I won't give up but my rope's getting shorter

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This is the kind of thing I HATE! Let's say AS IS a fake made up illness. Let's face it, TECHNICALLY, it IS! AS is merely a way of describing a number of combinations of problems that nobody really fully understands. 3 people with the SAME symptoms could conceivably have them for different reasons, etc... That STILL doesn't mean that your son needs NO help! After all, they used to attribute some things to curses, demons, etc.... Today, we don't believe in curses, demons, etc... but some of those things are STILL around. We just attribute them to miniscule troublemakers that we call bacteria, viri, prions, etc... People used to be LOCKED UP for thinking about such ridiculous theories. Just look at what happened to one guy that suggested that some curses could be solved by washing one's hands! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis

So why should your child be given a WORSE diagnosis and possibly be DOOMED to a life of being subjected to substandard expectations, just because the people at that school are STUPID!?

Last edited by 2ukenkerl on 01 Jan 2010, 8:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

I have to say, posters here know the most interesting things. I wasn't aware of that story. Fascinating.

I'm sorry if I'm not really helping but I just wanted to say that, in my experience, just about every single teacher is lazy, stupid, and ignorant. You have the kind that just believe in the goodness of mankind and don't believe kids just "get bullied" without a reason - the "bullied" kids must've done something as well. There's the kind that's just lazy, they don't really give a crap about the kids as long as they get their payment every month. And there's of course the kind that just believes the kids that look bored are lazy and that all they need is "a kick in the butt".

I don't really have a solution to the problem but I'm not particularly optimistic about making them "see the light".
In my experience it's just too difficult to change other people's way of thinking, especially when they're unwilling.
Supporting your son when he has problems might be the only thing you can do.

School sucks, but school will end at one point. Your son is strong, he'll get through it.

WOW, they are like that in the NETHERLANDS ALSO!?!? Are they unionized with tenure also?

For what it is worth, they are the SAME way in the U.S.!



At one point, in the US, classes were small and worked together. Some higher grades helped the lower, etc... They could ask the teacher for help. We are supposed to believe that bullies were ALSO not so common.

At SOME point, and this was apparently before the 1940s, and may have happened FAR earlier, class size shot up, less outside help was offered. Bullies became common. Eventually, “teachers” became nothing of the sort and tenure and unions made schools little more than daycare centers.

It is interesting to note that OLD first grade books may not even be understood by some TEENAGERS today and old highschool papers may look scholarly. Considering that we have had HUNDREDS of years to refine stuff and the amount of knowledge to learn is larger, I find this interesting and embarrassing.

This is so like me and my son's story- only he said "testicles"! (and it was kindergarten, and the teacher asked me, in an accussing voice, where he heard such a word- which literally cracked me up).
I wanted to agree that putting pressurre on teacher/principle/school helps a lot! My son is in 6th grade now, and although he isn't in special ed and I think they all groan when they get a call from me, they have made some concessions for him, and it has worked wonders. He gets really good grades, and no longer gets 'in trouble' for accurratly describing body parts.

WOW, I knew the word testicles and testes when I was 5(Average age for a person in kindergarten in the US), and perhaps EARLIER! I ALSO knew about ovaries and fallopian tubes, etc.... One of the first books I read was about ANATOMY! I STILL remember how the drawing of the females anatomy, with the vagina, uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries, etc... looked like some sort of odd creature.

HEY, kids are curious! I never had to ask about the birds and the bees, etc...

another was about science.

BTW I REFUSED to use baby talk to describe anatomy. I STILL don't generally refer to my mother and father by such nomenclature. I used/use their first names.

It is STUPID that a "teacher" figures a child should be TAUGHT language on the "TEACHER"'s schedule. HECK, I had a teacher in the 11th grade, who I think was AS!( ), that actually taught me some words didn't know! I LOVED IT! BTW I think he was AS because he seemed awkward, had an odd behaviour, was not emotional, spent EVEN his LUNCH HOUR memorizing the dictionary, etc.... He was different in a number of ways.

As far as a kid knowing the name for his or her body parts I'm all for it. Infact alot of law enforcement and child devoment experts tell you to teach your child the right names for the sex organs.

my son is in second grade and I have had to aggressively advocate for him since preschool because of his behavior that could be helped with the smallest of modifications , it is exhausting and I had almost an identical experience to yours except she said "he just needs to learn to get over it" that was her favorite phrase about my son how do you get over autism? . The key here is the principal if they do not support you your son will continue to suffer , I have discovered people like this do not change. My son did not like the changes but after 3 different schools I discovered a school made awesome by the principal the teacher understands him and is happy to work with us he has gone from the class pariah to being very happy and well liked . Has your son been to a behavioral optometrist? I strongly suggest it as he may have Dyspraxia this is common with aspergers and is classified as a learning/behavioral disability . This teacher is toxic to your son in your position I would do whatever I could to remove him from her class before she permanently damages his self esteem . Try taking him for a visit to his brothers school make it a game maybe he can have a school map or pics to study if he is allowed to visit the 4th grade room and meet the teacher after school he may change his mind.

not a parent of an aspie, but i do have AS and went through similar crap in school

first off, a "teacher" who says something like this shouldn't be teaching at all. in 4th grade, at least in my school, the average class size was between 18 and 21 students, so there are a lot of kids to handle, but that is no excuse for doing nothing!! a teacher like that, refusing to help in any way, is the lazy one in that equation, and does not deserve to be called a teacher. as for the "your kid needs a kick in the butt" comment, i would have gone straight to the superintendent.



fart? a swear word? maybe to a preschooler...a very sheltered preschooler. any 9 year old boy could have, and probably would have, come up with that eventually. i wonder, though, if it had been any other student, would that child have been sent to the office?

i had similar injustices with being sent to the principal's office, often for retaliating against the other students who treated me like dirt. i spent more weeks in lunch detention than i care to count, simply for standing up for myself.



ok yeah, another example of when i would have gone to the superintendent or the school board. ALL the teachers in the district could benefit from workshops like that, no matter what grade! and a workshop like that could help any students with undiagnosed AS get the help they need!

as for observing your son at recess, if he is getting picked on at all, the other students would notice and back off with adults around, then would later pick back up.

your son is diagnosed, right? the biggest thing i would do at this point is, if you know what kind of help he needs, get him an IEP so the school is REQUIRED to help him.

best of luck!!

Seems a lot of so called teachers out there simply can't be bothered, IEP in place or not. I had a Special Ed teacher tell me AS is something we have done to our kids by parking them in front of video games so they simply lack social skills as a result of this, very nice coming from one who is supposed to have expertise in the area. When she made this statement she had no idea my son has AS, we just happened to be talking about his sister who has an IEP for ADD. I have lost so much faith and respect in the school system and wish I had taken my son out in elementary and home schooled, if nothing else maybe I would have been able to salvage his self esteem from the constant bullying which BTW teachers witnessed and turned their heads the other way. My son had an IEP in place for ADD since the 3rd grade and not one of these so called professional Spec Ed teachers ever picked up on his AS. After several meetings with a fantastic psychologist only then did I have a word to describe my son...an Ah Ha moment. I always new there was something different about him, thought CAPD. Wish I knew then what I know now perhaps I could have made his life just a little easier. Sorry for rambling but this teacher BS really gets under my skin.

That is ridiculous!! It gets me fired up!! ! We have one particular OT who works with my 7 year old AS dd. In our last IEP meeting (in which I wanted to discuss her new diagnosis of AS...she is deaf as well, so that is her preliminary eligibility), this OT told me that she is just lazy and doesn't want to try. Uhh....okay....so let's find a way to make things a little easier for her...maybe? I think we'll be having some battles with this chick. I just need to get my feathers ruffled a little more and it'll be on. The rest of the staff is making an attempt at least to understand my child, but the one who should understand what she's dealing with the most, doesn't care.

I definitely think you should be getting your son away from that teacher if at all possible. It's not doing him any good to have someone thinking he's just lazy. Some days I wish that I could be in my daughter's shoes just so I could understand what she goes through day in and day out....and I wish I could give others that ability as well.