Are teachers telling the class that student X has ADHD and student Y has autism? I find that rather disturbing.
blackcat, I just wanted to clarify that my children's teachers have *not* told their students that certain students have ADHD or autism or other disabilities - my kids know about other student's challenges because either the kids themselves have told their peers or because a parent and/or the child has talked to the class as a whole about it (typically at the beginning of the school year - and this happened more often in elementary school - in middle school the kids tend to handle telling peers on their own). Not all the kids at their school who have challenges tell others - my dysgraphic ds, for instance, as far as I know, has told absolutely *none* of his peers ever. It's something I honestly wish he would do because I think he'd find acceptance. It's pretty obvious he has a challenge with handwriting both because he uses keyboarding for almost all of his classwork and from seeing what his handwriting samples look like compared to other kids in his class.
As a parent, I know of quite a few kids challenges simply because parents talk to each other - not gossip as in "did you know Suzy's dd is allergic to shellfish" but because parents of the kids with the challenges have told me about it for whatever reason. I happen to know another mom of a dysgraphic student in my ds' class simply because the mom mentioned something about it casually when several of us class mom's were having coffee. This is the first person in "real life" (ie not online) outside of my family that I've known who has a ds with dysgraphia - I'm glad she mentioned it. I occasionally will mention my ds' dysgraphia in conversation with other school parents, and found another mom of a younger student who also has dysgraphia. I wasn't looking for that type of connection in either case - but I am so glad I found the first mom, and the second mom was so glad she found me.
Re playdates, very few parents I know would specifically exclude a child from playing at their house because they have ADHD or are on the autism spectrum. The way we decide who is invited for playdates at our house is... our kids decide who they want to invite and they are invited. We've had on occasion children over who were annoying in terms of behavior... but they weren't kids with ADHD or autism or any specific kind of challenge - they were just kids who were not well-behaved kids. I'll be honest, I do not get excited about inviting those kids back, and neither do my kids... but fwiw... I haven't seen any correlation between kids who are not fun to have over on playdates and kids with autism/ADHD.
If my DD ends up with a 504 plan for ADHD that should be something that's kept between us and the teachers, not announced to the class with the kids being aware of the "label".
My kids' disabilities and 504/IEPs etc have *never* been announced to the class by a teacher, and neither have other students. From what I've seen the school staff does everything they can to prevent that info from becoming public knowledge - to the extent that when I've volunteered in a coaching position at one school I was not told which kids had 504 plans and I technically violated one simply because I didn't know it existed. I think it's important to realize though that fellow students can figure out for the most part which peers are receiving extra help (either push-in or pull-out) and which kids get accommodations in the classroom and on testing. My ds worried about this a ton when he first was given accommodations - he was so scared of having other kids see him as "different". But the thing was - it really isn't a big deal to the other kids in class. It took him literally months to get up the courage to take his laptop to school and use it in 4th grade... he was so worried about what all the other kids would say and what they would think and that they would think he was "wierd" because he was doing his schoolwork differently. When he finally opened it up in class the first time, maybe one or two students stopped by his desk to see what was up and said "cool!" and that was it.
I don't intend to sound pollyana about the reality of people with disabilities facing discrimination and misunderstanding from others - the only point I was trying to make was that in my observations of the school environment my kids have been in - most students have been very accepting of other student's challenges and disabilities when they knew about them. When students were exhibiting behavioral or other challenges and their peers weren't aware the student had a disability... those students seem to have more difficulty fitting in and being included.
polarbear
