Hi, Irishmaggie,
Congratulations on making it through the meeting and being so effective! That's great!
Well DS6's IEP meeting was today and we got the results of the autism evaluation. We're in Missouri and he doesn't meet the criteria for an actual "autism" diagnosis though he scored in the autism spectrum. The OT also noted that on the "social IQ" his scores were well below his IQ and normally they're more on the same level. We had to go with "emotional disturbance" as the official reason he qualifies for special school district services but the principal & gifted director were quick to remind me the label is just for the IEP and can change if we feel it needs to.
I think if you aren't doing so already, you should pursue an evaluation by an autism expert outside of the school system, to be very sure what kinds of autistic features you're dealing with.
Once you have that in place, I'd recommend going back to them with your expert's opinion and changing the identification. Autism spectrum disorders are not a form of emotional disturbance. Normally any child who is on the autism spectrum (autism, Asperger's, PDD-NOS) should be identified in the IEP as having "autism" as the qualifying disability.
As you say, it doesn't matter at this point as long as he's getting what he needs. But you definitely won't want him placed with emotionally disturbed kids-- for a kid with autism, especially a bright one, that would make everything worse.
Its more important that this will allow him to have the support in place he needs. He'll continue his social skills class which he really enjoys and we'll work on classroom strategies to help him manage his frustration with unstructured environments.
Great. This is all very important.
He was very familiar with the program and told me that my son wouldn't be the first student they'd dealt with that had similar challenges.
Good-- know that they can't legally discriminate against your DS due to his disability.
I know you'll be keeping an eye on how things go; keep a diary if you can, so you can track patterns of behavior (for DS it was art and gym days in the early years).
We found at that age that DS needed outside behavior therapy to make gains at school-- what the school could offer was not going to be enough for him. So you'll want to evaluate for that at some point too.
At risk of repeating myself, there are great resources in the parent forum at OASIS at MAAP--
http://www.aspergersyndrome.org/Home.aspx Kudos to you!
DeeDee
