My son is in a regular 1st grade class, but gets pulled out 30 minutes every afternoon to go to special ed for social skills class; he also gets speech therapy for pragmatic (conversational) language at school. He is seeing an OT for handwriting and sensory issues outside of school although the school OT checks in on him every once in a while and has issued him a word processor. He also sees an ABA therapist outside of school.
It depennds on the eval that your school did-- ours did IQ test (huge difference between VIQ and PIQ), parent and teacher questionaire, and observation by the school psychologist. I also requested a speech test since he did not seem to follow multistep directions very well, took things literally, etc. I also requested a OT test for sensory issues (unable to sit still and nervous fidgets like chewing on things) and for handwriting. Once the school did the psych testing, I went to pediatrician and requested a psych consult to get help outside school. The wait list was horrible but I was able to get down to 3 months wait with persistence and since I told them school already did testing. It was kind of up to me to research and request testing for specific issues that I thought might be a problem (auditory processing, pragmatics, etc).
Wrong Planet and Do2Learn are my favorite websites, and the Oasis Guide to Aspergers was the first book I read to get an idea of what exactly we needed to work on. Every kid is different. It is very hard and frustrating in the beginning to even figure out what exactly pertains to your child or to what degree your child has to do something for it to be considered out of the normal realm. When we first filled in questionaires, I remember thinking my son had empathy, especially when he heard a crying baby-- he would walk right up to the mom/dad and ask them why the baby was crying and ask them to help the baby. After all those questionaires, my mom was visiting and we were in a restuarant with crying baby, and my mom says "oh, are you worried about that baby", and he responds bluntly "no, I just wish it would shut up because it is hurting my ears". Turns out, he is very sensitive to the sound of a baby's cry--sensory problem, not empathy. We also figured out he had absolutely no idea between an angry face and a kind face or tone of voice; we were shocked that he could not read emotions. No wonder he got so apprehensive about being in a crowded room-- he had no idea what to expect. He also could not tell the difference between a question and a statement, so when I was running frantically around the house screaming for him, he was calmly sitting on his bed reading with no response-- because he didn't know he was supposed to respond. When he was little he very rarely asked for things-- I would just catch him climbing the cabinet to get a cup-- I thought he was just independent. He is independent, but now I think he did not ask because he did not understand the value of conversation and he thought I knew what his brain was thinking. Just to give you an idea of how strange these things seemed, he is very verbal and smart and very creative about things out of the social realm-- no one would ever assume he had autism unless they spent some time working with him, saw him with kids his age, and demanded things from him that he did not want to do.
The biggest thing you have to remember is that he has no idea that other "normal" people see things differently than he does, so he is not just going to tell you what his differences are because to him these things are just normal.
If you give us more specific ideas on your son, I am sure everyone here would be glad to help you understand or give you ideas. Everyone here is wonderful and will jump at the chance to help-- we have all been there!
02 Mar 2012, 2:53 pm
