Things you wish your aid knew about your child

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I originally posted this in the general discussion forum and Ganondox nicely recommended re-posting it here and on the adolescent forum. So if you've seen it already, I apologize. I'm not trying to spam the forum, just looking for some useful information.

I've been working with adults with a wide variety of disabilities for the last 25 years. Most recently I've been working in an administrative function running adult residential facilities. I'm soon going to be leaving my current job as direct care and the work I get to do as part of a team creating and adapting behavior plans, ISPs and the like makes up far too small a part of my job. In the current stage of my job search I'm finding that most of the jobs I am interested in involve working with children and teens with ASD. I have worked with numerous adults with Autism (ranging from 30s-70s) but never children and rarely teens. What I would love to know, before I apply for even one job, is this:

What do you wish your child's aide/support staff/team knew? What bits of information have you found would greatly help someone looking to work with your child, yet doesn't seem to be as widespread as you feel it should be?

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

I think for me the issues we had with the classroom (not dedicated 1:1, which he really needed--but that is another topic) inclusion aide was really lack of even general training. So, to me the best thing would to be training in what the ranges of behavior for an autistic child might be and what the causes might be to try to address them.

The other thing is that when you see behavior that reflects poor social understanding, there needs to be faster intervention and explanation than people are apt t do with NT kids. If you see something that reflects a dysfunctional attempt at friendship that will do the exact opposite, the odds are the kid is not going to figure it out on his/her own, no matter how many times the other kids rebuff him/her.

Mostly the main thing is to listen to the parents for what the child's specific issues are and to communicate what is going on to the parent. Sometimes we can figure out possible reasons for things because of what we already know about our kids.

I'd like them to understand that when there's a special event, class trip, assembly, etc., behaviors are going to appear that don't usually happen. Stop being surprised, and start planning for it. Also, understand that some NT children take advantage of these situations as opportunities to bully.

Has there been any attempt on their part to help your child deal with anxiety surrounding off-schedule events? Has anybody made any attempt to prime your child for off schedule events like field trips? I'm guessing it might help if they could give you even a somewhat loose schedule for the field trip that you could go over with your child a day or two before. I know some people have been helped by reviewing materials pertaining to the field trip a day or two before: having a teacher review a pamphlet or informational brochure about the location of the field trip with your child, visiting a website at school and/or at home about the site the field trip will take place so your child can have at least a small amount of familiarity with what they will encounter on the trip, etc.. The same idea can be used for things like assemblies and special events. Is there anybody at your child's school who could help with such a thing? (assuming it hasn't been tried already, of course)

The problem is usually when the school doesn't communicate events to me in advance. One day they held a big ice-breaker event with his entire grade in the gym, no notice given. A lot of the activities involved touching (linking arms, etc.) My son tried to cope by making rules and telling the other kids what to do, which of course didn't go over well. Then some of the kids told him he couldn't participate anymore. My impression is that there was not enough supervision. Anyway, he ended up sitting by himself crying. No one at the school contacted me about it, and when my son later complained to his teacher she told him he needed to "stick up for himself". This is terrible advice for my son, who has previously punched people who teased him. We don't want to go back to that.