Category: ‘Autism’ · TangleBones

Thanks for ignoring his diagnosis

Jared’s school pro­moted the WON­DER­FUL woman who has been Jared’s assis­tant since the middle of last year, and he has a new person help­ing him stay focused. Or rather, he has a new person stand­ing near him while he remains unfo­cused and anx­ious. Evi­dently that “resistance to change” part of the autism diag­no­sis slipped past them.

I’m hoping that Jared warms to this new person, or that his behav­ior last week (less than per­fect) was because of his fall aller­gies. I don’t begrudge his old assis­tant get­ting pro­moted because she totally deserves it, but I wish that if they were going to switch things up on Jared, they would have done it in the begin­ning of the year. And I’m sure that the new assis­tant is doing her level best, but she’s been put in a crappy situation.

I guess I’m just dis­ap­pointed because it’s been all good news for Jared this year, and now things are going down­hill. Each day the kids get a little indi­ca­tion of their behav­ior in their take home fold­ers: either a green, yellow or red dot. Last month, Jared had almost noth­ing but green smiley faces - not just dots, people, but smiley faces. A couple days of a new assis­tant, and behav­ior is lousy again.

Here’s his first month’s progress report towards his IEP goals from the school:

Jared did well in his first month of first grade. When asked ques­tions during and after read­ing he is able to answer them cor­rectly. Jared can respond to a text orally and pic­to­ri­ally but often needs verbal prompts to stay focused. We do modify tasks for Jared and he is usu­ally able to finish a task. Jared will answer when called on and we are work­ing on him qui­etly rais­ing his hands. Fine motor skills such as cut­ting and hand­writ­ing are improv­ing but are still some­times dif­fi­cult. Jared is com­mu­ni­cat­ing with his peers and inter­acts with them both inside the class­room and at recess.

Here’s the second:

Jared has been making progress in the area of lan­guage arts. He has been writ­ing full sen­tences with­out even taking part in shared writ­ing. Com­pre­hen­sion with text is get­ting better, although Jared still will restate ver­ba­tim from the text. Jared is improv­ing his task com­ple­tion but still needs many prompts.

Yes there are some crit­i­cisms in there, but when com­bined with how well Jared is doing aca­d­e­m­i­cally, I’m ecsta­tic with his progress so far. But by switch­ing out a member of his team, a wrench has been thrown into the works. Jared is already work­ing at a dis­ad­van­tage com­pared to his peers. He’s easily dis­tracted, has a hard time com­mu­ni­cat­ing with other people, and learns in a com­pletely dif­fer­ent way. The metaphor I use is that it’s as though all the kids in his class are run­ning a marathon. Jared’s autism means that he’s run­ning with 30 pounds of weight on his back, and yet he’s still keep­ing up with the other kids. The last thing he needs are detours on the route… okay, that metaphor is get­ting tor­tured. You know what I mean.

So here’s to hoping that things work out with the new assis­tant. Jared’s been work­ing so hard this year, and I’d hate to see him start falling behind.

Show Me Yours

So who’s curi­ous how I did on this Asperger’s quiz? Well, take it your­self and let me know how you did in the com­ments and I’ll post my results. [Via Scalzi]

And for those of you who score par­tic­u­larly high, enjoy this list of Seven topics to avoid if you don’t want to risk being a bore. [Via Kottke]

So very wrong

As men­tioned over on Left Brain/Right Brain, in the intro­duc­tion to Jenny McCarthy’s new book about rais­ing her autis­tic son, Dr. Jerry Kartzinel says:

“Autism, as I see it, steals the soul from a child; then, if allowed, relent­lessly sucks life’s marrow out of the family mem­bers, one by one..”

…which makes my mind boggle. Let’s be clear who we’re talk­ing about. This is what Dr. Kartzinel thinks a soul­less child looks like:

Has this guy ever met an autis­tic? Jared is the hap­pi­est, fun­ni­est, sweet­est bundle of life and joy that you could ever meet. He’s made every­one around him happy for years. Every kid in his school seems to love him, and when they see him, they run to him shout­ing his name as though they were greet­ing a con­quer­ing hero. This kid isn’t suck­ing life’s marrow from anyone. This kid is too busy relent­lessly making life better for every­one who knows him.

So the next time you hear people like Dr. Kartzinel or par­ents like Jenny McCarthy on tele­vi­sion describ­ing autis­tics and autism, think of these pic­tures. Think of that smile. And then give them the finger.