Saturday, October 14, 2006

fighting the good fight...and losing

As you know my 8 yearold son is a high functioning autistic, he has been to 5 different schools and is only in the 2 grade, he repeted kindergarden, we have fought every school he has been to and lost every year and he has suffered because of it, he started out this year not doing to bad, but the stress is getting to him and his education is suffering because he cannot get the help he needs, it looks like we are going to lose again, he doesnt qualify because some jerk psycologist hired by the last two schools has decided that my sons condition is brought on by a chaotic home life and incosistant parenting, hes never even spoken to us personally and knows nothing of our home life, but the school says that although my son qualifies under the medical model he doesnt qualify under the school model, 3 doctors, an ot therapist, a pt therapist, a pscological therapist, they are all aparently wrong accoding to the school, and our pacer advocate says unfortunatly it is legal for them to go by their own psycologist, so while i am fighting the good fight with them my son is falling further behind, sitting in his desk with his hands in his lap not sure how to approach the teacher to tell her he didnt get a paper. I dont know where to go from here, we've tryed private schools, we've tryed 4 public schools, we've tryed home bounding with a public school teacher which worked, but was only allowed as a temporary fix so he didnt have to go to a new school in the last 4 weeks of the year, he did wonderfully during that time though, but i thought about homeschooling him myself, but i would be robbing him of his social experiance, but his social experience wont be a good one if he is 10 years old and still in the second grade either, and it isnt fair to him to lose out on so much either way, is it possible to have him go to a half day of school to get his social time and structured learning environment then do the other half at home so that i know all of his work is completed to the best of his ability without too much stress???are there any other options, we live in the country and there arent any autism centers in the area. I have no idea where to turn, I tryed the ausm site but couldnt find much help there, anyone know any other help places or resources besides pacer and ausm? post avice here or share your story.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Have you tried going up the chain of command yet?

For my child with aspergers, they allow him to turn in his work up to a week late, which gives me a change to get those papers that he misses. I e-mail the teacher and I ask her to put them in his backpack.

Also, his backpack is checked daily for his homework.

Terri (From homesteadingtoday.com)