Life with Aspergers

I was reading an article about a boy with autism who was silenced at a school board meeting because the subject was approaching dangerous legal ground.  Big thanks to Caitlin for pointing this one out.  I don't have any problems with the silencing because I fully understand the reasons and I don't think it was discriminatory. What got my attention though was the boy's response to being silenced; Christian concluded his talk by telling the audience that his self-advocacy work had taught him, "Nothing for me, without me," and left the microphone. That's something for his parents to be really proud of. I started thinking about this in more detail, thinking about how my wife and I have been going to IEP meetings without our sons and how the things we've been doing for them have been "without them".  I think there's a big flaw in our plans. The Initial IEP Meetings There's no doubt that the initial IEP meetings need to be conducted...

We all want to send our kids to school and have them return as bright and educated young adults. Unfortunately the "playing field" is far from level and many of our kids simply struggle too much with everyday tasks to become academic superstars. Sometimes we just have to revise our goals and accept that we, our children and the school have done the best that we can do. Too often I find that parents are confused by school. They believe that the purpose of school is nothing more than to return our kids to society with an academic education.  They consider that what their kids  are learning at school isn't useful if it isn't focussed on the their child's primary issues. The reality it somewhat different.  In this post, I want to touch on some of the supports in and around school systems and see how they combine to help children with special needs. Hopefully by the end of this post, you'll understand that school is only a small part of your child's educa...

Just wanted to draw your attention to an excellent series of articles about the IEP (Individualised Education Programme) on Aspergers: A Mom's Eye View ( http://asdhelp.wordpress.com/ ) Help! IEP Time http://asdhelp.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/help-iep-time/ This is a very detailed article which covers; Does your child need an IEP. Three major steps for Preparation for an IEP It's well worth a read!

Image by Sherilyn Hawley from Pixabay This article follows on from parts 1-3 which deal with when parents, children and peers begin to recognise that there are differences.  (see: Should you tell your child ). There are at least three levels of recognition involved with the discovery that a child is different. Adult Awareness This invariably seems to come first - from parents, teachers, relatives, other parents and doctors. Usually these adults have enough discretion to avoid talking about the differences in front of the child - particularly if the child is unaware of the problem. The Child's Personal Awareness I hope that this series of posts has served to highlight an important truth - that the aspie becomes self-aware at a fairly early age. They won't know anything about aspergers itself but they will at least sense that they are different. Peer Awareness It also doesn't take long for a child's peer group at school to begin recognising the differences and, depen...

I just want to draw your attention to an article in AdditudeMag (an online journal for parents of children with ADHD and/or Learning Difficulties). 12 Steps to Better IEP Meetings by Karen Sunderhaft in AdditudeMag http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/article/4628.html I'm not 100% certain that I agree with all of the tips presented (the presentation idea sounds way over the top) but I feel that they are mostly good advice. Just be aware that an IEP is only as good as the team behind it. If you ask for too much, they might agree without actually putting anything into place. The amount of work that a school is willing to put in will vary considerably and it doesn't always bear a resemblance to the amount of funding they receive.

Recently I've been blogging quite a bit about the Individual Education Plan (IEP) and I've gone over some of the better approaches. I had been thinking that it was high time I provided a decent example; Then I noticed that Smelena's Aspergers Site ( http://www.smelena.com/ ) has a copy of Daniel's IEP on it. This is a particularly good IEP and is probably better than any examples I could provide because it's being used today. In fact, Smelena's whole site is brilliant, so make sure that you check it out.

This is the third post in my series on the Individual Education Plan (IEP) and if you've been following, we now have a list of strengths and weaknesses for our child. The list of strengths may fall into broad categories such as; favourite/best subjects specific special abilities aspergers abilities working learning patterns specific interests While the weaknesses will probably fall into the following categories; subject areas social skills issues with children taking things literally emotive concerns muscular issues memory and concentration issues comorbid conditions medication routine fixations meltdowns The next task is to walk through the list of weaknesses and allocate each one; a specific (and achievable goal a strategy to attain that goal one or more owners an evaluation or monitoring strategy to ascertain progress The Goal The fact that the goal needs to be achievable can't be stressed enough. More is accomplished in little steps which succeed than giant strides which f...

How an Individual Education Plan (IEP) is Structured An IEP is designed to be a "flow-on" document where the issues are identified up-front and the remainder of the document covers methods of dealing with them. The IEP will start with a bit of information about the child, the diagnosis, who is present at the meeting, etc. I'm not going to cover this bit as it's simply box-ticking on the form. The first part of the IEP will attempt to ask and answer two questions; 1. What are the child's strengths and interests? 2. What are the perceived weaknesses of the child? It is important to get these questions properly answered as the entire remainder of the IEP will reference them. This post will attempt to provide some background on the sorts of things that should be in these areas with particular emphasis on their relevance to the aspergers condition. Keep in mind though that aspergers manifests itself differently from one individual to another and that all c...

The IEP is a critical document resulting from the Individualized Education Program in use at schools worldwide. In short, it results from an IEP meeting and is a unique "plan of attack" for your child's education utilizing your child's strengths and targeting their weaknesses. Over the last few weeks, we've been struggling with my child's second IEP. The process is long and I've learnt a lot. This topic is going to take several posts. To start with, I'm simply going to try and establish the importance of the IEP and the reasons why schools struggle against it. In later posts, I'll cover good and bad things to have in an IEP and how it could be tailored for Aspergers children. A warning: Parents, do not approach the IEP meeting as if it were simply a normal school meeting. It's a critical and legal part of your child's education. You need to get it right. So, How important is this IEP thing Anyway? Schools tend to underplay the impo...