I completely fail at this quote system, so hopefully you can follow this as a reply to your post/questions...
There is really nothing in the IEP that is a bad idea for my son, just that it's got a very copy/paste feel and does not address a lot of stuff specific to my son. This leads me to believe they just picked some applicable items from a list of premade IEP items.
I did observe the classroom he will be in when we visited at the end of last year. It is K and the slower 1st grade kids combined. At the end of the year they were still learning letters and talking about what month it was and what the season was. It was clear that circle followed the same structure and went over the same things each day as they had a chalkboard they worked from that looked rarely updated. For circle the kids all were on chairs and there was a lot more focus on tipping chairs and moving chairs to new spots than there was on the teacher/lesson. Two of the boys kept hugging my son and introducing themselves to him. DS tolerated this, but did not appreciate it.
After circle the kids moved to a table and a teacher read a very basic book while only my son seemed the slightest bit interested. One of the kids had a dry erase board that he doodled on and erased the whole time. My son was upset that he was playing during reading time and kept trying to take it from him. Next they said they would bring out legos for a group project. My son got all excited. What they brought out was those huge mega blocks for babies. Right away DS got upset they were baby toys and not legos and that the teacher had lied. They had the kids take turns adding a block. My son spent the whole time telling the other kids how structurally unsound their choices were and trying to redesign the whole structure while the teachers told him he could not do so. He ended up crying because the whole thing overbalanced and he told them that would happen and now it's all messed up and why didn't they all listen to him... etc.
We were there for an hour and those 3 activities took the whole hour. It was a very slow pace, very boring stuff, and 100% group instruction. How does that leave room for differentiation? Ironically the kids in the class towered over my rather small DS and they kept calling him baby. Luckily he didn't seem to mind. Most of the kids were 1st graders and presumably 7 years old. DS is 5 and just over 40 inches tall. He really did look like a baby next to the big kids.
So, even if we can't hold an official IEP, should there be any staff available over the summer who could temporarily change his placement until we can get the IEP updated?
We spoke to the supervisor of special ed on the phone. She is the one who said my son can't be in the general ed as he is too disruptive. She has never met my son.
My sons disruptive behaviors vary. Mostly he runs in circles around the room during circle activities. Reports from playgroup say that when he is upset he sometimes knocks things off the shelves. One report from a few weeks ago said he was "distructive" that day. I'm still not sure if they were making up a new word combining destructive and disruptive or if their spelling matches their teaching skills.
(I'm still annoyed about Tuesday when I got a bad report that my son refused to eat his snack. First off, I never require my son to eat. Second, on the way home from school he told me he got in trouble for not eating but that he didn't eat because the snack table smelled like pee because of all of the juice boxes. I'd hardly call that refusal to eat, I'd call that feeling sick due to an unpleasant odor.)
My son makes noises due to his TS, but nothing really loud or inappropriate. He also moves almost constantly, mostly due to tics. I have gotten used to it at home. At first it really bothered me, but now it's just background noise and movement.
Some other behaviors include just acting silly too much and trouble with transitions. Everyone who knows him says that he won't be the only 5 year old with those issues and that nothing he does is really outside of normal, just that he has trouble more often than other kids.
He cries very loudly when he does cry and has a tendency to scream and be very bossy "You should NEVER put that there! You know I don't like that and if you ever put that there again there is going to be a punishment! You'll never get to watch TV again and you'll have to go to jail!" That might all come of me putting his drink in the usual place, but not where he currently wants it because it's out of his reach (and which he didn't share with me). I don't get worked up and simply tell him if he doesn't like where I put his drink he could probably think of a better way to let me know. He usually apologizes and asks nicely in his sweet voice with a please.
I have no idea why he gets so bent out of shape about stuff like that. I should also mention it's not all of the time, in fact it's maybe 1-3 times a day at home on average. On a bad day if it gets excessive I tell him he needs to stay in his room if he can't interact nicely. He storms off to his room and might stay there for a few minutes to a few hours playing quietly. When he returns he is fine. He doesn't harm me in any way and only on rare occasion he will knock something down (never anything that could break, usually a book or a pencil) or hit something on the way, like a wall. The worst words he knows are stupid and poop. He sometimes just says stupid when upset the same way an adult might utter an expletive. He is a little kid with big feelings and no impulse control, so things are not perfect. I'm happy he doesn't hurt anyone and I don't mind the yelling too much. I'll admit that I sometimes even think it's funny. I don't let him know that, but I have a secret chuckle here and there.
DS also needs excessive prompting to stay on task or get anything done. He forgets why he is where he is and what he is doing mid-activity. He needs at least 20 prompts to soap up in the shower for instance. Every time you remind him he starts up again. But then he starts to talk and he stops. This is part of his ADHD and not something that I consider to be a behavior. He is as absent minded as they come and it is not by choice. I have told everyone that he does better with written instructions, but that falls on deaf ears. Surely he cannot really read and understand written directions!
There is no data for the disruptive behavior. The only data they have is from an FBA done at 3.5 by the IU. The supposed FBA that the district did has no data whatsoever. It is a single huge paragraph detailing my sons bad behavior during his IQ test in the admin conference room. I'll admit it sound like he was horrendous. That's not typical for him and I think it was the stress of the testing plus the new environment and people in the room.
The lady who wrote the "FBA" was at the transition meeting and she was a truly nasty person. She claims she also saw him at his IU playgroup, but our wraparound staff was there the day she claims to have observed him and they did not see her. They also said he had a good day. There was a 10 minute gap between his BSC and MT, so I guess she could have popped in at that time. She claims she observed him for 30 minutes and that he was highly disruptive and engaged in attention seeking behavior. Neither of his therapists saw any such thing. I think she just read a teacher report or talked briefly to a teacher and since attention seeking behavior has been the IU go to to explain my son, she just went with it. I did request a real FBA with data. I was told that paragraph style is how they always do it and no other parent has ever complained. Clearly that makes it OK.
Like you said, a 1:1 is usually only assigned for a pretty difficult case. I have no trouble dealing with my son. I know what will upset him and when he is upset, I know instantly why. This is not simply because I know my son. When I worked with autistic children who were not my own I was able to figure out why they were upset or what would help them calm down when even family were baffled. I'm just really great at seeing the world from other peoples perspective and I actually take the time and care to do so. I understand that when my son is asked to stop a task that the reason he does not comply like a typical child is anxiety. If I pair the request with a timeframe for when he can continue the activity again, he is fine with complying. So, instead of computer time is all done, time for bed. I say the timer beeped, it is time to put away the computer. Remember, as long as you put it away on your own without a fuss you can earn computer time again tomorrow. A good nights sleep will help you feel better and earn your computer again quickly, maybe even before noon! This leads to him putting his tablet on the table and letting me carry him to the bathroom to brush his teeth. No fuss whatsoever.
It's all about understanding why he is having trouble rather than just saying he is oppositional. He is not oppositional. When he is well regulated and having a great day he is actually super agreeable. When some mean adult imposes their will on him without taking into account his feelings he quickly gets upset. What I have learned is that when he isn't getting upset because I am doing a good job with him, pretty much the only issue we have is the hyperactivity. When he gets really hyper, we go outside or go to our playroom full of gross motor stuff. He is a climber, so when he can't settle he is usually climbing things. The school has a motor room, so I'm assuming they could use it for times when he needs to climb.
You give me a lot to think about with your educational placement ideas. It's good to have more options to consider, so I'm very grateful for that. I definitely won't be sending him into school if they can't get this all fixed. I just don't want to start the school year in a classroom that will cause any sort of association with acting goofy or misbehaving with having fun at school. DS very much is a child who continues a behavior that he has done in the past in the same environment. He can walk into a room he hasn't been in for over a year and the first thing he will do will be some habit he used to have in that particular room. If he once knocked over chairs in that room, he will get right to knocking over chairs again. If he once played with foam letters, he will run over to the bin of foam letters and look to see if the same one is missing as was missing last time. I need a good first association and good role models.
Thank you very much for your detailed reply and helpful suggestions. Hopefully my description of his behavior will help you understand where he is at right now. Clearly I can't give present levels with data, because they never took any data.
They seem to have all decided based on the opinion of one psychologist who barely met my son and saw him at a very bad moment that he is a severely disturbed child. I have also found that I hate the idea of attention seeking behavior. It seems like the reason they default to when they really have no idea why a child is doing something.
OK, I'm tired. Off to bed. Thanks again for your help
