So the School District has finally finished Tiberius’s evaluation. Some parts were difficult to read, but others were more encouraging.
On the down side:
Tiberius scored high on measures of anxiety and depression. It’s more than a little bit upsetting to hear these terms applied clinically to your six year old. I like to think of my son as a generally happy kid. Is my perspective mistaken or is his mood just that much worse at school? Neither possibility is encouraging. I also feel like anxiety and depression foreshadows some tough medication decisions down the road. While there aren’t “autism drugs,” there are a lot of mood stabilizers on the market and Tiberius does have the additional problem of lashing out physically during tantrums.
The first grade teacher who had Tiberius in her class part time reported that she was unsure Tiberius can be accommodated in a mainstream classroom. This leaves us very hesitant to ask her to try having him in her class next year.
There were also some heartbreaking in school observations that included:
-Tiberius lying on the floor banging on the lock of a trunk during group reading time
-Tiberius quitting a game and hitting himself in the head during gym when he was ruled “out” during the normal course of the game (as in all kids get out – we have the same problem with games like sharks and minnows – even the “winner” gets caught at the end).
-Tiberius hitting another student who accidentally bumped in to him, which led to a fight and Tiberius slapping an intervening teacher in the face.
On the up side:
The speech therapist said Tiberius was just fine. She also made some recess observations that suggest his play with peers is something approximating normal. He’s odd, but he’s working trough it. That’s big stuff.
He’s also gifted. It was actually written as:
Primary Disability: Autism
Secondary Disability: Mentally gifted
In PA you need a 130 IQ to qualify as gifted in the clinically significant sense. Tiberius was scored at 143, which put him in the 99.8th percentile. So he’s a smarty-pants. One point of potential concern is that his aptitude tests showed him as advanced in all areas, but not to the same degree as the intelligence test. Translation? He’s well above average on his 3Rs, but probably not as far ahead as he would be without his disability. Our challenge is to make sure that everyone involved remembers that if Tiberius ends up with average academic skills, then we’ve all failed him. It’s very good news that he has intellectual gifts, but it does add a bit of pressure.
With all this in hand we’re gearing up for tomorrow’s IEP meeting. Our basic plan is to sign there forms and let them look for a school with an appropriate “autism support” classroom. If we don’t like what they come up with then we keep him at his current school. Potentially we only send him to school for the hours we can get wrap around services approved. That’s only 15 hours at this point, which is a best 3 days a week of coverage. That’s a daunting proposition, but so is leaving a familiar environment for the unknown waters of special ed.
So good news: Smart, plays pretty well with others at recess. Bad news is he’s depressed, anxious and his school wants him out. Blah.
My Autistic Son 