Not if what you love is pissing people off.
I don’t know about these rich parents paying for doctor notes but of course that’s wrong. That’s cheating the system established to help students who do have special needs. It took three years of testing for us to qualify for 2 sessions of speech and 1 of OT a week at school plus consideration for sensory issues and delays. I am on welfare and food stamps because I’m far, far below poverty level. Not once did I have anyone whisper in my ear, “hey if you have a little extra cash we can take care of that testing right now for you!” I guess maybe if we had better insurance than state brand we’d be sent to different doctors? I don’t know. All I know is my daughter makes As and Bs (or the equivalent) because I continue to fight and insist on plans and goals every few months. If I sent her in without that help she would fall SO far behind yet she is very intelligent.
The problem is that she DOES need a little extra time and she does need someone to help explain what is needed sometimes, mostly because she has language processing issues. You can’t ask her “Where is your nose?” or she’ll draw a blank, but if you ask, “Can you point to your nose?” she knows exactly what is being asked. This is because she has so much difficulty with Who/What/Where/Why questions. They just don’t compute. And you know on most tests those words are used on a regular basis. If she didn’t get extra help, she couldn’t answer the question- it just won’t happen. If it’s rephrased, she has no problem at all. Why would anyone want to take that extra help away from a student? Can you not see how quickly a child would fall behind and remain caught in the crack? It’s the difference between passing and failing academically.
I don’t know what line of work you’re in, but if you’re in education how do you determine who to allow to fall into the cracks? Where do you personally draw the line when it comes to who is worth helping and who doesn’t deserve extra assistance? I think that’s probably the entire point of IEPs, don’t you? And yes, sometimes people will cheat to get their kids an IEP, but considering there’s a review every year with the current teacher, principal, every therapist and the lead Special Ed. teacher, a single note from someone’s doctor is NOT going to hold much weight.
HUGE CAVEAT. My comments are not from the perspective of soemone who understands all the nuances of this stuff. I don’t even know what an IEP is.
I’m not saying that you are pulling this shit. I was voicing a general frustration with the apparent epidemic of learning disabilities that we see, especially among the children of doctors, lawyers and investment bankers that get diagnosed right before the SATs and lose their diagnosis in their senior year.
The criticism I was directing at you was the distinction you made between getting straight A’s with an individual teacher versus A’s and B’s in a class environment. If you are talking about sessions with a psychologist to get your kid to understand how to function in a social setting, then so long as we know that this is something that therapy can fix or mitigate then we should try to get your that therapy if it isn’t going to drain resources that could be better used to help a greater number of kids.
But if you are insisting that your kid needs individual tutoring so that they can get A’s instead of B’s then you are setting yourself up for a pitting.
If you look at the links above, you will note that poor kids (and especially minority kids) get diagnosed much less frequently than rich kids. Things have to be pretty bad before people notice a learning disability in a poor kid.
I don’t have problems with behavioral therapy and occupational therapy, thats levelling the playing field as far as I’m concerned. But a lot of this stuff isn’t levelling the playing field its creating a special easier playing field for kids who are diagnosed with a learning disability.
Not to put too fine a point on it but at some point you have to wonder if your kid is as smart as you think she is. If you want special sessions to help your kid understand the concept of who, what, where, why, etc. I can see that but if she just can’t ever understand those concepts then it sounds like your kid probably isn’t going to be very functional in society.
I’m pretty utilitarian about these things. We have limited resources and we allocate the resources where they will do the most good. That means that some kids fall through the cracks if their parents don’t have the resources to bridge the gap?
If a year or two of behavioral and occupational therapy during childhood is going to turn a ward of the state into a self sufficient taxpaying member of society then great. I think that is an investment well worth making. If they are going to eventually be wards of the state no matter what we do, then I don’t see why society would want to invest so much in them.
Well, I think it’s because you don’t know what kind of kid you’re working with. It’s hard enough to predict the future of a non-special needs kid. Maybe you put in two years and you see significant progress, but the kid is still not where he should be. Do you just give up? Or do you keep going and see how far he can go? Maybe with another two years of individual attention, you will turn out a “functional” future tax-payer.
Also, there is not an absolute definition of “functional”. Maybe a kid will never become fully independent, but it sure would help his caretakers if he can dress himself, understand basic sentences, and not set the house on fire.
I do wonder about the heavy emphasis on social skills training, though. I agree that schools should teach children how to socialize, but it seems to me there comes a point when parents should not expect schools to provide all the therapeutic services their kids need. If I have a kid who has extreme social anxiety and is selectively mute, I would make sure the teacher knows and helps the kid navigate their learning environment as much as they possibly can. If the social anxiety is impeding learning, then I would hope that the school could accommodate this somehow. But it seems like expecting the school to “fix” my kid’s difficulties would be expecting a little too much out of a public service with limited resources. I would definitely appreciate any assistance they could provide with therapy and life skills management. But I don’t know how I would feel about demanding it.
I must say, this is not anything I’ve ever seen IRL, and I do wonder to what extent it happens. And I don’t understand why you would - wouldn’t it be simpler just to put them in a posh private school and hire tutors if you’re trying to give them an unfair advantage?
Anyway, even if people do pull something like that, you can’t with Aspergers. An Aspergers diagnosis is for life, even if you, through effort, improve your flexibility and social functioning to the point where nobody can tell the difference.
I don’t know the specifics involved in Sticks’ school system, but I doubt that the individual attention involved in “Content Mastery” is that of an actual teacher.
Here’s how it works in our school. My oldest kid is in a class with a boy, “R” who has Aspergers and has an aide. This position has the same qualifications, pay and career opportunities as that of zebra crossing supervisor, and to the best of my knowledge they don’t have much if any pre-training in special needs. Having seen the aide at work while I was doing parent-helper stuff in the classroom, here’s an example of how it works.
The kids all get together at the start of the lesson and sit and listen while the teacher explains the lesson. “R” sits still (mostly) too - a task he finds extraordinarily challenging, and he has various strategies to help him achieve this - low humming, nodding his head back and forward, muttering under his breath, doing a countdown till he’s allowed to move again. The aide listens to the lesson, occasionally attempting to redirect R’s attention to it also, but he really doesn’t have much attention to spare, what with all the concentrating on “not moving” he’s doing. Then the kids split into groups to work on the lesson material and R and the aide go out into the corridor.
NOW, finally, he’s free! He paces backwards and forwards backwards and forwards round and round and round the landing while working on the lesson material with the aide, in exactly the same manner as the other kids are currently working on the lesson with each other in the class. He can now discuss this perfectly intelligently, and concentrate quite well. Freed from the necessity of keeping still and not distracting the other kids, he masters the material, just as the other kids do.
Some observations:
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All the other kids are doing one thing - mastering the lesson material. “R” is doing two - mastering the material AND practising his “sitting still and not distracting people” techniques.
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With the aide, R can do perfectly well, even excel. Without the aide, not only is he totally fucked, most of the rest of the class is too because he’s going to be wandering backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards all over the classroom muttering and distracting everyone. The choice is not “get As or get Cs”. Its “get As or get Fs” or possibly “get As or get expelled”
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At some point, with lots of practise, R will probably master the “sitting still and not distracting people” technique, maybe even to the extent where he can concentrate on other stuff at the same time. But he’ll still be pretty screwed at that point unless, in the interim, he’s learned some actual schoolwork.
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The aide, while essential to R, would be no use whatsoever to a neurotypical kid. She has no particular knowledge of the subject matter the kids learn. In some areas, like French for instance, she may even be behind his skill level. A large part of her job consists of taking him away from the teacher, the person who actually knows stuff.
Not to put too fine a point on it but at some point you have to wonder if your kid is as smart as you think she is. If you want special sessions to help your kid understand the concept of who, what, where, why, etc. I can see that but if she just can’t ever understand those concepts then it sounds like your kid probably isn’t going to be very functional in society.
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To the best of my recollection, rushgeekkid is still pretty young. Eight, nine? Far too young, anyway, to give up on her and say “oh, she’ll never be able to do that”. Yes, even though that is generally an age two to three level skill. Kids with autism spectrum difficulties often just don’t get it and don’t get it and don’t get it … until one day they DO! And that is why we keep on trucking.
Let me address something first..I forget who mentioned it right this second though.
IEP stands for Individual Education Plan. Basically, it’s a list of goals decided upon by the teachers/therapists your child works with every day for that semester or school year. Every so often (we get ours when report cards come out) they will send you an update saying they’ve made limited progress, good progress, or even mastered whatever skill/goal they put forth. The IEP gets reviewed at least once a year during an ARD (Admittance, Review or Dissmissal) committee meeting which involves the child’s regular teacher, any members of the SpEd dept that need to be there, the school’s diagnostician and usually the principal. During an ARD committee meeting, you discuss the IEP and what changes (if any) need to be made for the next school year.
I personally do not expect the school to “fix” my child. I DO however expect them to HELP me in correcting any issues that can be corrected. Hubs and I are very big on working with the teachers, etc and I have no problem saying “What would you like me to work on with him at home? What can I do to make YOUR job easier?”. During school breaks and summer, we do at least an hour of “schoolwork” (writing practice, math worksheets, etc) every single day so that he doesn’t fall behind. We work on the issues he specifically needs help with (coloring in the lines, writing and drawing shapes for example) and I try to help him with any physical therapy I can. We spend a LOT of time at the park/at the pool so that he can work on climbing, running, jumping onto/off of things and hanging (to develop upper body strength) from monkey bars.
I don’t know how it works in other school systems in other countries, but I know at in our school system there is generally only one or two teachers in CM and there may be as many as 20-30 kids in there at a time from different grades, most of them needing assistance for any number of subjects. So it’s not exactly individual tutoring, although I know Slim did get more one on one face time when he went to CM. They also would ‘scribe’ for him on tests (his handwriting is terrible to the point of almost being unreadable, but we’re working on that) when it was required.
I’ll jump into this water too - I had a stepson in my first marriage that had needs (I handled all his IEP meetings because his mom didn’t want to deal with it) and I come from an education family (I am the only non teacher in the group.)
I think the big difference between today and ‘the good old days’ is that there was no lack of children with issues, it’s just those children were simply labeled ‘troublemakers’ and were pushed down the ladder. Then they either dropped out or barely scraped along until they graduated, then proceeded to fail through the rest of life.
Sure you can argue not my problem / don’t spend my tax dollars, but a person who has met with failure all their lives for reasons they did not choose to have you are going to end up paying for their problems somehow. It might be incarceration, welfare, whatever, but the price of adult failure is a lot higher than the cost of childhood intervention.
You could easily be describing Vlad the Younger: born with severe hearing loss, dystonia, oral defensiveness, ADHD Dx at age 5, Aspergers Dx at age 10, and at 17 still wears some jeans with drawstrings.
We tried Strattera, and it made him wild. We tried Ritalin, but it wore off too fast. We tried Adderall, but it didn’t help enough. We tried some other things, and eventually settled on valproic acid and Seroquel for mood stabilization and Concerta (time release methylphenidate) for attention. He has done wonderfully on them, and doesn’t like it when he misses his Concerta dose. Keep trying with the meds. ADHD/Aspergers have their roots in brain microstructures that result in throwing brain chemistry off-balance, among other things. The right medication at the right dose will help the imbalance, and make it easier for him to accomplish what he wants to do and interact more easily with the world.
Oh, yeah - did I mention that he’s close to getting his Eagle rank in Boy Scouts? He would not be so close if we didn’t find the right medications.
I’m glad that medications worked FOR YOUR SON. I don’t believe that medications are the answer for everybody, though.
That is NOT to say that some day we won’t try medications again but that day is not today. Base on the side effects we saw from the one medication we tried (Focalin) we’re just not eager to go there again. Aside from the lack of appatite and the trouble sleeping, Slim would have massive meltdowns on a scale I’d NEVER seen before from him. He would rage to the point that I was afraid he would hurt himself or me, slamming his head into doors or walls, throwing things, trying to bite and kick and hit and headbutt me. This would go on for up to an hour at a time and it truly scared the living shit out of me. I began to wonder what I was doing wrong to cause him to act this way. I was starting to say to myself and to Hubs, “My GOD! If I have to put up with this for the next eleven or twelve YEARS until he goes to college, God willing, I will go completely insane.”
When we took him off the Focalin, the meltdowns decreased not only in frequency but in severity as well so I knew that it had to be the medication causing him to act in this way.
I understand your reluctance, given the reaction he had. That sounds like a very scary and traumatic time. It isn’t fair to judge all medications based on the experience of one, because different medications act in different ways. There’s no reason to think that your son will have an equally violent reaction to another drug, or a different dose. Just as you’ve discovered that the school system’s attitude of “one size fits all” is inadequate and unfair to your son, so is the opposing attitude of “no size fits no one.” My son was, and still is an enigma to us at times, but to the clinicians he sees, and the researchers I’ve talked to, he is somewhat familiar to them. It has helped us to tap into that feeling of familiarity and with their guidance, try different things (not just medication) until we found something that worked.
While I respect your decision and belief that drugs are not for everyone, I have also seen a lot of people needlessly suffer by foregoing medication. Those who eventually agreed to take medication benefited.
You’re right, of course, but from my understanding every single drug that can be prescribed for ADHD has the potential for that kind of reaction, though.
It also didn’t help that Slim has a very strong gag reflex, so with the Focalin we hd to break open the capsule, pour the meds into a spoonful of applesauce or pudding or whatever. It made the food taste disgusting (naturally) and eventually it got to the point where I practically had to sit on him and force the medication into his mouth. He’s a LOT stronger than I am and a lot of times, he would spit the medicine right back at me instead of swallowing it. So I never really knew how much of his dose he was getting.
We’ve been doing behavior modification and that seems to be working, thank goodness.
I’m going by news articles. I provided a cite. Posh private schools are great and all but its not “either/or” you can get them a posh private school education AND double the time on the SATs.
Hrmm. I did not know that. So at some point they can have an AHA moment and somethign clicks and that particular problem either goes away or diminishes?
Ah thanks
I hear you and I think its a good investment to try to transform convicts and inmates into taxpayers even if they live in group homes and assisted living their entire lives because their lives are significantly better, there are fewer societal ills and its cheaper for cosiety over the long run but I have heard of programs to give these kids the college experience through “college camps” when they are never going to attend college ever.
And i still have a problem with the extra time on things like the SATs or letting kids take take home tests when everyone else has to finish the test in 3 hours in a classroom environment.
Are all these medicines bascially the same? If you can reduce or eliminate the disability with a pill, then why wouldn’t you keep trying every available option until you found one that worked or you ran out of options. You can always always discontinue the ones that have bad reactions, can’t you?
Exactly. Writing is one of those things that Slim has always struggled with and for a very long time. For some reason, when he saw a lower case “e”, his brain processed it as a circle with a horizontal line across the middle which is how he wrote it as well. When he FINALLY got that it was NOT a full circle with a line straight across the center last summer, I cheered.
Essentially, yes they are. They may be made from different base components but Ritalin, Adderral and most ADHD meds are stimulants. You could essentially get the same effect from giving the kid a cup of joe (and in fact, I know somebody who is also anti-meds who slips her kid some espresso with her morning cocoa).
Well, then I don’t really see abuse (there will always be fraud and we should make the consequences of such fraud lifechanging for these rich kids and their parents will stop it toot sweet), now I wonder if we waste resources on what are sadly hopeless cases.
Where does society’s responsibility to pay for this stuff end? I think it ends when the cost exceeds the long term societal benefit. I suppose I might feel differently if it was my kid but I think objectively we have to weigh benefits and burdens (including (to some extent) the benefit to the parents).