Elaine Park Our house is frequently really loud, as my seventh grade son, Drew*, races his long fingers at break-neck speed and top volume, up and down the piano, pounding out the Imperial March from Star Wars or some original composition of his own. His fingers are fast and strong, dexterous and coordinated. They are equally skilled at piecing together intricate creations out of his world-class Lego collection. But because of a neurological quirk, this same child can’t tie his own shoes and has difficulty writing with a pencil or pen. He has a lot to say and wants to share it, but the frustration of handwriting often reduces him to despair, and is a frequent problem when it comes to completing language arts assignments. Like many parents of a child on the autism spectrum, I hope this can be resolved by his learning to type. Once Drew has…
Tag: inclusion
Judy McCrary Koeppen www.septar.org www.sagetherapy.com www.sagetherapy.blogspot.com Dear Parents of the Blue Bombers, Last week my husband attended the team parent meeting. He was confronted in front of the group by a couple of parents about our son. My husband was not at the game he was asked about. I was there and was organizing the team snack when my son evidently hit or pushed a child on the other team after being taunted. I was never aware nor told that this had occurred. Our message to him was, and continues to be, that this type of behavior is never acceptable. At the beginning of the season I told the coach (as I do every coach, camp counselor etc.) that our son has learning and attention deficits and sometimes has difficulty controlling his emotions when in competitive situations. I asked the coach to let us know if he needed assistance, had…
Susan Etlinger www.familyroomblog.com It’s official: I’m a bitch. By which I mean I’ve moved past that initial flush of optimism and teamwork and wanting everyone to feel good about themselves to disappointment, confrontation, detente, anger and now — inevitably — relentlessness. And it is relentless — for reasons bureaucratic, cultural, personal, possibly gender-determined and sometimes inexplicable. The day starts with a clamor of children in the big yard. It’s an expansive space — too much for the Kindergartners, much less any child with sensory issues — and children whiz around, hollering, bumping into each other, a chaotic, moving mass of kidness. Isaac refuses to set foot in the yard. This full frontal assault first thing in the morning is unbearable. He makes a beeline for the library, and insists we sit and read a book. He falls apart when I tell him it’s time to go to the classroom. “Nooooo,”…
Elaine Park My son can’t spell. At all. I like to joke about it, because in my culture (Anglo-Canadian) making wry, self deprecating comments is how you get through things while keeping your dignity intact. For example, my favorite line is “My son spells phonetically. I’m just not sure what language it is. Maybe, Latvian? Estonian?” But it’s true. The child cannot spell. He attends a pretty good public school and participates in a program designed to include children with Asperger’s syndrome into the general education stream. He’s in seventh grade, and after six years of me whining at six years of IEP meetings that the child cannot spell, the child cannot spell. Solutions are presented and possibly applied. While the people who work in the program are great when it comes to dealing with behavior and social skills, they are not so impressive at follow through on things like…
Diane Levinthal http://www.socialstrides.com Sensitivity and compassion can result from having kids with autism and social challenges included in regular education classrooms. It is also likely that there will be no choice other than inclusion, financially, in the future. Classrooms will have to accept differences (and I write this knowing that every child is “different”). How do we make inclusion positive for everyone involved? I taught in a district autism spectrum inclusion project, have worked in speech for 25 yrs, and have a middle school child with PDD/ADHD. In my experience, what is important and overlooked is that regular education peers are not given good information. The teachers are trained (supposedly) as are the other staff, but the kids themselves are told little besides “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It has been my observation that in kindergarten and early elementary school, most kids are either…