how does AS qualify as "special educational needs"

Post Reply New Topic

in my school im supposed to have a support teacher with me in some lessons because my AS qualifies me for a "special eduactional needs" statement. its not like i have a huge difficulty in lessons, im good or at least a little above average in most of my subjects and whilst i appreciate the help i get, does having AS really qualify me for it or should someone with a more serious learning difficulty get the help? i live in London and i'm 16 and going go into six form in september. it just seems like the government have been blindly pumping money into kids with AS without understanding what it is in hope of getting results.

put simply, how does AS qualify as a "learning disability"? and what exactly in terms of learning does it hinder?

Yes, it qualifies you. Lots of Aspies need help. It's not a matter of difficulty with your actual lessons; it's a matter of having problems with transitions (having to stop one thing and start another), perseveration (not being able to stop doing the same thing over and over), sensory overload and meltdowns (when your brain stops working and you shut down or have a tantrum), and social interaction.

AS can come along with specific learning disabilities. You might research NVLD, which is kind of a neurologist's view of AS and autism; they focus more on learning when they describe it than when they describe AS. You might for example have trouble summarizing things, understanding context, writing fiction, or doing things without obvious, step by step instructions; or you might have problems with projects where the instructions weren't really comprehensive and clear.

You can also have additional learning-related problems. Dyslexia (reading problems), dysgraphia (writing is difficult; you write slowly and messily), ADHD (difficulty controlling what you pay attention to), and dyscalculia (math problems) are all common. An aide can help with these, but many students are just pulled out for extra lessons during the day.

If you can say that you would do just as well without your aide--on everything, including overall behavior, not just school--then you have a case for asking not to have one anymore. But don't do that unless you know you really aren't getting any benefit.

I would have done so much better in high school with an aide.

I couldn't even get library books out, or ask someone to get them out.

It's amazing I even just passed.

I had extensive special ed services in school and I am not sure how they helped at all. I did have an aide, according to my school papers to work on my behavior and to model social skills, but one of the aides I had was mean to me and threatened me with beating if I didn't behave.

Also in the actual special ed classes I was in part of the day, all they had me do was my homework.

I had no problem with the intellectual part of school, but since I had those tantrum spells and hyperactive behavior and bad social skills, they tried their hardest to give me services.

What sort of school is it? Is it a private school? Perhaps the teacher comes in with the package, to attract more customers.

Im in a similar situation to you exept im in the Scottish School system, Aspergers and Autism are classed as Disabilities because people with Autism learn differently and so they need help in mainstream school.

I Get a scribe and i sometimes get to use a laptop in class because I cant write. I also got extra time in my exam's.

In Canada public schools issue them if the situation merits. I was never even caught with a diagnosis until the end, and I never wanted one so I didn't get one. It really depends on the student's current problems. In my case I was doing well enough, but there was 1 AS student who had a TA escort at all times for not being able to control the behaviors mentioned above. I doubt the attention it attracted was entirely positive but I guess that's what it took for the student to be approved in classes.

Those services helped me out a lot, when I was in the school system.

The services can help a lot, both academically and emotionally depending on the situation.

I got both good and bad experiences from being in special education,

The Good
The smaller class size allowed me to consintrate better, less anxiety, They helped build up my strengths in English writing skills, social studies, and in science.

The Bad
I was allowed to graduate with poor math skills and was not offered foreign language classes. When I was in first and second grade I picked up some bizzar behavior from the othe kids in class. They felt I needed to work on my social skills so they made take regular art and social studies classes with a regular class. It was like throwing a lamb to the lions. All I got out of was I learned to keep my head down and my mouth shut. I am a bitter and mistrusting person today for it even thirty years later.

The Ugly
The other students saw I was in special education classes so I was singled out for extra harrassment and torture. Kids would get away with walking up to the door of the special education classes and kicking it as hard as they can while the class was underway. They always got away with it with everybody thinking it was the funniest thing in the world.

Putting an Aspie in room full of knuckleheads might cause them anxiety and keep them from consitrating on the task at hand. A spcial education teacher would be able to help you find and strength what your really good at. Not to mention helping you improve your weaknesses.

I received an official statement from my Psych that AS does not qualify as a learning disability in the strict sense. It is a behavioral disability that can detract from learning.

Not in "the strictest sense". Kind of the way that being blind doesn't, in the strictest sense, prevent you from reading. You do, however, read differently, and expecting you to use a regular book in exactly the same way everybody else does would be silly...

Similarly, AS doesn't affect learning directly. It does, however, mean you think and learn differently, and this has to be compensated for.

Having an aide should not curtail your freedom. I hate it when that happens; but it does, so often that it's practically the norm. Unless you're prone to freaking out and running into traffic or hitting people or something equally dangerous, there's no reason why having an aide should ever mean that you can't do things other kids are allowed to do. If yours does that to you, I suggest you bring it up at your next IEP meeting (yes, you are allowed to attend, and you should; I am pretty sure that other countries have similar meetings to discuss a special needs person's academic progress and accommodations.)

"Special needs" doesn't necessarily mean "learning disability". Autism's three main deficits are:

1. Difficulties with social interaction - Social interaction is an important skill. Being able to work collaboratively is very important. Not being able to understand social conventions can cause conflict in a group and alienate you and other around you. Not knowing how to interact properly may cause confusion and anxiety, depression or to be oblivious to your obligations. If you don't know how to interact with your peers or your teachers, this can hinder your learning because you have the burden of having to decode people on top of actual learning.

2. Difficulties in Verbal and/or non-verbal communication - My biggest deficit, personally. You might mistinterpet what people mean, causing conflict and anxiety. I struggled immensely with english because it was very ambiguous and vague to me, aka, there was not a "true" answer. Oddly enough, I was good at analysing stories- I was just rubbish at explaining why an authour would use a particular phrase (though I've improved, I must say). You might use phrases and sayings inappropriotely. You might not know what is expected of you because of the way in which a question is worded. On top of your problems with social interaction, you might not know how to ask for help. People may find it difficult to communicate with you because of your exxagerated or lack of body language, which might send conflicting messages. You might not be able to word yourself as eloquently as you would like to and the language you use might confuse people.

3. Difficulties with imagination/flexibility - You might be so sevrely affected by this that you cannot imagine anything and that you take thing very literally which means that you might heavily rely on a strict routine to relieve anxiety. If you're like me, you will have a fairly decent imagination for things like telling stories and creating alternate universes, but you might find it difficult to predict what people might be thinking and feeling and being able to think of new solutions to a problem. You might have a fantasy world in which you retreat to but you might think that others know what you are thinking and understand what you mean when you say "Do you remember when John fought all the martians in his flying wheelie bin?". I did that. I still do that, actually, no realising that people don't know what's in my head. You might not lack logic but you might lack the imagination to do problem solving properly, e.g, you might continue to use the wrong method to solve the problem over and over again because you cannot think of another way around it.

Also, there are lots of sensory problems autistics can face.

So, even autism on it's own can be detrimental to learning. Personally, I believe that my AS makes learning detrimental in some respects and beneficial in other respects.

However, if I didn't recieve support, I wouldn't be wehere I am now. I still require support even in college.

It sounds a bit arbitrary to me. I'm in the USA and my two eldest children have AS, and all three of my children have ADHD and various other dx's. Eldest son has a support person who goes with him to class and helps him stay on target. This isn't just for him but for the teacher and the rest of the classmates. Some of his behavior can be distracting. He's academically gifted and has bounced back and forth between Honors and regular classes. He can't write legibly and the school gives him a word processing unit to use. He also gets extra time on tests because his cognitive processing speed is severely impaired, which is connected to his AS (but isn't universal, it's just that there is generally a big point spread in IQ subsets for people with AS, and for him the low score is especially low and is in that area). He also gets the bubbles filled in for him on bubble tests so the machine can read his answers accurately.

His younger brother also has a relatively low Cognitive Processing Speed, but it is within the normal range just low relative to his other IQ subsets. He neither needs nor gets accomodation for that, but the teachers know he takes a little longer than other children who are as academically capable as he is. He is in the gifted program for his grade. He gets excellent grades. There is a chance he'll get to skip a grade and go into a more accelerated program if the school can implement that. The teachers know that he has sensory issues and stay off his case about his odd way of dressing and walking and look out for him if the other kids get weird about it. He can get from class to class on his own and does not need anybody to sit with him in class, so he doesn't get that. He has no formal accomodations, it's just that the teachers know he's got a legitimate diagnosis so cut him a little slack about certain things.

I've tried to get him more formal accomodations because that would qualify him for social skills training, which he does need and want, but they won't go for it because his problems aren't big enough.

The good news is your school system runs rings around ours. Your gov. spends way less on education than ours, but they money goes a lot farther. Our schools seem to be a great black hole that we pour money into with very poor results. There's never money for programs, services, or academic excellence, but we pour more cash into the system than any nation on earth.

It is quite noble of you to be considering others to be more deserving of educational support when you have a legal right to it yourself.

But if you have been diagnosed with AS, you have clinically significant social impairment and while your disability is mostly invisible compared to most disabilities, it is none the less a very real disability.

My school grades were unaffected by my AS, other than English, where I could have used some help.

My parents were told that my 'comprehension was nil' (which was actually a fairly accurate description of me) despite the fact that I was top of my class in two different foreign languages and mathematics

I was so f*****g lost in space with Shakespeare, which from memory was even less intelligible to me than NTz are today

Back when I went to school, ADHD was disbelieved by many teachers, and thought of as disruptive rather than something that should be accommodated. My mom got around this when I was in elementary school by volunteering to work as "room-mother," but in reality while she helped other kids too, she was my aide. And believe me, I badly needed it. I was never put in special ed, though. And thank God, because they were very, very poorly equipped to handle the combination of ADHD and giftedness.

As I got older I didn't need that in-classroom involvement, though I did need help at home for longer. By the time I got to college, accommodation was getting better. A lot of people my age got extended test-taking times and the like, for having ADHD. I never asked, because I had been forced to deal with the time constraints the hard way and had learned how to cope. (Though God knows it probably would've helped when I took finance. What an AWFUL class. I hate the intricacies of math, probably because it doesn't hold my attention. Other than that, though, I was OK.)

I can tell you that even for ADHD it can make a real difference. But, I think every situation should be individually evaluated. You and your family can make the best call of what you do and don't need.