What were the speech pathologist and the psychologist arguing over? Will the results affect the services he receives? If so, outside testing may help.
The school wants me to have him evaluated by a professional, to determine if he has it or not. The reason for this is, b/c the 2 women disagreed.
The one thing that bothered me the most. When I asked all 6 people in the room, what would change if he did get the DX of Aspergers?? No one could give me an answer, they just danced around the question,
poorly. Nothing would change.
Well, if the school will foot the bill, then I think it might be worth a try. Perhaps this tiebreaker person would have suggestions that would improve things for your DS, even though the school doesn't. I think it's a little unfair to ask the school NOW for what changes they would make with a Dx of Aspergers (if they are willing to pay - and I think that they might be required to pay in a situation like this) because there isn't any specific set of accomidations for Kids with Aspergers. I believe that the expression is 'If you've seen one child with Aspergers - you've seen ONE child with Aspergers.' So perhaps the tiebreaker specialist would have some reccomendations (or listen to you and adopt yours as his or her own) and that would have some weight with the school?
It's possible at least.
I have seen kids use the Aspergers diagnosis to get gradeskips and subject accelerations. Along the lines of 'since we can't met his social needs, we had better at least met his academic needs.' and 'since he can't control his behavior as well as regular kids, we had better not stress him by underplacing him academically.' Hard to believe that works, but I've seen it happen!
Best Wishes,
Grinity
