its known by my profile I have diagnosis just haven’t handed them it yet.
This does not change the fact that they have to be more cautious than what you wish them to be.
So how many times now has he been married and divorced? O.K., I suppose you mean something different by this word. After doing some research, it appears that it means that “an autistic individual leaves a safe, monitored area without permission, often with significant risk of injury or harm”. It’s probably a good idea to explain what the term means.
Sorry, I assumed people knew what it meant. Thanks for clarifying for everyone else, though!
Yes, he’s running away. Somehow yesterday he got outside the safety gate. It’s a potentially dangerous situation.
He has done this occasionally but not frequently up until now. The behavior has become much more frequent since he started kindergarten. He did it to me a couple weeks ago when I picked him up from after school care. I had to chase him down in the school hallways and at one point I didn’t even know where he was.
There is a lot of other problematic behavior too, but I would consider this the most serious. He gets overwhelmed and rather than stopping to figure out an alternate coping method, he takes off running.
We’re working on it. It’s hard because he has a good heart but he has an especially hard time understanding how his actions affect others and why things aren’t appropriate.
I don’t know enough about the law to know whether this sort of comment falls afoul of it, but once you have a doctor’s note it really shouldn’t matter, you should get the accommodation.
Your diagnosis doesn’t really matter regarding calling an ambulance. I’m sure it’s true that when people with POTS go to the hospital after fainting the hospital cannot do much - but it’s definitely also true that people with POTS aren’t immune to fainting from other causes such as blood loss, dehydration, a cardiac arrythmia and so on. You might be comfortable not going to the hospital and your parents might be comfortable not calling 911 if it happens at home - but you/your parents aren’t going to be sued if it turns out that the POTS didn’t cause the fainting and instead, you had internal bleeding that caused you to faint. The school can’t be certain of that.
If they don’t have a written, signed, official copy of your diagnosis on file, then it doesn’t count.
My wife taught students with disabilities for more than thirty years. Everything needs to be documented, and the documentation has to be perfect (as in able to be used as a defense in court.) That’s especially true with any medical condition, particularly one in which a student faints or collapses without warning.
I’m not a trained medical professional. How long should I wait for you to recover before I call 911? How do I know you didn’t hit your head and have a concussion, and that’s why you can’t sit up?
I was very surprised the first time I heard it in reference to a child which was probably 30 something years ago. It generally refers to a person leaving an institution of some sort under particular circumstances - you wouldn’t use it for a child cutting school but you would use it for a dementia patient who managed to leave a memory care unit.
That’s actually the original sense of elope, to run away or escape. Traditionally, eloping in the context of marraige referred to running away to get married generally without parental approval.
This isn’t relevant to my situation but I thought I’d mention that elopement is common in kids with autism and it’s the main reason that autistic kids are 36 times more likely to drown compared to neurotypical kids. It often happens when kids exit the house while the parents are unaware they are missing, fall into a neighbor’s swimming pool, and drown. My son has never left the house like that, but we keep a safety on the laundry room door just in case.
My biggest fear is he runs out into traffic. He has low situational awareness.
Thanks to OP for setting an informative thread! My reading further about POTS was worthwhile without a doubt.
No problem 
Also in Illinois, and this is also my impression based on discussions with family and friends who are teachers, and my review of IEPs/504s in conjunction with my job, from grade school through college.
I am confident that there are some districts that likely “slow walk” requests for IEPs, likely due to a perceived lack of resources. Other districts seem (to my non medical/non educator eyes) to be very active in implementing IEPs. I periodically wonder what percentage of the student body in certain schools has an IEP or 504.
The issue of what accommodations schools ought to provide and how they pay for them is indeed challenging.