(Public) School Sucks for Children with Autism--RL, my son

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Okay, we got the IEP, and he got some help with his reading and then got the "Other Health Impaired" ruling.


I don't care because he gets picked on and the neurotypical kids fight more than he does!! His moral compass has been really good as of late and he's getting better and he sees fighting and it upsets him. True, he should not be a vigilante but he sees it and then he gets to see neurotypical children who fight more than he ever did in the past (he basically has just been mildly aggressive, never full fledged violent or anything).

His teacher treats him like crap and I'm tired of it. She has no patience with him.

I've thought of moving.

Public schools suck for children who have autism.

What does the teacher do?

If she is breaking protocol and/or a law, someone needs to know.

You don’t say where you live. If it’s a fairly well populated area, you might find local Aspie support groups, networks, homeschool groups.
If you had a good network, would you consider homeschooling?

Also, charter schools are worth looking into. My kids went to a K-8 charter school with a total of 100 kids, and the culture was great.
After that, my son went to the county vo-tech for high school (major in computers) which was a geek’s paradise.

Well I hate to disappoint you but private and boarding schools suck just as bad. if not, worse. I know. I've been there and done that.

I second that. I attended a Catholic school for my first three years of high school, and it was a worse experience than all of my nine years of public school combined (which aside from a few isolated incidents, really weren't so bad). The worst verbal bullying I got in my life was during my last year at that school, and with a few exceptions, most teachers and staff there simply did not care about it, nor were they very understanding about how Asperger's affected me. Even beyond that, it wasn't a very high quality education. But I should note, to be fair, that this school closed a few years later, and other Catholic schools may very well be better.

I think I feel lucky because most of my teachers liked me.

I have tremendous sympathy for you.

I remember my mother calling the principal and screaming at him because I got punched in the headgear for my braces in seventh grade, and the principal physically punished both of us kids (even though I had done nothing) by letting us hit each other with a wooden paddle. The other kid hit me until I was in pain, then all I could do was barely swat him with it and he said, "That didn't even hurt."

In later years, my poor mother had a breakdown, not because of just that, but I'm sure all the crap I had to endure at school didn't help her state of mind. And I went to a private school. I'm probably not helping by telling you this story, but I don't think homeschooling would have been a good solution for me, either. In spite of all the trauma, I was forced to learn some social skills by being around the kids who were nice to me.

I've always went to public schools (I still do), I've never been bullied and teachers have never treated me like crap.

News flash: All schools suck now.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h11u3vtcpaY[/youtube]

You should enroll him in online (home schooling). Im not sure if it's Kaplan or some other company that does that. My friend switched from public school to online. If you do that, he will not be picked on and will have a huge amount of extra time left to read on his own (if he likes that) because he wouldn't waste hours and hours doing BS in class while the teacher tried to calm all those morons down who end up dropping out anyway by the time high school rolls around.

That is disgusting. When I read this I immediately thought of the Milgram experiment and the Stanford Prison experiment; having peers punish eachother when an authority figure says it's ok to do so. That principal should be fired and banned from teaching for life.

Unfortunately, we're talking 40+ years ago ... it happened in 1967. We moved away from the area, but years later I heard he was still principal there (undoubtedly as mean and nasty as he was then).

I loved my boarding school.

I agree - public school is horrible for people with autism spectrum disorders.

Not only do I have Asperger's, but one of my younger brothers has Kanner's/classic autism, as well.

Twelve years ago, when my brother was in kindergarten, a counselor physically abused him. He came back with fist-shaped bruises all over his back. My dad - a policeman - rallied several of his coworkers together to investigate this. They took photos of my brother's back, but the film developer lost the photos. Then, the ignorant district attorney said that there was no case since my brother couldn't talk, and therefore couldn't prove what other things the police found had already proven.

Luckily for us, the local private school for children with severe autism intervened. They allowed my brother to bypass the entire waiting list and took him in as a student, and then forced the school district to pay for his education there. The principal at that school loved my brother. It's a shame that she is now gone...

When his new teacher came to take him out of his old school, the principal hugged his new teacher and said, "Thank GOD you're taking him away!! !"

Even though I was 10 at the time, I was horrified. My brother was very well-behaved - he just didn't talk. He was - and still is - very angelic. I could never see why anyone would hurt him.

Sorry for the tirade. I just want you to know that I understand how poorly students with ASDs are treated in the public school setting.