How to help teachers see the whole child, not just a problem

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We went to my second-grade daughter's parent-teacher conference, and were met by her two team teachers, the physical education teacher, and the principal. They proceeded to describe every annoying behavior they have seen our daughter have this year, without making a single positive statement during the whole conference. The physical education teacher described how our daughter doesn't seem to "get" whatever they're doing in class and always moves more slowly than the other kids. The classroom teachers described in great detail how our daughter would happily stand and think about something unrelated to class for 20 minutes, how it's become a "safety issue" how slowly she moves, how she takes too long to move through simple routines. All these are true and unsurprising to us, who ask her to get dressed, then find her five minutes later half-dressed, staring at the wall and thinking about how skin cells regenerate. She is always thinking about something interesting. She says of her mind, "Oh mommy, if you could only see what a busy factory it is in there."

Her teacher complained of not knowing what our daughter is thinking, often. She said yesterday our daughter was "laughing maniacally" and refusing to share why. She presented this as a sure sign of mental instability (the general tone of the meeting). I'm thinking, well, she was probably laughing at you or something she can't share with the group. She's not stupid. My husband and I find that our intelligent, funny, intuitive daughter comes across as dim to others sometimes, we think because social anxiety makes her play dumb. She just recently stopped using baby talk in public, for example.

It became clear that the purpose of the meeting was not a standard conference at all, but a message to us that they believe our daughter is on the autism spectrum and they "just don't know what to do for her" so they want experts' help. This means basically that they're tired of issuing reminders and extra help to her and (I believe) want to get her diagnosed so they can send her to a special program here in town instead of teaching her themselves. This is the "best" elementary school in town, full of privileged children and with the highest test scores around.

So near the end of the meeting, I asked if she's failing anything, and they replied, "Oh, heavens, no," and showed us a perfectly good report card, way above grade level in reading and social studies and at grade level in math.

My issue is that there was no effort made by the teachers to speak of her as a whole person, one who always takes pains to be kind, who never lies, who is fabulously imaginative, reads way above grade level, solves math problems in her head quickly, and who, most importantly, is improving steadily at handwriting and routine-following, etc., even if she's not as fast as the other kids. Who cares about how she compares to the other kids? Not us.

I'm happy to get professional support if it can actually be useful. But I'd be more likely to trust that professional support if it were offered by people who see my child as a person, not as a nagging problem they have to deal with.

I am sorry if you find this cynical, but I do not think you can change their attitude.

You do not get this result by chance or accident, but rather by very determinedly pursuing it, in competition against other schools pursuing the same goal.

This is not a goal one becomes the most successful at pursuing, by worrying about "whole people" who could be a liability, either by bringing down scores or bringing down the "tone of exclusivity".

If your child seems slow to others, how do you think Mr and Mrs Privilege will view her inclusion when they thought they had gotten little Master or little Miss Privilege into the "best" school in town? Being the "best" school in town as measured by test results and the degree of privilege that characterizes the students enrolled there usually requires certain priorities, such as caring more about how a student's inclusion looks (to privileged children and more importantly their parents) than about the student themselves.

Do you think it's plausible this school is the "best" school in town as a result of infallible delivery of exceptional education to everyone who walks in the door, rather than as a result of delivering good education to a carefully selected student body?

Your analysis of the school situation is probably dead on. Right now I'm feeling just obnoxious enough to stick around at this school long term, effectively saying, "Look--you've got all these resources and relatively few problems to deal with compared to other elementary schools, so use those resources to help my kid." In reality, though, I'll do whatever seems best for my daughter's emotional health, as well as her academic learning.

i work in a school with kids with learning and communication "differences..."- kids who are neurally diverse. it's obvious the teacher/principal are overwhelmed and clueless. my only suggestion would be for the school and family to find a way to collaborate on social skills or classroom behavior skills for your daughter. you might need to initiate this process. the idea would be that however this is addressed at school would mirror how it's addressed at home. so identify the general issues (taking too long to get dressed, for example) and then find a way to address it at home and have the school use the same verbage when she's taking too long at school. if you're in the USA, you could have her qualified for special education services so she could get modifications/adaptations written into a contract and the teachers/school need to abide by that. she could also get help from a speech therapist with pragmatics...social stories, so she could "fit in" a little bit better to the classroom structure.etc...
if she has an IEP, it can be re-negotiated as often as you like but at the minimum, once a year. goals are set (for academics or for social, emotional, behavioral, organizational concerns), and she would be eligible for more one-on-one if she needs it. you might want to consider it as school gets harder (middle school, high school).
they would only be able to move her to another school with your consent. it would take a legal hearing for them to force her out of the school and a well-written IEP should make that unnecessary. remember, parents have the ultimate decision and the ultimate rights.

This sounds like "Portrait of AmberEyes as a young girl."
Possible future biologist?




Here here!

I remember being treated like a "problem" when I received "help". People were petrified of the "problem" and began avoiding me. This just further compounded my issues and made me even more confused. My self esteem was rock bottom because I wasn't being treated like a human being, but a "problem" to be fixed.

It's like a self-fulfilling prophesy. If authority figures label the child as a "problem" or a "failure", guess what? The child will fulfill the adults' low expectations: they will be a problem and fail.

I noticed that I began to perform much better when people didn't see me as a label, but as a whole person. When people began denying that I "had" AS, this allowed me some autonomy and control over my life, I began to feel responsible for my actions and didn't act up as much.

It was a lot of hard work on my part to get to that stage though. Oh course, some of my social issues were ignored and glossed over in the process, but at least I felt valued and respected by others. I also noticed that when others weren't aware of my past label, they treated me like a "normal" person and were much less frightened and suspicious of me.

Actually, I believe that every student should be seen as person with individual strengths.

I find your experience valuable and want to understand exactly. Are you saying that at some point you decided to deny that you had Asperger's, and that dropping the label helped people see you differently? Are you saying the label was unhelpful for you?

Have you written more about your experiences elsewhere on this site that we could read about?

Not having the label brings a lot of problems, too. People accuse you of bad behavior when your autistic traits show. For example, when your daughter was slower than the other kids, they might call her "lazy". That's what happened to me. Or they might say "stop fidgeting" all the time, and make her ashamed of moving--I learned to be very secretive about my fidgeting, because it helps me think and it's annoying to not use it. If you have meltdowns it's even worse, because now you're a bratty manipulative misbehaving immature problem child...

I don't know that the label's the problem; it's the way people treat the label. If they see the label as an excuse to say "this child is a problem that has to be solved", most likely they'll do it when the child has no label; only it'll be misbehavior instead of some kind of disease stereotype.

Maybe a good way to get them to change their outlook--or to talk to people at a new school, if you so desire--is to emphasize your daughter's talents. From what you're saying, she has a great many of them; and it's really a shame they're not working with her to improve them. Maybe some of those talents can even be used to help her with the things she finds difficult. For autism, this is very typical--you have some very high skills; others, very low.

If your daughter's not in distress at that school, and she's learning, then she's doing better than many kids her age, and I really wouldn't recommend dropping her in a special-needs school; besides, those have limited placement and other kids who couldn't tolerate school at all would be in line ahead of her, anyway. Plus, she's got more chance at programs that'll help her use the areas in which she's gifted. (Scoring way above grade level on standardized tests really ought to be enough to get her some appropriately interesting work. She shouldn't have to trudge along at grade level if she's really that far ahead.)

So yeah--emphasize what she's good at, start yelling about her not getting what she needs to develop her strengths.

Slowness is not the end of the world. I'm a biomedical engineering major in college, and thanks to my diagnosis, I'm allowed an extra hour to take tests (more, on finals). When I take a test, I'm no longer hurried and confused; and if I drift off into daydreaming or lose my way, I have enough time to figure things out and pick up where I left off. The extra help has raised my GPA by two points--yes, that's failing to passing. It's a legitimate increase; if I couldn't do the work, then I'd be getting bad grades no matter how much time I took.

While your girl isn't failing anything, she may eventually get to the point that extra time will be necessary, if she's slow at working things out, gets distracted, or loses her way when following instructions. For me, that time probably started in high school, when my academic talent started to be not quite enough to compensate for my slowness and distraction; thankfully, the last time I'd had to deal with a traditional classroom was in the sixth grade, when I kept my math grades up only by doing copious amounts of extra credit on my own time. (Math has always been the first to show any problem with my academics--it's a lot more processing-intensive and attention-dependent.) If you can get people to see that, with extra help, your daughter can show off those really useful talents she has, then you've got it made. And really, how much effort is it to write down instructions, or give a little girl some extra time to make up for the time she's drifted off into thinking about human biology?

Well, it was my entire family, plus a psychologist who didn't believe that I had it. They believed that the help I was receiving was doing me more harm than good so decided that it was best to drop it. It was basically a shoe-string budget speech therapy, motor therapy, aide etc. I didn't understand the point of any of it, because it wasn't explained to me scientifically at the time. My family didn't honestly understand why my personality (as difficult as it was at the time) was being pathologised. They didn't see anything "wrong" with me bar me being a little "shy and excitable". Nobody really gave my family proper or useful information at the time either.

Dropping the label definitely helped people to see me differently and in a positive way.
People treated me as a person with strengths and weaknesses, not a negative set of "criteria". I wasn't ostracised so much any more.

I was able to go on all sorts of trips and be given opportunities without the fear that I would be discriminated against. I learned a lot from these activities. Of course, I still had issues with crowds, group-work and noise, but at least some people made an effort to understand me instead of running away in fear all the time.

Later on, I did have quite severe socialising/lonliness/routine issues which did affect my performance. However, I was reluctant to seek help at the time because I was afraid of a negative reaction. My friends and parents also advised against me asking for "obvious" help or therapy because they believed that I was "better than that". I also don't seek help because whenever the word Asperger's is mentioned, I get a feeling like I've been kicked in the stomach because I remember how I was bullied by tecahers and pupils for "having" it.




In my country (over 10 years ago), yes.
Things might be different in the US though.

I've tried to seek advice recently and I haven't found anything productive or positive in my country yet. I've only been met with ignorance and fear. People have said that I shouldn't label and stigmatise myself, but should just get on with life.



Yes.
Just search my name.
I've written some threads in the Members only section.

These are just my experiences, so they probably won't apply to everybody.
Hope this helps.

Your daughter sounds amazing. My comments are apt to be a bit strange, so if you find them inappropriate please feel free to disregard them.

I'm becoming convinced that not only are autistics neurologically different but we have an entirely different system for processing information and giving meaning to our lives. I believe many autistics are capable of accessing other dimensions beyond the three with which we are all familiar and that we tend to think in a non-linear way. Non-linear thinking is beyond the boundaries of space/time. We have a very rich mental life and it is painful to return to the boring ordinary life to which average humans are accustomed. So it is not surprising that we have a great deal of difficulty leaving our more complex consciousness to return to everyday reality. Relative to this ordinary reality, our world is much more fascinating and adapted to the way we are neurologically constructed. It would be hard for anyone to find a way of tempting autistic children to leave their reality for the standard reality when theirs is so obviously better suited to the way their brains function. And this is the conundrum we are up against.

I loathed school until the 7th grade where my teachers were well above average and the school's principal outstanding. My teachers all offered the option of doing extra credit assignments for the purpose of improving our grades as well as obtaining one-on-one tutoring from them. I thrived. I jumped at the opportunity and always did every extra credit assignment that was offered. We were also assured that the extra assignments could only raise our class grade, never lower it. Many of my teachers commented on how brilliant and creative I was. And I'd not heard that very often before except from my parents who were perhaps a little biased. As a result, I couldn't wait to get to school each day. Unfortunately my high school was more of the same mediocre garbage....and so once again I loathed going to school.

What I am suggesting is that rather than trying to get your daughter's teachers to see the whole child....instead, you work on making your daughter as happy as you can in terms of her academic achievements, with an at-home enrichment program. You parents take it upon yourselves to encourage your daughter in special projects which she can do at home. Make sure to praise her initiative and expand her interests. Offer to help her with a project of her own choosing. Let her know that you are willing to help her access the places in her mind where she is inclined to want to stay and not come out of, but that you would love to see the results of these ventures in terms of a physically constructed project, demonstration or report. I would also suggest that you respectfully request that your daughter be spared the pain of interacting with others during physical education if that is at all possible...and allow her to play by herself with a jumprope, ball, small trampoline or whatever is available. I would bet that she has no trouble at all entertaining herself. When I was quite young I expressed interest in an abacus, a slide rule, and a chemistry set--all of which my parents were happy to provide me with.

Ditto on the solitary physical activity. I managed to get the idea that PE was when you stumbled around and looked really awkward and had people mock you. It took me a long while to realize that if you're competing against yourself, or just doing it for the sake of doing it, it's enjoyable in its own right. Get away from the performance-oriented sports and races and whatnot, and it doesn't matter if you're clumsy as anything.

Call up friends and members of your family (or your church, for that matter), and try to find someone within who is seeking an advanced degree in a field that suits your daughter's interests. Try to arrange for her to spend some time with this person and learn in detail about his/her field. Trust me: once she has been struck with the realization that this sort of stuff has meaning outside of her imagination, she will take a greater interest in the world around her. Right now she's going through a point in her life in which there is literally no connection whatsoever between what she has on her mind and what is physically going on around her.

Don't get me wrong: she can tell the difference between reality and the contents of her own mind. They just have no connection to each other. Period. Until she has begun to make connections between the land of ideas and the outside world, she will not be able to see the world around her as meaningful or important. She needs to feel that the stuff that goes on in her mind can and does have concrete meaning.

If you can get in contact with someone who works in a chemistry lab (assuming that's what she's interested in), try to start the process of hooking her up with a part-time position there long before she is old enough to actually take the position. The sooner the tread hits the ground for her, the better. Until it has, she is going to be completely divorced from her own body. She is not going to see how anything she physically does has more meaning than she can acheive by sitting on her rear-end putting important concepts together; and, quite frankly, she is right, at least based on what she knows. She needs a concrete grounding for these ideas, probably more than she will ever need anything else besides her mother's love.

This is completely based on my own experiences, and I think I've been through a sufficient trial-by-fire to have some grounds for what I say. When I could really see how what I DID connected with what I THOUGHT, the world was utterly transformed for me. I didn't have to hide in my books and my thoughts anymore. I was able to accept the fact that I EXISTED. Prior to that, I literally refused to accept the idea that the contents of my mind and the material world outside had any real association with each other. Period. I was a living ghost in my own flesh.

Quite frankly, I liked it that way. If you'd been in the toxic environment I was in, you'd have rather been a ghost yourself. We're talking about a pale, long-haired, angel-faced, soprano-voiced, lisping, heavily eccentric youth with a highly romantic outlook living in the middle of the American South during a period when the conservative Christians were fighting tooth and nail to preserve the public's belief in some insidious "gay agenda." You could be targeted for heavy-handed abuse just for admiting that you didn't exactly hate the gay people. If you had been there and I had asked your opinion, you'd have advised me to stay a ghost. It was just the intelligent thing to do at the time.

What I'm finding, though, is that it's taking a lot longer to build those bridges than it might have if I'd started a lot earlier.

^^^

ThisisjusthowItalk,
I find the above post fascinating, insightful, brilliant and helpful. Well done!