It's been a while since I posted, which is probably to my own detriment, however, I've hit a bind, and so I'm back. Oy.
DS8 has autism. It's significant, but he 'passes' well enough we don't tell summer camp staff about it. In a high-interest environment, his "symptoms" amount to obvious obsession with whatever floats his boat, and a vaguely annoying tendency to teach the adults around him stuff they didn't know (but that's actually really cool, "and I actually really wanted to listen") when they are in the middle of trying to do something completely different.
We have been fighting for accommodations for 4 years. Major damage has been done. He has a massively anxious/aversion reaction to anything academic. He will explain why the uncertainty principle precludes reaching absolute zero easily and excitedly, but panic and refuse to write down "uncertainty principle." Because he is "bad at writing." He won't add an introduction to his talk (I suggested he say "I'm going to talk about absolute zero, which is a temperature"), because "I'm not good at this."
Cue the meltdown, and inability to enjoy anything more about absolute zero for an indeterminate period of time. After a short pause and tangential awareness of his brother and I dancing wildly while singing "Let's have fun for no reason at all..." The kid got in controle, and switched to domino logic gates, happily and engagedly learning how to build a half-adder. So in some ways the loss of particle physics is of minimal importance, but the loss of reading, writing, and toileting skills is more problematic -- and continually re-enforced because he's having aversive experiences almost daily (and that may be a significant under-estimate). And at school, the meltdowns are legally difficult to handle, because they *aren't allowed* to leave him alone to use the strategies that work for him -- so they sometimes escalate.
Things are happening at school, and we are continuing to fight for accommodations. Right now they are suggesting putting him in a full time ASD programme and telling us "it's the best chance of providing him with academic enrichment." I have some reservations about whether this is true or not.
I am returning to school in the fall, and am seriously considering keeping him home as much of the day as I can -- but he knows he's supposed to be in school and becomes anxious about missing days because half the problem is that he feels like he's constantly in trouble.
Two questions:
a) What do you think about this ASD class as enrichment idea? The class would contain 8 students with ASD all unable to handle a regular classroom (though who knows how many are in that category for similar reasons to mine), a teacher, and a Child and Youth Worker. Minimum cognitive skills for the classroom is "Range of average" which goes down to at least one standard deviation below the mean -- I don't honestly know where the majority of students will fit in that very large range, but most of them will also be *younger* than he is. The class is for gr 1-3, and he's going into grade 3.
b) What would you recommend I read/contact regarding helping him overcome the anxiety with output tasks. I am inclined to establish a zero requirement for a while (all output to be scribed for him, etc, for at least a few weeks, before re-introducing ANY expectation that he write. ZERO evaluation of his reading skills, or surveillance of his reading choices.) I'm half tempted to tell the school to put him in the office with an unsupervised you-tube connection for two weeks and strict requirements that if they don't have anything nice to say to him, they shouldn't say anything at all
(Though somehow I feel like they might feel offended by the idea that the best thing they can do for him is to leave him alone and try not to talk to him too much)
I'm sure you can "hear" my frustration through your internet connection right now... If you've got any advice of *any* kind,
well, let's just say I'll fry the fish I catch.
