along fine with other autism spectrum kids but never develped any lasting friendships) and suggested a private school program where his intellectual gifts would be recognized AND HE WOULD BE FORCED TO PARTICIPATE IN GROUP TEAM SPORTS (Ummm, no I don't think so!)

He changed schools for 7th grade and I LOVE his school. I personally have a lot of connections with staff as my mother and father both taught there for 20 plus years and we are treated as real people. This past school year they have worked very hard with him without having a diagnosis. The IEP was crafted without one. He gets extra time on exams and is allowed use of a word processor. Teachers provide him with copies of their notes for the classes. His guidance counsellor checks in with him daily and all staff have been on the look out for signs that he needs a "guardian angel" to negotiate socially. He's been encouraged to use and offered space within the school to get away from everyone during recess and breaks. The library has purchased books on his special interests. There has been no bullying. There have been incredible accomodations. But there have been about a months worth of suspensions in the past year too.

His IEP is being completely rewritten now that we have a diagnosis and when I went in to let them know what was up (even without the psychoeducational report in my possession) they immeadiately began brainstorming further accomodations.

So, they are VERY open to our input into the IEP. With his diagnosis they will get special funding, enough to hire a 1 on 1 aide if needed (and they recognize the need for him to have "a guardian angel" as the spec ed resource person put it.

What would your dream IEP look like?

Here are the issues I've identified that need to be addressed. He scored in the 99th percentile on the WISC - except working memory was in the 40% percentile (he lost interest) and his processing speed was in the 15% percentile.

What accomodations should we ask for for his gifted profile? When we homeschooled I crafted our entire curriculum around his special interests. This isn't possible in a school setting I realize, but the IEPs until now have focussed so much on social development ("by the end of first term XXXXX will sit with a group, by the end of second he will make eye contact with his group, by third he will write down one idea another person has offered, by fourth he will utilize these skills in a group discussion during final exams) that his intellectual needs have been ignored, and frankly, he's been much too anxious to even access that natural intelligence while at school.

What kind of classroom mods would you want to see?

His classes are english, math, phys ed, moral education (nonsecular), history, geography, science, arts (semestered and they run through visual arts, drama, dance, and music in the year) and french.

As I'm sure you can guess he has a lot of difficulty with phys ed.

The hardest class for him though is french. While the whole language group project approach works much better for addressing the multiple intelligences of a classroom of NT kids than the old rote system of learning vocabulary and composition, it is absolutely maddening for my son. Not only does he not understand a word of what is going on, he can't read the social situations, body language, and facial expressions that are supposed to provide the cues for him to start understanding the language. The principal immeadiately suggested we get him a standard traditional FSL computer program with headphones and that he work one on one with a teacher. We live in Quebec, the french instruction is not optional.

Dance and music are pretty hellish too.

For the rest, he mainly needs help staying on top of assignments, homework, and following instructions. We've had a big problem with rigidity around expectations. How to decribe this....whatever he hears as the instructions first, he follows. A teacher can see that s/he hasn't provided him with a clear enough set of instructions and revise them and there is no way my son will accept the additional information no matter how nicely its presented.

So if YOU could craft an IEP what would you ask for?

Hi Dirtwitch, welcome to AFF!  Sounds like your son has a great school!  I don't have any experience with IEPs, as my son never had one (although he did have some unofficial accommodations), but I can offer a few thoughts in general.

I agree that individual instruction and a computer program would help.  Also, do you speak French well enough so that you could have "French days" at home, speaking French all day, playing French Scrabble, and so forth?  Language practice at home might give your son more understanding of how the words are used in everyday conversation.

Is there any way your son could help to tutor other children in the subjects he enjoys most?  This would give him an opportunity for more social interaction, as well as showing him the teacher's perspective on assignments and homework.  I asked my son to tutor my daughter in science over the summer a few years ago, when she got bad grades, and I noticed that his own performance on assignments and homework was much more responsible when he went back to school.

Also, your son needs to learn that in the real world, people have to be flexible in their work.  Discussing real-life work examples helps to get that point across.  My family had a conversation yesterday, for example, about how my husband worked late to help out a co-worker who neglected part of a task that had to be done by Monday.  Although the co-worker should have paid better attention, it was important to the company that the problem get corrected in a timely way.

edit: I noticed in another thread that your son enjoys fan fiction.  (One of my favorite hobbies too!)  Maybe he would like to try translating some of his stories into French and posting them to a French fanfic writers' site.  That would give him a much more interesting environment for working on his French, and reading and writing fanfic in French would give him a better understanding of word nuances.

Welcome dirtwitch,
Your son's school sounds great. I would keep what they already have in the IEP and add pragmatic speech therapy, and priming(preteaching) for the French class. You mention that he has been suspended a lot. You might want to see if there is an OT person at the school that can teach him some self-calming techniques and address any sensory issues if present.

My partner and his son are francophone, so there is plenty of french in the home (his two year old brother is bilingual,well as bilingual as a boy with a vocabulary of 20 words can be!) - when he is with us.  When he is with his father (alternate weeks) there's no french and no siblings to practice with either.

Right now, there'd be little chance of "assigning tutoring" to my son, he's too explosive, but when he's been in situations where there is a clearly defined protocol (like his karate dojo) about seniority and teaching/tutoring he does a great job.  So I will discuss this with his resource person.

The translating fanfiction idea is a GREAT one.  He taught himself to read with Calvin and Hobbes comics when he was 6 (then read the Way Things Work and every HArry Potter book out at that time in a couple of weeks) and I've been trying to get him french translations of those to start working on french with, and encouraging him to translate his own writing would be an easy push I think (his stepbrother is keyed in to all the francophone gaming and sci-fi sites)

Thank you Marie for the suggestions about pragmatic speech therapy and OT to keep working with his sensory issues.

Keep the ideas coming, I'm keeping copious notes for our next IEP meeting in August.

Thank you all so much!

The best IEP would be to make sure that it meets your sons needs, and mekes things easier for him.  My IEP is set up so that it makes things easier for the school, so that they receive what they want, and what is easiest  for them, but provides more dificulty to me, will NOT work for your son.  Make sure it adresses his needs in a way that works for HIM.

The best IEP would be one that addresses BOTH the needs of the student AND the needs of his teachers AND the larger school community.

It needs to address the student's intellectual, emotional and social learning needs. It needs to address the realities facing classroom teachers who have on average 25 children in each class and roughly 150 students a year to get to know and work with.  It needs to address the basic rights of the entire school community.

At my son's school he is actively involved in the creation of the IEP, we bring things to the table and he has the opportunity to agree or disagree with suggestions.  He is welcome to bring suggestions too.

So, what sort of things would you like to see in your IEP, how could it better address your needs?

My child is only 9 so I suspect his needs are different and I'm not sure I can be of much help, but I do want to say I've really enjoyed this thread.   You and the respondants have struck a few chords with me.

First off, the memory and processing speed portions of my son's testing were his low scores, also.  Is that a pattern?  It's interesting, because he comes accross as so very gifted, but in real life often struggles.

My son had speech therapy for pragmatic speech for one year and it was excellent.  I LOVED the speech teacher.  Of course, the goal is develop the skill and move on, which my son did in that one year.  He "graduated" and no longer gets pragmatic speech help.

The speech teacher, however, also conducts lunch bunches with small groups of children and she bent over backwards to be able to keep offering this to my son.  He LOVES lunch bunch.  They play games and socialize, all with the help of the speech teacher.  It sounds like a program like this might be good for your son.

As for subjects that are struggles ... Something my son and I talk about a lot is that dealing with things that are boring or difficult is part of life.  We actually worry less about the skills the class is trying to teach than providing my son with skills to cope in that class.  Success is simply him making it through.  That may sound strange, but the teachers are basically on board with me on this.  It's a life skill, and one that your child will need.  Coping in less than ideal situations.  How often are the french, music and PE classes?  Is each offered every day, or can he expect to have deal with no more than one on a given day?  If it's the later, I think you are OK to focus the IEP on how to help your child cope in the classes.  No worry about he learns; simply focusing on the coping.  If the classes are more frequent, I would ask for alternatives (the volume would make them inappropriate for coping lessons).  Is there a resource center he can go to?  My son has regular pull outs to work on skills like writing and spelling, and the resource teachers try to schedule these during the activities in class he is least inspried by.

Note that things can change, too.  My son always hated music.  But, this year, they introduced the recorder.  He still lacks talent, but he enjoys the idea of playing an instrument like the recorder.  Suddenly his interest in the entire music program perked up.

I am glad you have found a school that is willing to work with you.  There are great schools out there.  We have one, too.  It is a blessing!

I need advise on how best to approach the dreaded middle school years.
I know i need to specifically state things I want in her plan such as her communication log,with her teacher last year it was a harroing experience. She wouldn't communicate with me everyday as we had agreed on and then weeks would go by and at parent teacher conferences she would unload a bunch of Haley did this and Haley did that, if she had been communicating with me we could have worked on that. My biggest fear for next year is that some of the time she will say things not meaning to be rude but is very often taken that way by teachers etc. I am working on it with her but there are going to be times when I know I will get calls from the teacher, or worse the principal. I am so very worried how she is going to deal with a broader mix of children and changing classes etc.
If anyone has any advise for me please help me to face my fears and offer me some advise, Thanks! Juliashaye