Anypne ever have POSITIVE changes in middle school?

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I'm almost afraid to post this [for fear of jinxing a good situation], but since school has begun this year, we are seeing GOOD things happen.

Last year we had many, many weeks where our 6th grader forgot his books. He isn't doing this at all this year.

Last year, it was a constant struggle to get our son to write in his assignment book on a daily basis. This year, he is doing much better. If he doesn't write assignments down, he at the very least has his homework sheet, and knows what he is supposed to do.

Last year, he wasn't clued in to conversations at all. This year, we definitely see an improvement in conversations at home with the family, and interactions with peers in his scouting group.

I'm not joking -- last year, I was really wondering about the future. I had a somewhat negative outlook and was wondering if I should rearrange my hopes for my son. This year, at least so far, I feel like a jerk for second-guessing things so much.

This is not to say we haven't had some bumps in the road -- but they have been relatively minor, and are the expected bumps that it seems we go through every year for the first month of school.

QUESTION -- Can middle school, and some maturity, produce GOOD and POSITIVE changes for kids on the spectrum?

i'm glad you're seeing positive changes...........wish we had seen some when our son went through middle school.

Just thank God.

I'm an Aspie.

My son often surprises me by suddenly maturing in a way I wasn't expecting. He's had a good start to middle school, and is taking interest in skills he hasn't had the patience for before. I think he's in a perilous space, it wouldn't take much to topple him over, but if we can keep things aligned I think we will see positive growth in, *gasp,* middle school.

We've got the kinds of kids who can go from not talking at 3 to expanded vocabulary at 4; freeze in skills for years then leap ahead, etc. They take a totally different road, and it's impossible to predict how it will play out.

DW_a_mom, that's just it -- I wonder if I will ever adjust to the "freeze in skills, then leap ahead" cyclical nature of all of this. Just when I think things are going great, if I get too comfortable, I'm shocked when there's a disruption in the "great" flow. I want to enjoy the good stuff, and man, I really want to figure out the key so that others can also enjoy the good stuff -- but those "shocks to the system" when things aren't going good bring me back to the realization that I still know very little about what helps or hurts my son.

I really should just enjoy it when things are going well.

I'm with you, though -- it wouldn't take much to topple my guy over, either. My one comforting thought is that my oldest son (much more mildly on the spectrum) actually flourished in middle school. Can't quite figure out why, but he honestly did. Even high school was more of a struggle than middle school.

It's tough not to be in control of it, but that is the life lesson imposed on us, isn't it?

Yeah, right. I really wanted that.

I'm with you. I agree with everything you are saying. It's easier to post it than deal with it in the moment, isn't it?

I am enjoying the phase that exists at the moment. I'm trying to keep my eyes open without being tense waiting for the other shoe to drop. And I've told my son a million times how proud I am of him.

To the point where my younger daughter is wondering why she doesn't get so much praise. Ooopss.

You're very lucky. Middle school is usually hell on earth. I went to 3 different schools for 6-8th grade and it wasn't easy. Catholic school was just too biased towards some students. The private school I went to next took kids that were kicked out of other schools, plus my sister, who got there before me, got others to pick on me. The public school I went to was an absolute nightmare for me.

Glad it's working for him, hopefully high school will work out well too.

It all depends on the school. It seems you found one of the few schools, that don't just dump all their Special Needs kids into a SPED area, they treat them like the individuals they are.

It seems the other shoe may be about to fall - here, at least.

We're having a little trouble getting the teachers to understand that an IEP means you may have to adjust your grading standards. My son is getting graded down for things the teachers have trouble reading, for not showing his work, and other issues that can well be anticipated for a child that has physical difficulties writing and other processing/transfer problems. Advanced teachers aren't used to having IEP kids in their classes, that was obvious at our first meeting, but they seemed to be willing, yet I'm not seeing a level of understanding in the grading process. A child that has a solid grasp of the material and is doing all his work should not fail simply because he doesn't write it all down to the teacher's perfect liking. Take a grade off, I can live with that, but all the way down to fail? NO. So .... my son loves his classes, but is getting frustrated by the grading. I've got a note in to the resource teacher. This HAS to get fixed or he'll just check out, like so many AS before him ...

Absolutely, in my case! I joined the band - music was my salvation throughout jr. high & high school. It was definitely a "special interest" - and the more time I spent at it, the more I was praised for it. Like the world had suddenly turned upside down & I got to be on top, for a change. Also, through the band, I met my first girlfriend (who, I suspect, was also an Aspie - at the time, it was referred to as "being painfully shy.")

Oh do I know this so well, having a handwriting disability myself. These days with PDAs and portable computers, do you think they could carry around a PC and type everything out? They tried that a couple of times when I was in school, I'm hoping with better technology there might be something lighter to lug around. Some of the smaller PCs don't seem to be as much of a back breaker.

I am glad to hear things are going well, because for me middle school was absolute hell and I worry how my kids will be in it too when the time comes.

They have something called an Alpha Smart (?) which is basically just a keyboard and small screen to view as you type in. It gets downloaded at the end of the day into a computer. My son's typing skills aren't quite high enough yet to use this well, but the resource specialist does plan to get him one.

I guess I'm just really appalled and surprised not only about what this means for my son, but what it says about education in general. Are dotting the i's and crossing the t's so important that the ability to do well with them can outweigh the ability to understand the material when it comes to grading? The paradims the teachers are using is sending exactly that message, isn't it?

I haven't heard back from the resource specialist yet. I'm not sure if the message got delayed, or if she needs time to investigate the situation before responding. She is VERY good, and I do trust she will fight for him. But I already know from the IEP that the teachers are very resistant. I guess advanced class teachers don't want to deal with IEP's and probably have never had to. But my son does best on the year end standardized tests when given advanced materials to learn and lots of accomodations in how he gets the work done. This school could use every boost it can get on it's test scores. If the resource teacher can't make progress for us, that's the argument I'm going into the teachers with: don't you want the highest test scores possible?

At least my son's science teacher adores him. She'll do right by him, I do believe. The rest ... I don't know. It feels like I'm trying to push a boulder.

But, someone has to push that boulder. My son isn't the only child with these needs that they will ever have.

He's keeping his spirits up so far. He knows how I feel about the grading, and that I am working to do something about it. He knows that I don't care about his grades as long as I know he is learning the material and doing his best. But that is tough load to bear, the one he's got right now. Mama bear (me) is growling!

Yeah, this hyper-concentration on writing and spelling is so frustrating, especially if your son is getting the material. Heaven knows, in the REAL world outside of academia, engineers neither have to write legibly or spell -- and they get along just fine. And if the teachers understand how LONG it takes for any of these kids on the spectrum to do any writing assignment, they would be a lot more inclined to raise that grade (if they have any soul at all).

Just keep reminding your son that most people with engineering/computer science skills are BRILLIANT, but very few of them also have terrific writing skills. It's almost a badge of honor to not write well for some of them! One of the smartest guys my husband has ever known was his employee who had horrible spelling, but boy, his technical work was awesome.

zeichner -- I am right there with you about band. My son is in band, and it has helped so much socially. He is going to try out for jazz band (may not make it -- he doesn't take trumpet lessons and there are only two openings) because he likes the music so much. I've been trying to get him interested in learning the guitar because my older son did much better socially when he began to get into bands with various friends.

schelp, things are still going well? I am really glad of that, if that is the case.

I wish my son could find an outlet in music, he is really drawn to it, but the problems with his hands make it inherently frustrating. He has music for a few months as part of a "wheel" and the teacher he has was one of the most receptive at the IEP, and is actively looking to see if he can introduce my son to an instrument that he won't find frustrating.

My son's best classes are the non-essential ones, the ones we would have to eliminate if it is decided he needs to spend time physically in resource. So we're going to fight to make the classes he has work for him. He LOVES his schedule, he loves the material ... it's the grading that threatens to take him down. UGH!

It has also dawned on me that he no longer has his largest outlet for success: free time a daycare, surrounded by kids of various ages. He loves to invent games and at aftercare he found a willing group of test subjects who really looked up to him. His talents were shinning then, to the point he actually had to complain about the kids following him around admiringly! So, I also worry about the long term effects of not having time for inventing and sharing the inventing. That was all so affirming for him, and it is the direction he wants his life to go in.

When it comes right down to it, I worry if this middle school can make it work for him. The school has a difficult population to teach and many other issues to start with. I have heard for years how fantastic they are for special ed, but those weren't AS kids. The OT is great, the speech therapist is great, the resource specialist is great ... but none of them are responsible for grading him. It's a large school - too large, in my opinion - that is struggling with so much, and I admire the effort, but is there room in there for my son to shine? I just don't know. I'm trying to stay positive - my son has friends and I know he wants to stay with them - and I'm trying to make it work, but ... I can feel the weight of mud there, of being too big, and the stress inherent in that for the teachers.

DW_a_mom --

Funny that you should ask "things are still going well?"

The other shoe has dropped . . .

Things are still going well -- but today I received an email from his reading teacher, asking if I had changed his meds recently. Apparently he is spacing out a lot during class, and not finishing his assignments. I'm pretty puzzled by this, because he's doing GREAT in his other classes.

This reading class has changed from a reading lab last year -- where it's a smaller class with more specialized help -- to a regular ed reading class, which I'm guessing requires more of my son. Tie that to the fact that my son has a diagnosis that makes reading comprehension HARD, and you get emails from teachers saying "he's not living up to his potential" or "he's not doing what he's capable of." This teacher is a sweetheart, and had her own son with special needs, so she has been very helpful and understanding of my son. But I'm not convinced that there's a lot of understanding about the details of High-Functioning Autism/Asperger's -- I keep having to repeat that kids with this diagnosis have COMPREHENSION PROBLEMS, SLOWER WRITING SPEED, and DIFFICULTY WITH WRITING.

The knee jerk reaction of the school is to provide a special needs class. Well, in the special needs class, they dumb down the material, and don't provide enough experience in writing. I think it's far better to put my son in a regular ed English and/or Reading class, and expose him to regular writing homework and vocabulary, and not expect him to do very well for a while as he catches up. After all, he's been in special ed classes for these two subjects for 6 or 7 years -- no wonder this is hard for him. But without exposure to these skills, he won't learn. I don't care if his grades aren't great -- I'm just happy that he's WRITING! And frankly, I think his writing is VERY GOOD!

So, thanks for asking about my son -- I loved your story about your son and his groupies at daycare! Oh, that we should all be that popular!

I guess this experience just goes to show you -- just when you think things are wonderful, they can rapidly go downhill! The lesson is . . . keep holding onto the wonderful times, as they will eventually come more often than not.