Can I do anything else?

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Hello all,

I've posted this on a couple other sites, so I'm hoping to get as much feedback as possible.

I'm new to the site. I live in middle TN and am 28 years old and have a 5 year old autistic son. He was diagnosed formally at 2 years. Right now he's far behind in most areas. He has very limited vocabulary, but is very vocal. His overall communication skills aren't where they need to be. We've even been struggling to get him potty trained and it still hasn't worked yet. He's about 5 months away from being able to go to school and he's not ready. We started with what therapies we could afford (a few hours of ABA a week along with an hour or two each of physical and occupational therapies as well as a couple hours of speech therapy) and we can't afford any more. He's in a preschool program that's monday thru friday and about 3 hours a day. Because of money we are not able to give more than 4 hours of ABA a week now. I'm just wondering if there's some other source that could get us more therapy or more funds to use for therapies. I'm a married man with 3 kids total with a meager paying government job. I wish I had the money to give him 40 hours or more a week of therapies to get him caught up, but we just don't have money for something like that. So now I'm torn between trying to between my wife and I home schooling him or letting him go to a special class at school. This has put a huge mental burden on both me and my wife and we keep going back and forth about it. I just want to know if there's anything out there that we can do to try to get him to a level he can go to school at. I'm sure I'm just like everyone else on this site that wants nothing more for their child to have as normal of a life as they can get and have the most opportunities possible for them. I love my son very much and I want to see him happy.

Sorry for the long text, but Can anyone help?

Thanks well in advance for anyone's opinion. It really does help.

Brandon

You should have been in contact with your local school district before he turned 3. At 3 the school district is supposed to provide him with therapies and/or preschool to help him get adjusted. Whether he's ready for kindergarten or not, the school district needs to be providing him with some sort of education at 5, even if it's in a special education preschool yet, and not the mainstream kindergarten. Talk to your school district ASAP and get the ball rolling.

I was in contact with the school system then. When he was diagnosed he got into Tennessee Early Interventions System (state run). They got him into the school system and were providing with some therapies. That's not really what I'm looking at though. I'm wanting to know if there's something else I can do past all the basics and a few extras to maybe get him ready for kindergarten as a typical child. I know he'll never be a typical child all together, and that's fine with me if he's not, but if there's a chance he can not have to go to a special class, I want him to have that chance.

How your child will be placed will have a lot more to do with his special needs, than anything acedemic. At least that is how it would be done in our district. Given that we have children in K who don't speak a word of English, having a child with a limited vocabulary isn't an issue. Potty training, however, will be, because not being trained will set him off too far from his peers, and create social problems for him. But since I have the impression that it isn't all that unusual for an Autistic child to remain untrained by 5, I wouldn't put too much pressure on that skill. It will happen, just not on the same time frame as for other kids.

Other reasons for keeping a child out of the regular classroom might include sensory issues that make it difficult for the child to be in a class with 20 rowdy kids, and so forth.

My son is Aspie and mainstreamed, but our school hosts the county special education class for Autistic children, and I wouldn't be quick to say that a program like we have would be a "lessor" option for your child. Most of the children in the special class are doing extremely well both acedemically and socially, and many of our "regular" school kids are involved with that class, so it isn't as if those children are completely isolated from others.

I am not in your situation so I don't know if my opinions on this are really relevent, but I think it is most important to focus on what your child needs now, and worry about your vision for what you hope for him later. If he isn't ready for a mainstream K class in 5 months, he isn't ready, and if you are already concerned that he won't be, then you are probably correct. I doubt that any sort of intensive therapy between now and then would accomplish what you seek, and it would probably stress out your son. He needs more than anything to be able to progress at his own pace, whatever that may be. Remember that it is a moving target: what he is ready for today, is not an indicator of how all his school years will go, just an indicator of what he needs now.

Every child will thrive when placed in the best environment for them. I can't even begin to share all the stories I have witnessed that prove this. You will know when your child is in the right place, because he will be happy and he will look forward to learning. When he is in the wrong place, he will be stressed and integrate school as a bad thing. Placement really is key.

I am sorry that you feel your son would thrive better if he had more access to expensive services, but that may or may not be true, and it isn't worth beating yourself up over. ALL children under 5 need more than ANYTHING to be free, to play, to explore the world on their terms, with loving guidance. That he has had. He has loving parents who care about him and his future. As long as you stayed tuned to the real him, and what he needs, he is going to do very well.

From what I've read, most of the popular therapies come from what parents have observed has worked with their own children. Parents who were once told nothing could be done, but knew their children well enough to see the life inside, and relied on their instincts to access it. The real miracles happen from one on one interaction, parent to child. Nothing is keeping you from that.

We certainly weren't sure my granddaughter was ready to attend pre-kindergarten last year, but we thought it would be helpful in seeing what areas she needed more help in. That was before she was actually diagnosed with autism. About halfway through the school year the pre-K teacher asked us if we would agree to have her tested, and that was done. The school came up with an IEP for her and she began going to the "resource room" (the special ed room) for a little extra help or when she needed some quiet time to recover from a meltdown.

The IEP included the first half of her Kindergarten year, which is only half a day in our town. So in the morning she goes to the resource room and in the afternoon she attends the regular Kindergarten class. She was not potty-trained when she began pre-K and still wasn't able to manage her toilet issues when she began Kindergarten. We knew that was often one of the things that take longest for autistic kids to master so none of us were putting pressure on her to master it. In January of this year she suddenly began going to the bathroom on her own without prompting although like any 6 year old she sometimes gets too busy or forgets to go in time. She still wears a pull up to bed, but has had as many dry morning as wet ones over the last month. Ah, progress.

She has caught up in her classwork with the rest of her class, and is ahead of some of her classmates in some subjects. She still struggles with some fine motor skills, and has trouble transitioning from one activity to another. We recently reviewed her IEP for the remainder of this year and for next year, and she will continue to get reminders about going to the bathroom at regular intervals. She will continue to have a para helping her at times, and she will be able to go to the resource room for a time out when she becomes overwhelmed and has a meltdown.

We have seen a great deal of progress in the last year, but these kids are simply slower than their neurotypical peers. We could not afford a preschool or early intervention therapies, but for the last few months we have been going to see a family therapist for a weekly session and that has been very helpful to all of us. It can be quite a burden for the parents (in my case grandparent as well), and being able to talk to the therapist has been wonderful . . . as well as opening her daddy's eyes to the extent of the situation. Funny how hearing the same thing from a neutral party as we've been telling him suddenly makes sense to him.

Good luck with finding resources and help for your little guy. I hope the teachers and the schools there are as helpful as ours have been (barring a couple of disturbing incidents with substitute teachers and substitute bus drivers and a difficult principal).

I sent my son to mainstream kindergarten after county determined he wasn't eligible for services. Within the first week of regular classes, they decided he needed a full evaluation. He was put in special ed and I stuck it out until 2nd grade. He never got used to going to public school. It was nothing close to typical. They sent him home early from school several times every month. He was being given lengthy timeouts every day. I pulled him and started homeschooling. I view public school as a waste and feel like he would have been better off if we never tried it. I feel like the experience put him in a hole that we've had to dig out of.

Maybe where you live, they have better autism services. I actully live in a supposedly very good school district...but, autism services are the pits here. I did not have the money to wage a legal fight with the county to get him a private placement in an autism school.