Expert: Celtica - 10/17/2008

Question
Our son has been attending school here in our neighborhood.  He is in the 5th grade now and it was found that he has Aspergers in the 2nd grade.  It has been an uphill struggle with the school as they have not wanted to acknowledge that he has Aspergers even though we have had him diagnosed by more than one professional.  Recently, he had an assessment legally mandated by law and the professional that did the assessment has submitted his report all of which verifies the diagnosis of Aspergers.  Although his Aspergers is slight we have needed to put him in a special ed class so he can get the interventions he needs, presumably from a teacher with knowledge of special ed.  It seems that the teacher needs to be constantly reminded that our son has Aspergers and that engaging him in power struggles and other such things will be counter productive yet it seems to be a constant and recurring theme.  It is almost as if they are not special ed teachers.  Add to this that when the teacher is out they bring in a substitute teacher that does not have any training in special ed and we are told that subs are not required to have a special ed background.  Fair enough but it seems that this sub leaves our son frustrated, agitated, in a high state of anxiety, etc.  He has difficulty availing himself to the interventions he has been allowed and when he does try to regulate himself with these interventions she undermines him.  When we found out the other day that our son was going to have the same sub again my wife contacted the teacher and asked if she could sit in on part of the class.  The teacher called and left a message that no, she cannot sit in on the class that it "would not be fair to the substitute teacher".  We do not understand why it would not be fair or why she can't simply oberver part of the class.  Unless, of course, they don't want us to know and see what she is doing.  When our son has her as a teacher we spend the rest of the day doing what we call "damage control" and decompressing our son and getting him back into some state of normalcy.  We are going to have to change advocates because the one we have has not been very proactive.  When we try to contact him it takes him forever to get back to us on urgent issues and when he does he has usually been playing tennis and things slipped his mind and he says he will do better next time.  So our advocate has basically been useless in these situations.  I am hoping you can give me some thoughts and/or advice on this whole situation.  Is it right that they refuse to let us observe the sub teaching our son?  We do not see how it is unfair to the sub and yet it is fair for our son to come out of school in such a state of agitation.  Thank you in advance and I hope you can offer us some thoughts on this.

Answer
Hi Richard,

I cannot give you legal advice, and I honestly don't know if it's for legal reasons why they don't let you sit in your son's class (I guess it would cause alot of distraction if there was suddenly an adult in class all the kids don't know. Probably a few kids who depend on routines strongly wouldn't even be able to cope with that - but I don't know if there are other autistic kids in that class). Probably it's just because of that. I also don't know if there is a way to make sure (leagally) that your son's teacher is a qualified special ed teacher and not a substitute teacher.
I'm very sorry, but I don't have any ideas about what to do, only - have you considered sending your son to a different school in your area ? Probably they just don't have much experience with autistic kids at your son's school but they do in another school nearby (maybe go and speak to some principals and see what they say).

hope that helps,
C.