Hi, I posted last year about my son in this thread: http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....dvice_on_Giftedness_Aspe.html#Post151795

Just an update on our life and troubles now that my son just turned 4 and most of the school year is thankfully over.

The IU hounded me about signing him up for a preschool and how if I didn't I would be pretty much permanently ruining any chance of him making the early progress needed for his long term success. To make a long story short I eventually caved in and signed him up for a Montessori school in August where they assured me they have had special needs students with HFA before and were looking forward to teaching him. I chose to do 3 mornings for a total of 9 hours a week.

At the same time I tried again to get TSS services approved for him from our wraparound provider (who at that time was only providing us one hour of mobile therapy a week, so I'm using the term provider liberally). I was denied again as his behaviors were not deemed problematic enough. I was told he would need to be observed in the classroom and a TSS would be added if needed after a proper behavioral observation period.

We also had him evaluated at a local place for OT around the same time and he has been getting 2 hours a week from them since August. His main issues are vestibular, auditory, and tactile.

At any rate, school started and he had his mobile therapist for an hour and an SI for an hour through the IU each week. Well it didn't take long for everyone there to realize he was not able to be functional in the school environment. IU and wraparound blamed my choice of a Montessori school and the school seemed completely baffled by his behavior. He was non-compliant, would end up spending huge periods of time crying, wanted to be alone all day in the book section, hid under tables, and became aggressive to the staff as well as other students.

Got a BSC assigned, then in December after tons of phone calls and evaluations finally got TSS assigned for all 9 hours of school. Since school started we got the IEP changed twice, got speech moved to the school, and just today finally got the 45 minutes of OT I have been fighting for since he turned 3.

Also today I heard that the other kids are terrified of my son because he pushes and hits and that he is still not able to participate in circle or really do anything meaningful in school other than writing numbers. And his speech goals are being changed because he is not able to muster up the minimal social skills needed to even start a conversation with another kid, let alone engage in verbal exchanges.

Most infuriating to me of all (well, other than my son hitting other kids) is the IU's continued insistence that he is good at academics due to his ability to memorize facts.

We don't really teach him a lot at home, but the other week I was laying in bed trying to half sleep another 10 minutes and I told him about multiplication for the first time ever. After two sample problems he was able to solve a bunch of them no trouble. How is that memorization if I never told him the answer?

He reads at a strong 1st grade level and loves to listen to us read. Right now we are reading him "The Sasquatch Escape" and he not only is very attentive when we read, but he discusses the story. We feel very certain he has reading comprehension at the same level that he is reading at. He also asks tons of questions about the stories in the books that he reads and talks about the motivations of the characters.

He's not doing a whole lot more academically than he was the last time I posted as we are so worried around here about behavior and school we don't tend to teach him much lately. Whatever we do teach he picks right up on it.

His ability with addition, subtraction, and number manipulation is pretty amazing to me and he is able to do most of the stuff considered average for a 7 or 8 year old. He loves to do mazes and to draw his own. He makes huge complex mazes and even adds fun rules and one way directions and such. His writing is fantastic, especially his numbers. His spelling is typical for someone spelling phonetically, he recently wrote on a card "happi brfda". I would argue that if he was so great at rote memorization he would have just pulled that common phrase out of his visual memory and written it correctly.

His latest obsession has been Legos and he is able to build the 7-12 kits with no trouble. We just help him find the pieces in the piece bin and he is quite able to follow the the instructions and build all of his rather extensive sets. He would spend his whole life on math, reading, mazes, and building things if we let him.

I'm still annoyed that there is no recognition of his talents and that they are still putting it all down to memorization. I have no idea if he is gifted or not, but I know he is a very smart kid. And I mean separate from all of the academic stuff he can do, he's just very smart in conversation and asks really good questions. He's always asking questions and eager to learn.

On his IEP it says he can rote count to 60 and correspondence count to 30. That's all it says about his abilities in the whole thing. And it's completely inaccurate. He rote counts well into the thousands and has such a firm grasp of correspondence counting I'm not sure why it would even be considered to be something to do up to a certain number. The other day he saw a grid that was 8 across and swiped his finger along it and told me that 20 of the spaces were filled in. He did this by adding 8 and 8 and 4, just like I would have. I know how he found the total because he said "Mommy, did you know that 8 plus 8 plus 4 is 20?"

Still no one will give him an IQ test due to his age. I'm really not looking for anything super accurate, just enough to show that there is a serious issue here with his social skills being so low and his cognitive skills being so high. I'm tired of being told that he just memorizes facts because he's autistic.

I'm very discouraged right now as my son is in a bad place at school and just like I had predicted was not ready and ended up picking up tons of negative behaviors to help him cope with the very difficult environment of school. I feel bad that I listened to the IU again and like I just made my sons life much worse. I'm contemplating removing him from school as I don't like the way any of this is going.

Sorry for the huge post, but I'm so frustrated and upset right now. The school told me today that the other parents are upset and complaining because my kid is hitting and pushing their kids and they are scared to come to school. I was told that other parents might not enroll their kids next year if my son returns in the fall. Obviously, they don't want him there. It makes me want to cry that I am driving him to a school tomorrow where he isn't even wanted. At least he has his TSS there so I know someone is looking out for him.