Ava is aging out soon. For those of you not in the special needs world, it means that she will be turning three and transitioning from early intervention into the school district. The district will be responsible for her services - and hopefully providing her what she needs.
It is no easy task to get your child an appropriate education. And it is more than that. Ava is still young. Her brain is still forming. She still has the potential to recover from autism - at least, to be functional in normal society and have the necessary life skills to be independent. Her education IS her treatment. I can give her so much at home. But I am not a professional. Neither is my husband. Autism requires skilled practitioners.
Can you imagine having a child with a horrible disorder - and his/her chance for a normal, functioning life hinges on the quality of the education he/she will get? And I don't just mean being able to read or write -- I mean being able to walk down the street and not wander into traffic. I mean being able to go to the toilet unassisted. I mean having the basic skills to take care of oneself. Her placement into the most appropriate program is critical. Her livelihood depends on it.
So now we enter the arena of the Individualized Education Plan, the document which will outline Ava's goals in her education. Her goals have to address her needs, in order to prepare her to mainstream into a classroom with typical peers. Hopefully, that transition will transpire.
But it all comes down to dollars and cents. School districts do not want to spend the money to education an autistic child in a specialized program. They want to generalize. All the special needs children in one classroom, with a few special sessions thrown in.
I can't gamble with Ava's livelihood. I need to get her what she needs to become a functioning adult. And I will.
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Comments (3)
I just went through ALL of this with my oldest daughter. Its a fairly decent program, but the school hours are lacking due to funding and they REFUZED the put "autism" anywhere on the IEP because they want to keep everything generalized. I found out from another mother that the reason they do this in our district is so that when the child begins to progress they can come back during the IEP review and say "oh, she's all better, her "developmental delay" no longer needs intervention. She is doing great." And then they can mainstream her, and with the no child left behind poilcy there is nothing anyone can do, they will just mover her from class to class, grade to grade, and pretend nothing is worng.
I fought them on this, but in the end they won. They told me if I didn't like it, I could opt out of the services. And of course I don't want to do that.
We have a pretty good private school here for autism called the "Joshua School" but full time services are $26,000 a year. First of all Gabriel is 3, and her sister is 2, She is also autistic, so starting next year it would be $52,000 a year to get both my children the services in a school that would truely help them. The problem is we only make $27,000 a year.
So another words, we are finding that in our area only the rich kids are getting the services they need. The borederline poverty, or poverty, those kids get swept under the rug. But I imagine that is the way society works in most area in America.
There is something VERY wrong with that!
What a great post. I intend to include the last section in my daughter's present levels summary this year when we start the IEP. It sums it up so well. These are life or no-life decisions for our kids and too often they decide to provide woefully inadequate services so the school to saves a few dollars. As the previous commenter stated "only the rich kids are getting the
services they need. The borederline poverty, or poverty, those kids get
swept under the rug...There is something VERY wrong with that!"
I wish you and Ava the very best!
I wish more parents like you existed.
My boyfriend's younger brother is ten years old, and I know he autistic, but I do not know the ins and outs of it. He has a twin sister as well, but she is a typical child.
What I do know is that his parents do not monitor his diet. They don't monitor his sleep. Neither of the children are in any kind of school, not even home schooling. He sees no doctors, or therapists, or anything.
It deeply saddens me to see how he is neglected. I just can not understand people who do not do the best they can for their children.
He has no social skills at all, because he was never taught them. He isn't being taught to use the toilet alone. He punched and scratches his mother. He threw my cat out the window, and tried to drown another one.
I know it isn't his fault. I can't help but be frustrated by his parents' lack of commitment for him. I am at a loss; I just don't know what to do.
The worst part of it is that they think they're doing the right thing!
And not mention, there are free public schools less than fifteen minutes away that specialize in autistic children.