I feel current services for children with AS are misguided

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Have you tried something like a stress ball, putty or clay. Playing with something like that in my hand helps me to relax so that I can concentrate.

No offense taken. Comply is just a word to me, I have no particular image associated with it.

Everything else below is not directed at you Bombaloo or anyone in particular. This is just a general statement (even though I use "you" a lot)

My son is still young so maybe my views will change but I have a different opinion of school. In NYC, on average, you will have 1 teacher trying to teach 30-35 kids in a typical classroom. The fact is, it is IMPOSSIBLE for that teacher to give each child that idividual attention that the child needs, in the given time that the child is at school. When you throw in children with special needs, including ASD children, you are taxing an already taxed teacher. It's easy to sit back and say all the things that the teacher should do, but unless the class is smaller or there are a couple aids in the classroom, a teacher can only do so much. What ends up happening is the teacher, if they are good, will manage to get through to most of the children and teach them. They will not reach all of them. This is whether the child is NT, ASD or anything else.

Now what do you do as a parent? You can fight with the school, but they have a certain amount of info that needs to be taught in a school year that guides them. They cannot hold the class back for 1 or 2 children who cannot keep up. That would not be fair to the other children who are ready to move on to a new topic. Since all children learn a little different, what may work for an ASD child may not work for the the rest of the class. When you mainstream an ASD child, this is the challenge that comes with it.

The best option would be to have an ASD child in a small class with a specialized teacher. Unfortunately, this is not always possible. So, as a parent, I have to compensate. I could also fight the district, but while I wage that war, my son would be growing up, no better off. I have and plan to continue taking on the major role of educating my child. School is important but it is not everything. There are a lot of other life skills that parents can teach outside of school. This is how we are educating and addressing our sons ASD and also educating our other 2 NT children.

Well yeah lack of small classrooms and stuff can be a difficult issue...but yeah I guess it just sucks when it gets down to the child really cannot keep up and then people start getting aggressive towards that child as if they are doing it on purpose just to make things difficult for others...I remember getting that impression from certain teachers and such as a child. I mean sometimes one has to lay off on the pushing and not push too hard because that can cause far too much stress and bad feelings about ones self........but not everyone with AS struggles too much with school. I mean I was fine with the classwork and stuff it was the way I got treated by other kids and some teachers that was the issue for the most part, other than I tend to suck at math.

I see some of you don't understand...

Concerning the comments about the importance of being able to do boring things, and the importance of complying in society...

As with all things in life there is a benefits vs. cost ratio. In many instances, the benefits vs. cost ratio is going to be different for someone with AS than it is for someone who is NT.

If you thought that algebra course you were forced to take in high school was a waste of your time (and has since proven to be something you only remember hating), I agree with you. Even as an individual in the sciences, I agree with you. Most people do not utilize algebra in their every day life or at their job, and most people would benefit more form a survey course in algebra and other high school mathematics, than actually being forced to spend hours learning the subject, only to forget it.

But most people also are not particularly spectacular in one way or another. They do not have very strong strong points but at the same time, they do not have very weak weak points, and they live in a society in which they are compatible with.

This is not the case for children with AS, or people with AS in general. People with AS often have very strong strong points at the expense of also having very weak weak points, and being able to utilize those strong points in an effective manner is pretty much the only chance they have at surviving in society.

Much like in a beehive or ant colony, there are general workers, and then there are specialized bees or ants, the same is true of human society. Most people are generalized workers, and most people with AS are specialists, designed to do a very specialized and narrow task.

In the current education system, the costs to individuals with AS, outweigh the benefits the reap from it.

I know this first hand. Because I have a high degree of scatter, the biggest obstacle to my education and success in life was school policy. I was forced for 5 years to remain at a 3rd grade math level, and do timed time table test over and over and over again even though I was not getting any better or faster. Their reasoning was that I needed a sound foundation in mathematics before I could move on. This, despite my insistence that I already understood the concepts in more advanced mathematics and wished to move on because I wished to have a career in science. But no one would listen.

When I eventually got to college I was still at that 3rd grade math level. I struggled through the lowest math course the college offered because it was much the same thing I had been doing in elementary school (I was so traumatized by it I refused to continue with it in middle and high school). I passed that course with a C (which was no better than I had rpeviously done) and was finally allowed into a math course I understood a little better, algebra. As the level of the courses increased, the easier it became for me, not because of practice but because I was moving into a realm I was specialized in. I came out on the top of some of my courses and eventually received a degree in mathematics, among other things.

And yet I still had horrible social skills, and struggled with other aspects of life. All that time spent doing timed multiplication tables would have been better spent teaching me social skills, engaging me with other people, and focusing on teaching me upper mathematics and related subjects...who knows what I could have contributed to the world had the school system been designed to foster, rather than suppress potential.

This is why I homeschool my son with Aspergers. Thank you for reaffirming for me that public school is NOT where my son belongs!

Everyone has to do do things they don't like to to survive. Of course that's not all life is about, but there is a fairly sizable percentage of it that is when you get right down to it.



I think there has to be middle ground. In almost every profession, there are parts that may not necessarily fall in step with someone's individual skills. I hate math. With a capital H. But alas, I need to understand statistics to do my job, so all that dreaded math that people forced upon me when I was younger ended up being more useful--and critical--than I ever would have imagined.



Which is where the moderation comes in and also where I think parenting comes in. Of course, I cannot expect my son's school to build a curriculum around his interests, especially since they are not the same interests as his peers. But as his mom, I can help him make connections between the things that he has to learn and the things he is interested in. I can also help him to see that if he really wants to be a vet or a wildlife researcher, he is going to have to learn how to write coherently.

Crap. I have lost track of what the original post said...was there something about teaching social skills? Yes. I agree with that wholeheartedly. And teaching things like literal vs figurative language and how to identify sarcasm, etc. These are just as useful to independent functioning as an adult than almost anything else.

Yes that is all very true......also as for the teaching social skills, that is not a bad thing as it makes it easier not to be manipulated if you learn more how people think and stuff. But at the same time I am 22 and I don't think I will ever stop taking things too litterally at times or missing sarcasm or whatever I mean sure I can better recognize it after all these years but I still have issues with that stuff so its possible it might be too much to expect an autistic person to learn perfect social skills I mean that is one of the main symptoms that makes us diagnosable is having difficulties with social interaction so naturally we may not all ever ace that so to speak. I guess my main concern is yes there are many skills that help with independent functioning........but there are still people who cannot develop all those skills and that does have to be acknowledged, but maybe your child is not one of them I don't know I am mostly speaking generally here not specifically about you or anyone elses situation.

I would say this: although I agree 100% that our education system needs reform, especially when it comes to meeting the needs of people on the autism spectrum (and I think there are a GREAT many more children that could benefit from change than the ones with a diagnosis,) and I definitely agree that a situation that induces constant meltdowns is probably a good indicator of a problem, but I do not agree that the focus of a child's education should be on their special interests (we wouldn't allow NT girls to focus solely on fashion design and makeup, nor NT boys exclusively on sports, either, right?)

I believe it is important to teach people on the spectrum some degree of social skills and flexibility, including in their interests; some level of connection to the rest of the world is important. I developed this belief because I see how isolated, stagnant, and miserable my parents are, having immersed themselves so fully in their special interests as to have closed out the rest of the world. They manage this with a belief that the rest of humanity is at worst beneath them, at best "cute" curiosities...and that they choose isolation to avoid "wasting time" - but I can see that they are unhappy: lonely and bored and really don't like or want the life they chose for themselves; they just can't see another option.

Therefore, I am trying to make sure my son has access to skills so he can choose his path. If he happily chooses working in isolation for his adult life, and not using any of the skills he's learned - I'm fine with that. What I don't want is for him to be trapped as an adult, stuck the way so many brilliant adults, presumably on the spectrum, were in the past, before we had interventions to help.

At least in my experience, public school is a one size fits all, standardized approach to educating children. For the NT brain, that approach works (most of the time). Where I feel the public school lacks is the abilitiy to approach situations that are not typical, understand them, and formulate an individualized approach that best works with the non-typical child. There are just too many kids and not enough teachers for them to be able to look at each child and figure out what works (plus they waste a lot of time with bureaucracy now). We as the parents grow frustrated, because we see our children being misunderstood, left behind, ridiculed for not being "typical" (ie able to learn with their standardized approach) and to add insult to injury the public school then has the audacity to turn around and blame the parents for the child's failure.

ONLY a highly individualized approach works with our kids. They don't "fit" with the one sized educational model of public education.

It's not totally relevant to the conversation, but you might find it interesting. At one point, no, I could not do math. Not really. And I do think it was my school's fault. In 5th and 6th grades in the afternoon we were divided into 3 groups: the smart kids, the average kids, and the rest. No one told us this, of course, but it wasn't too hard to figure out. In the afternoon, we had math, science, and social studies. I was exceptionally good at science and social studies, but equally exceptionally bad at math. Unfortunately, you could only be assigned to one group, so I got assigned to the smart group. I could not keep up. At all. I was still counting on my fingers and couldn't reliably do times tables. I fell woefully behind and somehow, the stupid school district simply identified me as "college bound" and continued to insist that I take the hardest math available for my grade. I honestly think I passed in high school because my teachers were afraid to fail me because I was a "good" student. But I sucked at math. When I went to college, they made me take a math placement test. Instead of starting where they placed me, I started at the lowest class they had. A basic, non-college level remedial class. I took it twice. And I slowly worked my way up. I still do not like math and it is a weakness (thank goodness for excel formulas, etc).

I agree that it is unfair and unreasonable to expect perfect social skills from someone on the spectrum. There is just too much to process to be able to reliably do it all the time. To be honest, I am more interested in him being able to interpret other people's social communication than I am in him displaying appropriate social skills. Ok. So I could do without him stuffing his pockets full of rocks or pulling out pieces of asphalt to show various passersby. But generally, he's a sweet kid. Quirky. But you couldn't ask for a more honest, kind, and generous kid. But what I do worry about is his difficulty understanding the intentions of others and his inability to pick up on social cues that lead him to be the target of bullying. He is at least aware of the fact that he has a tendency to interpret things literally at this point. He sometimes cannot figure the figurative meaning, but at least he knows that the literal interpretation is not correct and he saves himself the embarrassment of responding as if the statement was literal.

I agree with you wholeheartedly that we do, as a whole, need to do a better job of accommodating and educating people who are unable to develop certain skill sets. To waste their time trying to force them to learn something that they cannot learn when that time could be spent on honing something they are good at, is wrong, IMHO. It's too one-size-fits-all. And it emphasizes their deficits to the detriment of their strengths. I don't see how anyone benefits from that.

Yup, me, too - AND my son. We are the Schmendrick the Magician of math. I truly believe that there must be some specific intervention out there, like the ones for dyslexia, for us - but thus far it hasn't been invented. We've tried everything with my son: songs, cartoons, drills, computer games, an abacus, times tables...he can't recall math facts to save his life - but he has this innate mathematical sense (that I share) that I'm not willing to give up on. Fortunately for us, there are mechanical interventions (he can use a calculator) so I think he can move up to do the things I wasn't allowed to do: engineering and physics and chemistry and geometry...

You know, its funny, Momsparky...I have a horrible time with math, but when it comes to math-like things, I am actually quite good. Like the on the analytical part of the GRE or on Einstein's riddle. My HS math teacher insisted that because I was exceptionally good at those types of things that I had to be good at math. He insisted they used the same part of your brain. Apparently not in my brain! LOL! My son has NVLD which predisposes him to problems with math. We definitely have faulty math wiring in this family, except my dad who does things in his head that most people need a calculator for.

I still count on my fingers and use things like "eight times eight fell on the floor, picked it up and it was sixty-four" to do many of my multiplication facts.

I'll have to remember that one!

I have degrees in language stuff, but my SAT scores were outrageously higher in math than in English, despite the fact that I counted on my fingers. I don't recall the numbers, but the English score was pretty average, and the math score was up there!

There is actually a local study going on at Northwestern University that we had DS participate in on math issues. They used a functional MRI to map brain differences in a control and kids who struggle (poor DS was stuck in an MRI with it making all kinds of noise and had to do math! He was so interested in brains at the time that he did it willingly, though.)

I got a *huge* wake-up call when I had to pull Daisy out of the classroom due to other medical issues. She went from basically 35 hrs a week to 5 hrs with a homebound teacher, and maintained an "A" average with literally no trouble, and maybe 45 min of homework a week. What does that say about the other 30 hrs in the classroom, and hr a night of homework? Granted, Daisy is a very intelligent girl, but certainly isn't the only child in her grade who would have that experience. Luckily her Dr saw the irony in this, and she continues to do homebound schooling. She does continue to attend the social events at school, etc, and now does other activities for socialization.

On the flipside, her school basically refused her any services other than a very informal lunch buddies group, because of her grades. I was told for her to qualify for anything else, I would have to let her fail by no longer reminding her of assignments being due, reminding her to study, etc. For some odd reason, I was unwilling to do that.

It would be fine with me for her to continue doing homebound indefinitely, but she has started asking me about returning to school, and I have told her we will look at it again next fall.

GRRR! (at the school, not at Mom2Daisy) I keep hearing this from so many parents! FYI - the school is lying. IEPs for functional skills (and that, apparently, is the language to use) cannot be refused on the grounds of adequate academic achievement. See this article, specifically regarding social skills as a functional skill, in Wrightslaw: http://www.wrightslaw.com/blog/?p=6721

Again, please write your school principal and copy your local school superintendent and let them know that you are homeschooling because the school refused to meet your child's needs by refusing to provide support for functional skills. Whether or not you're in the public school system, this message needs to be sent. For every kid with parents who finds support to homeschool their kids here, there's a kid whose family doesn't have access to the internet and WrongPlanet and whose parents just can't pay for private school or homeschool, who doesn't have an advocate. We need to hold public schools accountable.

This was me, too. Always hated math, in HS I had to stay after school for extra help and to this day I still have the occasional nightmare about failing a math class.

Add to that my parents pushed me to study engineering in college...ended up changing my major in my sophomore year or I would've flunked out.

Weird thing is I work in finance now, have been doing so for nearly a decade and I think the job suits me. Of course, without calculators, Excel, etc it would not be even remotely possible!