New to Kindergarten and behavioral problems

Post Reply New Topic

Some background info: my son turned 5 in June and just started Kindergarten in August. He was diagnosed ASD at age 3 (almost 4). He started preschool through the school district for his speech delay when he was 3 years and 3 months old. Our concerns about him started after he started school, we were told he was very smart but he'd have a meltdown quite often. He also was not communicating very well at all.

He is still severely speech delayed but he gets the point across and didn't start talking in full sentences until he started regular PK. So he's been talking in full sentences for about a year or so. School district wanted him to be in a special ed classroom but we insisted in regular PK.

Public PK was an awful experience for him so we pulled him out and put him in a private preschool program where he did awesome.

We moved out of state and we didn't do school or any kind of therapy that he had when we lived in Texas (he had speech therapy, physical therapy, and neurofeedback therapy). We continued to work with him and have him still be socially involved through playgroup and through church.

He is now in regular Kindergarten. Class size is 17 students, 1 teacher, and a teachers assistant. My son sits by the teachers assistant whom he loves. He also gets speech therapy twice a week.

At the parent teacher conference the concerns were not academically, but of course behavioral. Academically he is doing really well for a young Kindergartener. He is also the first one in his class who finishes all his sight words (they get 5 boxes of 40+ words for the whole year and he's on his last box) and who can read. During math he gets to go to a different classroom because he is ahead of his class. I wonder if he is bored and disruptive which is maybe why his teachers decided to challenge him more. Which I do think is great that they are solving it that way.

His teacher noticed that her regular behavior chart didn't work for him so she made him a different one that he carries with him at all times so he can see what is next and what is expected of him. Some days are good, some days are not so good. I noticed that during phonics he is not always cooperative and wonder if he is just bored since he can read already.

We just had an appointment with his new Dr. today and she told us that she was comfortable with his classic ASD diagnosis but that he is very high functioning and doing really well. She commented on how we did a great job working with him at home while he didn't receive any services and wasn't in school the 2nd semester of PK. A year ago my son was not even able to communicate as well as now, or even sing songs.


Dr. also told us to make sure that the school writes his medical ASD diagnosis in the IEP instead of a developmental delay or speech impairment in order to get him autism services. Our son was diagnosed by a different Dr. in Texas who wrote a prescription for ABA therapy but after a year has passed, he has also matured and developed so much. His Dr. told us that with ABA therapy they just do the basics for him? We said we still want to give it a try and told her we needed a prescription for our insurance to cover it. She then asked us if we could ask his regular pediatrician for this. We weren't sure so she looked it up and it has to be done by a behavioral pediatrician or a clinical psychologist so she will get us that after we have had our IEP meeting at school.

I wonder why she didn't seem to want to write an ABA prescription for him?

Does anyone have a child similar to mine and have any suggestions as to his IEP meeting that is coming up in a week? I emailed the special education specialist at his school and asked about an evaluation since we were told that the district wants to do that too.
His Dr. told us that our son needs to be in regular classroom with neurotypical peers because that's how he learns the best (and I agree).
She told us to make sure that he stays in his class and to ask what other options there are to help him stay on task and help him with his weaknesses.

I know I wrote a lot and I want to thank you for reading if you made it this far.
TIA!

We have a very similar situation except that we haven't moved so we haven't had to deal with changing doctors. My DS is very high-functioning, reading at a 2nd grade level in K, so boredom with the typical K cirriculum is a challenging part of having him in the regular classroom.

As to your doc not wanting to prescribe the ABA therapy, there is a chance that he/she is just not familiar with it and so is reluctant to prescribe. I feel we have been lucky with our regular Ped. because she is very open minded and has been willing to listen to me about what DS needs. She has not hesitated to prescibe OT or give referrals to specialsits that we need to get insurance to cover. There is an IEP stickie at the top of this board that you might want to puruse. We have our first IEP coming up so I can't share any direct experience with that yet. It sounds like you have a pretty good situation though with a fairly low student to teacher ratio and with an aide in the classroom that is willing to help him. My DS has had some fairly serious behavior problems so far in K including poking another child with a stick hard enough to draw blood, biting and head-butting other students and fighting with the kid who was assigned to sit next to him at the table to the point that the teacher just moved the other student so DS did not have anyone to sit next to him.

You are in the US? If so, you will have to go through the school evaluation, most (probably all) US school districts don't accept medical diagnoses for ASD. They must do their own evaluation to determine what, if any, services your child will qualify for. Good luck!

I will be the first to admit that my son is a particularly tricky case, until 3rd grade he was capable of hiding everything in public for months at a time (he saved all his explosions for home until they finally got away from him.)

However, one thing I learned is that our district is lousy at diagnosing; they got the big picture but absolutely none of the actionable detail. (The folks who did the ADOS caught all of it immediately) Once we brought it in on an official piece of paper, we had a much easier time.

I second that thought. FBA sounds magical, but really it's just observing and noting antecedents to problem behaviors. It's a great tool for sorting out what might cause what - but much better delivered by a professional who knows what to look for.

For instance, we discovered that DS would have meltdowns whenever there was some kind of afterschool parent activity (e.g. conferences, curriculum night, book sale) or a day off school. While the meltdowns happened at what seemed like random times, tracking them carefully, along with everything that happened that might be upsetting during that day, made us realize that the schedule change was the primary cause. We now spend extra time preparing DS for weeks when the schedule changes, and reminding him that things will be a bit harder for him because his routine has changed.