Ever been told its time to let your child "Sink or Swim

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(Kind of long)
I have been working (fighting) with my son's school since 4th grade and he is now in 10th grade. One of the biggest problems is disagreeing on what is due to Autism and what is bad behavior.
And I get a lot of it is my son's fault and no one can help him but himself.
I doubt you will be surprised that he is ranked in the 95% on the State education standards test but getting Ds and Fs in school.
I am told he is to smart to get very many accommodations on his IEP. He does have one but it only gives him extended test time, dictation of essay answers on tests and skill building for spelling and hand writing.
Every Quarter and every Semester end the same way. He is setting with Fs that can be raised to Ds if he does Triple time. He goes in before school, uses study hall etc. to get late work turned in. Last week in a 24 hour time period he did 17 math assignments.
But there is nothing the school can do. They wont help with organization, they wont do prompts, they wont help with communication between him and his teachers. They say it is all 100% his fault. That it is time I stop holding his hand and Let him sink or swim. That if he gets an F maybe it will teach him a lesson. I am ok with that statement if it is true.

I think his is showing bad behavior due to frustration with a delay in Executive Function.
I tried talking to the teacher and she agreed he does have delayed Executive Function but that doesn't change her opinion on him not receiving help for that delay.
So here I am again putting in an official request

Here is what I gave the school. I did replace my son's name with "my son" because he is uncomfortable when I use his name in this type of a discussion.

I would like AEA to test "my son's" Executive Function. I know there is no “yes or no” test out there but like his social skills it would give us an idea of were he is at, something on the line of D-KEFS testing.
I know "my son" is showing a very poor attitude towards school and his studies but since he does have developmental delays and we can’t open a door in his head to see what is happening with this function I want him tested.
I want to know that "my son"’s bad behavior stems from being stubborn and lack of effort and not due to frustration with a delay.
I think since "my son"’s organization skills, loosing assignments and struggle with homework have drastically affected his High School grades, to the point of being at risk for 3 “F”s this semester, testing this area of development has merit.
I feel as we go forward with High School this will continue each and every Semester and he will continue to get Ds and be at risk for Fs. I want to make sure that this is truly "my son"’s fault and not that we are not meeting his needs.
Thank you

So that is were I'm at.
Has anyone else been were I am now. Do any of your kids have an IEP accommodation that addresses organization or Executive function?

A lot of my bad behavior when I was in school was due to other kids provoking me when the teacher was not looking. They were evil enough to feign innocense or were quick to play the victim when I dealt out retribution. It also came about because there were teachers who did not hesitate to talk down to me so I did not hesitate to cause trouble in that teacher's class. For me school was where I went to be tortured by the students and ignored by the teachers. Why would I want to do well in an environment like that I was too busy trying not to get beaten up or spit on.

Oh yes bullying is also a big issue for my son.
Since it is a small school he has no friends. The ones who would like to be his friends or stand up for him wont out of fear of angering the 2 main bullies.
The good kids will treat my son nice as long as he is not the current target of the bully or as long as the bully isn't around to see them be nice to him.
Now that we are in 10th grade he is even getting things that could be classified as sexual harassment.
and your right when school isn't fun but a place to be picked on and made fun of why would he have a good attitude towards school.

The problem now is all the teachers are labeling him a bad student and have given up on trying to help him. Not only are the kids mean to him now even the teachers are mean in his opinion.

We are getting the 4th-grade version of this. DS came home with a Lego minifigure, excitedly telling me that if he stayed out of the social worker's office for a whole week, he'd get another one! Of course, his 504 states that he's supposed to be allowed access to the social worker whenever he needs it, and he is just now learning to ask for help when he needs it.

I'm frustrated. Either the school understands there is a problem or they don't, and either they are willing to accommodate my son, or they're not. This wishy-washy doublespeak around the issues wastes everyone's time.

Where are you?

We are in Central Iowa

momsparky~ My son was also to have access to the school consoler and it was in his IEP (504)in Elementary and Middle School. You say allowed access and that is the type of wording we had. I was told "well you your son doesn't ask to go see the consoler"
So we had to rewrite the accommodation and make it specific. He would see the consoler twice a week for 20 min and as need if an issue would arise. We also had to have a face to face meeting with the consoler to make sure he understood the challenges of counseling an autistic. He ended up doing some research on his own and was able to understand the communication issues and actually help during there talks.

We've had a similar issue where the wording got twisted: my son has difficulty with certain games in PE. I took him to school in the morning, and we would check in with the PE teacher, and I'd say "Do you think you can handle that?" DS would say yes or no depending.

I found out later that when he said no, the PE teacher would ask him again, he'd said (god bless the child!) no, he didn't want to participate - and she asked him AGAIN, whereupon he said yes. When I asked him about it, he said he was afraid to disagree with the PE teacher. (Great that he understood she was trying to make him say yes, though. Unfortunately, this understanding essentially came with punishment.)

Fortunately, my son's classroom teacher is really on it, and he feels safe asking to see the social worker, so him asking isn't the problem. I don't think our school is totally incompetent; I know they are stretched to their limit with accommodations etc., but this kind of slight twisting of words to make a result that is more convenient for them is really harmful to a kid who is struggling to make sure he is understood. We will be setting up another 504 meeting shortly, as well as a meeting with the principal and vice-principal to discuss our concerns about the way the 504 is being handled.

They're coming at situations the way they would deal with a problem with an NT child. That's the biggest issue facing people on the spectrum.

I had the same trouble at school and unfortunately didn't have a diagnosis so it basically reduced me to a nervous wreck. That PE teacher reminds me of many adults I knew in my childhood who just couldn't accept that some people are different and can't be hammered into the same shaped holes.

So they hammer and hammer until the poor kid feels completely at odds with the world. And the NT adults don't understand why.

Oh I think our school is the same in that it's not that they don't want to help my son.
It's they think they are doing whats best for him and also the fact they are understaffed and don't have the ability to "waste" a staff person on a student that doesn't need the help and should be doing it himself.

I do understand that - and I also understand that the fact that my son is able to "fake it" and seem NT isn't helping matters. We are trying to come up with a plan of action to properly explain that things aren't like they seem and the price he is paying for all the effort he's putting forward.

We just found out this year that the PE teacher didn't even know about my son's diagnosis, and knows nothing at all about AS; I am sure her intentions are good, she is a kind woman (nothing at all like the PE teachers of my past) but she needs to be better educated.

I do think one of our biggest problems is our son being compared to other students, both General Ed students and another Autistic boy in the high school that is lower on the spectrum then my son.
I've even been told by a few staff members over the year that my son isn't Autistic as he is not like the other Autistic student.

And staff not being educated is a big issue. They don't brief librarians, lunch room staff, PE, Art etc. due to privacy issues.
And the staff being educated in Autism ended up being a presentation during a Teacher's in-service day. They are very proud that they repeat this every year in case of new information they need to know.

OK, first off, I would suggest getting such finding an outside organization to do the executive functioning tests. I know, you should not have to pay for it but by doing so, it will give you an advantage where everyone has a differing opinion and no proof is being offered.

I do think from reading the story however is that the disconnect is knowing what the daily assignments are in the first place. If this were attitude, then he would not care to do the end of semester rush. Not only that but the rush is causing burnout for the beginning of the next semester and is helping no one. I would suggest looking at your son's assignment book (if he has one) for 2 non-holiday weeks to see if the assignments are getting written down. If nothing is in the book for 2 weeks, then something is up and you have something to bring in (along with your private testing) to prove that this is based on his disability rather than his attitude).

From a perspective that is probably similar to your son's...

I only figured out I have Aspergers last September, but I was labeled a "genius" in school, and they refused to listen or do anything, despite the fact that I was bored to death. My executive function is much less capable when I am bored. In fact, coasting through the way your son has taught me to be lazy; that is all I learned from public school, that being lazy was the only way to survive torture. Overall, it is a lesson I regret learning.

To illustrate how bad it was, I was so advanced in English that they actually agreed - after a huge fight, and a campaign on my part to make the teacher want me out of her room - to let my freshman English course (I was actually taking 12th grade elective English at the same time I was in 9th grade English, btw) be an independent study. I was still bored: every week I'd wait until the night before the assignment was due, rip through it, and still get an "A". (I'm hyperlexic, and English was the one subject I usually got "A"s in, even without doing most of the stupid makework they shoved at me to justify my presence in their prison.) And, I overhead this teacher, talking to other teachers in the teachers' lounge, telling them that she was losing sleep trying to come up with assignments that would "challenge" me.

Yeah. Been there. Done that. They've probably already sunk him, with so many years of such garbage. And even if you fight them, they are sure to know all the tricks. I am also legally blind (due to ocular albinism), and had a fight with the school over that. I wanted to take a graphic arts course; the teacher said I couldn't use the machinery. I was in my guidance counselor's office every day, arguing about this, with no luck. Until the day I got a warning slip, saying that my class grade was zero because I refused to do the work. I even felt bad for the guidance counselor, but at least he had to admit the teacher was the problem... which still did no good. So the state got involved, and sent someone out from the Commission for the Blind. By the time the administration was done stalling, he advised me to just give up and take the course next year with another teacher. And that zero is still on my record - but the letter from the Commission for the Blind isn't. Why? It was filed in the vice principal's "personal" file, even though his name was Mr. Rex, and the vocational counselor from the Comm. for the Blind addressed him as "Mr. Dix", and the entire subject of the letter was my case.

Sorry if I sound cynical. I guess I am when it comes to public education. The stories I've told here are far from the only ones; I could almost write a book. The only way for a parent who cares about their kids to deal with a school system that isn't doing enough is to be prepared, from the beginning, to take the fight as far as they possibly can, as fast as they possibly can. Then, the system might back down in enough time to prevent some damage. Otherwise, the kids they destroy are screwed, and they get off scot free.

One of the things that helped me in school was when my parents stopped punishing me getting written up for bad behavior. My parents knew about me being tricked or provoked into doing bad things in self defence so they learned to ignore the pink slips we called referals that my parents had to sign and send back in to the school. My suggestion is enroll your kid in boxing or judo (judo will keep him from really hurting people) if he beats up his bullies or at least defend himself they will leave him alone so they can pick on someone else less likely to hurt them. I spent my 11th grade 12th grade years bully free because I was not affraid to beat my bullies in front of the class and the teacher. I had to act like a terrorist to get left alone and I will never regreat anything I said or had done to be left alone. 2 years of of peace was better than none at all.

Bad behavior? Laziness? They think he is choosing these things? No child in their right mind would do that so there is some reason behind it. Either he is AS or something else is going on. They should accept and accomodate for AS or figure out what the problem really is. Accepting AS seems much easier.