WORST case scenario - what happens then ?

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YES, YES, YES.... They gave my child the MR label and sent him to a classroom run by a lazy ass B1TCH. NO, I will NOT apologize for my language - I am sick, tired, frustrated and exhausted.

I am not saying my son is perfect. He has delays and he has some challenges but he can learn. Up until his 3rd birthday came and went with nary a word out of his mouth, I was in denial. My older child had been speech delayed and only began to talk fluently at age 2.5 yrs. I ASSumed that boys are slower and that he would speak at age 3 or 3.5. With the clock ticking and no sign of language emerging, I worried. THEN, I got involved. I went to work, teaching him self-help skills first - life skills that he would need, regardless of whether he could learn anything else or not. He picked them up real fast. At 3 years and 4 months of age, he now helps me dress him and can put shoes on and off by himself with minimal assistance. Is that perfect ? NO, but it is a heckuva lot better than where his self - help skills were even 3 months ago.

I no longer spoon feed him. I sit him down at his dinner chair and hand-over-hand him with his spoon. I have only just last week become aggressive about teaching him to eat with a spoon and he is already willing to do some of the feeding himself. Big, freaking deal that 18 months old tots can self-feed and my son will only get there 2 months from now. Who cares when he learns to feed himself, as long as he is ABLE to self - feed eventually ?

He is not interested in toys or puzzles or books. So, I am looking at other ways of reaching out to him and engaging him. It bothers me that the Principal would look me in the eye and tell me that the educational setting is soooooooo different than the home or therapeutic setting ! ! OH, REALLY, B1TCH ? That is EXACTLY the reason why IDEA forces folks like you to make ACCOMODATIONS for kids like mine.

BTBNNYR, I could do with some advise from you on how to teach my child language explicitly ? I am thrilled to read that you learned to speak at 8 and had functional speech at 9. That says volumes to me about the opinions of these so-called professional asshats that language cannot be learned at any age, and that there is THIS MAGIC WINDOW that allegedly closes at age 5, after which kids lose the ability to learn. What a load of crock ! That is what happens when c@@nts inhale controlled substances and then set themselves up as school psychologists or special education "teachers" (note quotes).

Anyway, all that ranting aside, BTNNYR, (and of course, if you have lasted this long through my foul-mouthed vent !), would you share how your parents and teachers taught you to speak ? Did you use an augmentative communication system such as ASL or PECS ? Please advise. Your post gives me a lot of re-assurance that I am not being paranoid about the intentions of these B1TCHES and that my gut was right all along. His teacher is a lazy c@@t who doesn't do a damn thing for my baby. I send him to school to learn, not blow bubbles all day long or jump on the trampoline the entire time he is there. The B1TCH is supposed to be a god-damn teacher, not a lazy-ass baby sitter who does not know her fat lazy ass from a hot seat.

Harharhar, HisMom, all the things that you just described here have been described to me by the parents that I work with!

Eggspecially the part about not being able to learn past a certain age. And yep, they usually put that age around five or six. "The critical period has passed", they say in sage tones. A tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing, in my opinion. Or having no hope of evar catching up to other kids in any area from language to self help to academics to motor skills. The asshats call that "the gap is widening". Fark them and their stooopid farkwords. They're the ones with the brains that don't work. Don't listen, get mad, and fight. My boss is awesome at this. She asks them where they bought their Ph.D.s and delight in their squirming! The founders of our organization are parents of an autistic child, a teenager. We need moar moar moar parents to be like this.

Here is how I learned to speak:

I got taught English as a second language. This taught me to speak and use language eggsplicitly. Prior to that, I had not picked up on language naturally. My reading comprehension was nil, because I read at the single word level instead of in connected sentences with meaning for the whole sentence, paragraph, story.

So the first thing was that I learned nouns for things. There was a picture of a cat, and under it the word "cat", and I would associate the two with each other just by remembering the picture. I learned to speak from reading. A lot of autistic kids have great visual memories, so we should take advantage of that. The SLP I talked to said that no one did that in speech therapy. I was like WTF? Isn't this the obvious thing to do?

So you can make a bunch of these pictures on cards and put words to the pictures and show the pictures to your son. See if he would type the words from seeing them. You could also get objects like his toys and put words to them. Like put velcro on a toy truck and and have a tag that says "truck" with velcro, and stick the label on the toy. But try to get him to either type or say the word. That depends on if your son has verbal apraxia. If no verbal apraxia, then I would go for speaking. You would say the word, multiple times, and try to get him to say it. Associate object, word that he sees, sound that he hears. It'll be encoded that way. Don't worry if he doesn't say things right away. I had a latency period of learning lots of language and not using it, until my teachers told my father that I should skip a grade, because I was doing so well in school. And he was like WTF are you talking about? I didn't use language at home, because school was where I learned it, and school was where I used it to begin with. Anyway, it's all about showing him that there is an association between objects that he sees and verbal representations for them, that these things go together. So build up a vocabulary of nouns that he can recognize.

Next step is verbs. You can show a person running and have the labels "run", "running", "she is running". This makes the association between actions and words. It also shows that there is more than one way to say the same thing. Don't worry about official grammatical rules at this point. It's the associations that are important, because autistic kids don't make these spontaneously. That is why you have to teach them eggsplicitly. But they can get it if you teach them.

Another thing is that you should photoshop the other stuff out of the pictures for the kids to focus on the one thing that you want them to learn. Like in pictures of cats, photoshop out all but the cat. Otherwise, the kid will be focusing on something else, a different thing in each picture of a cat, and the word-picture association won't be firm. And it helps to have a bunch of pictures of each thing. That helps with generalizing. Once the associations are firm between single objects and words, then you can build up a sentence to put the cat on the armchair, and this is when the sentences can get more complex, like "the cat is sleeping on the chair". One piece of krap that I heard from so-called professionals is that they have a picture for each word in the sentence. Dumbest idear evar. Show one picture for the whole sentence once the words "cat", "sleep", and "chair" are understood, so the kids can make the leap to the sentence level and not be stuck at the word level.

My boss started working with her son on this kind of language development when he was ten years old, and he learned well this way. At first, he had shown no spontaneous interest in reading, but he started doing this, ackshuly understanding what he was doing and doing it well and having success, and he loved doing it, learning twenty, thirty new words per day, typing them because he can't speak due to verbal apraxia, when the previous goal was like five for a year of ABA. Fark them! He didn't need to "work for chips" and all that krap. He worked, because it was fun and engaging, and he was being treated like a hoooman child who could do things and learn things. He works for hours a day on academic subjects now, and the professionals had labeled him as severe, non-verbal, ret*d, hopeless, institutionalization recommended. They are smoking crack and talking out of their asses. Most of the kids who come to us are less severe, less non-verbal, easier to teach, and their parents all shocked when they see what he can do. And it works for their kids too. One nine-year-old didn't speak at all before he started this, and now he is saying words like "truck!" when he wants to play with his toy truck and he says the letters on the springboard or the keyboard, and he is just starting out at age nine. He has no or mild apraxia, I'm not sure, but I have no doubt that he will develop spontaneous language to say whatever is on his mind.

Another thing about ABA is that eggspectations are set too low. So so so low. PECS is ok for figuring out what your son's basic needs and wants, but it's just a stand-in while he is developing language. Picture icons are not the end all be all. They are somethng that autistic kids get stuck with when no one teaches them real language. It is not like our brains just can't get language at all. It's more like our brains don't get it spontaneously. We can get it if we are taught it. I have heard of some aspie kids doing horrible in their native language that they can kinda sorta speak not that great and suck at reading and writing and being at the top of their class in a foreign language that they were taught eggsplicitly at school.

Yeah, my son was placed in a DD (developmentally delayed) classroom with non-verbal children at age 3. He was hyperlexic, and was reading at the time, but his speech was delayed, so their solution was a school day filled with non-verbal skills. He also has hearing (fluid/tubes) and vision (bilateral colobomas) issues. At orientation the teacher read a tactile book to him and another student, and when he reached for it, she said 'no' because they had a rule that the kids weren't allowed to touch the book. I also found out that the speech therapy I had fought for was going to be "group" speech therapy with the same kids. That was his first and last day in the classroom. He isn't going to learn speech around kids who don't talk. We sent him to private preschool, but were able to make the public school give him weekly small group speech therapy (1:2) for the next couple of years.

As for the outlook. There is more public support out there for less functional individuals. If an adult isn't able to communicate or work, I think you can get public assistance and support for them. It might even be harder on your son if he is higher functioning when he reaches adulthood because he will probably need some extra help, but the public assistance might not be there. I'd look into medicaid waivers and social security. Get active in the local ASD community, and there should be classes free available.

BTW, if you see regression, make sure you get them fully checked out medically. Could be allergies, seizures, etc.

They put him in DD class without getting your OK? They are supposed to put your child in the least restrictive environment possible. Also they should have given you a booklet with your state's rights for parents and children for special needs children.

Here is some more info about placement. There is more on that site.

http://www.wrightslaw.com/blog/?p=5769

Placement Decisions
After the IEP team makes decisions about your child’s needs and the special education program, a team will decide your child’s placement — where the services will be provided. Placement decisions must be individualized and based on your child’s unique needs as described in the IEP.[i]

Who decides where my child will be placed?
In some states, the IEP team makes the placement decision. In other states, the decision may be made by another group of people who are knowledgeable about the child.

Do I have a say in decisions about my child’s placement?
Yes. Parents are members of any group that decides their child’s educational placement.[ii] The team must include people who know:

The child
What the evaluation results mean
What types of placements are appropriate

How does the team decide on a child’s placement?
The first option the team must consider is placement in the general education classroom at the school your child would attend if not disabled.[iii] The team needs to answer these questions:

Can this child be educated satisfactorily in the general education classroom?
What supplementary aids, services, and supports does the child need to be educated in the general education classroom?[iv]

Are there any rules about placement decisions?
Yes. Your child’s placement must be:

Based on your child’s unique needs as documented in the IEP
Determined at least once a year
As close to your child’s home as possible so your child can be educated in the school he would attend if he was not disabled.[v]

Your child’s placement may not be based on:

Your child’s disability category or label or severity of the disability (i.e., children with autism are placed in a class with other children with autism)
The school’s service delivery model (i.e., all children with learning disabilities receive “pull out’ or resource services)
The availability of special education and related services, staff location, or school district convenience. [vi]

Continuum of Alternative Placements
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires that schools provide a continuum of alternative placements for children with disabilities.[vii]

What is the “continuum of alternative placements?”
The continuum of alternative placements refers to places where children receive special education services. Placements are on a continuum, from least to most restrictive. Your child’s placement may be in:

A regular classes, with needed supplementary aids and services
A special class where all children in the class receive special education services for some or all of the day
A special school
Home
A hospital or other institution
Another setting

In making a placement decision, the team must look at the full continuum of placement options.[viii] . . . .

[i] Commentary in 71 FR at 46588
[ii] 20 U.S.C. § 1414(e); 34 C.F.R. § 300.327; also Guide to the IEP: Deciding Placements from the U.S. Department of Education. URL: www.ed.gov/parents/needs/speced/iepguid ... l#deciding
[iii] 34 C.F.R. § 300.116
[iv] 34 C.F.R. § 300.42; 34 C.F.R. § 300.114 – 300.116
[v] 20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(5); 34 C.F.R § 300.314 – 300.317
[vi] Commentary in 71 FR at 46588
[vii] 20 U.S.C. § 1412(a)(5); 34 C.F.R. § 300.115
[viii] 34 C.F.R. § 300.115

This was real early on before we had a good handle of his issues. We had the meetings and I received my parental rights. At the time, I was mainly fighting to get speech therapy from them, and for me the preschool was mostly to save money. I was able to get good speech therapy from them, and to get them to do more would have required a huge fight with the elementary school he would be attending.

At 3, I didn't have particularly good evaluations for him, and frankly it wasn't possible with his vision and hearing issues. I was a lot less versed in IEPs back then, and was in a crap county that was very aggressive legally. A lot of the ASD symptoms are also common with the deaf/blind. Still, a lot of these kids get identified as DD early on, and my recollection is that counties (in Virginia) weren't legally required to use a more specific label back then until kids hit 6 (or possibly . Finally, our school system didn't provide nt preschool, so most of the classes were ESE. They also were very very resistent to having people visit their ESE preschool classrooms, so it would have been very hard to find out if there was a more appropriate preschool option.

Hismom, you are wasting energy being angry with them. I understand why you are but I can't see them doing everything you want them to do for your son. Yes, I think they should. If you have the ability to keep him home for the next three years (?) until he is ready for school then you probably should. You have more than enough determination to teach him and you are able to help him more than they can. With therapy, and yourself, you can put him in the best position he can be in, in the coming years.
Also, blowing bubbles and trampolining are legitimate things for them to be doing with him. Not just for fun, but for theraputic reasons. Not all day, every day, but there is definitely a place for that. What they should be doing is trying to teach him when he's just off the trampoline. It doesn't sound like they do that.
The lack of a communication book is shocking to me. That has always been the most basic thing we have gotten and we have never had to ask for it. We have at times, especially when there have been more behaviour worries, asked for more detail on what was happening at school and this has never been a problem. We also let them know all the things happening at home. It's not all "remarkable" either, but still important to know what he is doing and where (eg. If I know he worked on maths, speech, did cooking and was upset when they did music but calmed when he had a lie down then I'm prepared for the afternoon)... I don't understand how there can be any cooperative efforts without one, or some equally open and easily accessable way to communicate with the teacher. Ridiculous!

Btbnnyr, your ideas on teaching reading are different to what we have been doing. My son (at 13) is reading more and more words each day. The language he has is not understandable and he has begun to type, but not in sentences. He does seem stuck on single words, your ideas make perfect sense. I am an asshat! Thanks.
Also, the idea that our kids don't learn well after 5 or 6 is utter bull, as we all know. I have never understood where they could have possibly gotten that idea from. I have seen the gap widen between my son and kids his age, but never give up that that gap can close completely.

I don't think that it is they think our kids do not learn well after 6. I think what it is is they have deadlines for milestones that are normed based on NTs. If you miss an important enough milestone by a certain date, they think it is hopeless. The things is, our kids have such variable timelines for their delays that the number of standard deviations they go out to declare these arbitrary "deadlines" don't catch enough of our kids that do "miraculously" learn to talk later, despite the predictions.

So they will predict somewhat dire things if your child doesn't talk by 3 and then give up on them entirely by 5 or 6 based on a statistical model that has little to do with spectrum kids.

The milestones that overlap with MR are the ones they are worst about. The hastling over other milestones is much less bad, especially if the school does not want to help you work on those milestones. But if a milestone enables them to take an easy way out...well you know, most school districts will take it.

OP, I think calling an advocate, like others advised, is going to be the right thing to do, so you can pull your child out if need be, but preserve your rights. Your advocate can probably advise you on whether there is any benefit to staying put.

Public schools are designed for group instruction, and while IDEA requires them to teach individuals with handicaps that adversely affect academics, it isn't how they normally operate. Also, teaching these kids isn't easy. When stressed, kids on the spectrum are prone to meltdowns. So it is just easier for them not to teach our kids. For the kids who are delayed, they'll claim they aren't mentally capable of doing the work, or they'll argue that it is part of autism and instead of teaching them a skill, it is better to simply accomodate the child. For the academically advanced kids on the spectrum, they'll say that the child is at grade level (all that is legally required) and not teach them either. Maybe a few of these kids score high enough on an IQ test to be classified as gifted, but typically they have deficits in some areas that pull their IQ down. Also, while the academically advanced kids on the spectrum are often a bad fit for traditional gifted classes where the focus is on abstraction and tricky challenging problems, and not simply on having them move forward in academics.

And yes IDEA addresses a lot of this, but getting counties and states to comply with the law is often very tough. Additionally, there are few protections for the kids who are academically advanced.

HisMom, you are a warrior. You will do the best for your son, I'm sure. This post is maybe the most significant I read on this forum and it makes me feel I'm not alone. I'm a foreigner for nearly all of you (I live in Italy) but it seems that disagreements with professionals are the same.
It seems autism is still an unknown entity, so professionals often believe things that are not really evidence based. I heard many times that kids can't learn to speak after 6, but I know for certain that many kids learn to speak after that age.
I was told by a professional that my son will not learn to read (but he will develop language) and she was so sure of what she said that I was astonished. Actually, I asked other professionals and they had different opinions.

My son (age 4.5) learned reading from watching Hooked on Phonics and The Electric Company on Youtube. The other day we showed in a vocabulary builder video and he started writing all the words out on a magnadoodle. He does not communicate verbally (outside of occasionally asking for food) though he has no issues actually speaking.