When your child needs extra help you do whatever you can to get them that help. My son needs help in school. He has asperger's disorder. He is oversensitive to sound and touch, many tastes and smells. Often in a conversation when he is excited or making a point he will get so loud that he is yelling. He misses many social cues and in the month or so that he has been out of speech his articulation has noticeably slipped.
Asperger's falls under the umbrella of Autism Spectrum Disorders. The difference is he is highly verbal and smart. Though I disagree with the latter. I have known several people with autism that were very smart. I go to his school district to get services for him that will help him in school.
He is six weeks behind in his homework. Not because he doesn't know how to do it, not because we don't make him do it. He is behind because of the physical and mental struggle to get it done. We do it differently than the teacher is the largest part of it. Change is often met with resistance. When I ask for a way for him to get help in this school for doing his homework I am met with resistance. I am told the resource room is not a homework club.
The meeting today was hard for me. Maybe because I pick up on other peoples emotions. Empathy sometimes gets the better of me. The emotions in the room were intense. Was it because we wanted him evaluated by the Committee on Special Education. He has had testing here and there but once we pulled it all together we could see holes. He did have an OT evaluation but not a sensory study.
Whether he gets an IEP or a 504 doesn't really matter to me as long as he gets support. I don't care if he is to smart for special ed. That is part of having asperger's He said a sentence before he was five months old. I am not worried about that. I don't want him lost in the system like I was. I was tested for learning disabilities in third grade. I was borderline and no one bothered to check on me again. In sixth grade I was struggling with math and spelling. I couldn't even get two or three words correct on my spelling tests.
I had to get extra help outside of the school. I had help with spelling and math. I could read in kindergarten, I would read ahead of my grade level and I just kept slipping by. Not one teacher after third grade pushed to have me evaluated again. I still struggle with math and spelling. I don't want that for my children.
I know he will need help, but he is above average or in the range that is considered benchmark. I see regression, but because it is in the normal range he is still considered to be doing well. I want to be proactive and keep him doing well. I want to keep him from slipping and I work with him on as much as I can.
We always work on social cues, and empathy. I will when I am reading to him ask him how he thinks the characters are felling so he gets an idea of how to do that. Now his pragmatic language skills are above average. That is my constant work with him. For a year now we have been figuring out ways to talk in many different social settings. His reading is average because I work on that. That is all work done outside of the school.
So now he is being evaluated and I will push for him to get help with homework. I will fight for the OT help I know he needs. I will do all a mother can do for her child. I will make sure he isn't left behind. I will make sure he isn't labeled the problem child. I am his mother and I love him.
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