Auntie - Advice

meghans30

3rd grade has proven very challenging for my PDD - NOS son. He actually has made great strides in his social skills support and reading (he has received 1:1 reading services), but now comprehension and abstract math are proving challenging.  It came up for discussion at our last IEP meeting to consider different options for next year. Trevor currently attends 3rd grade in a self contained classroom with built in social skills group and a positive behavior system. While huge strides have been made, his academics are now lagging and he is "immature." The option of keeping his back came up as an option for next year.  What are your thoughts on keeping ASD keeps back in school in hopes of narrowing the gap?  I am pretty much against this option. 

meghans30

Trevor really presents as a typical 3rd grader. He is sweet and well-mannered, but once you really look closely he is clearly not on par with his peers. This year we added a BCBA to collect data regarding "behavior" and revisited speech with an SLP evaluation ( he will be getting services in the fall to help with comprehension issues). 

meghans30

-auntie- said:

It's a tough call.

FTR- this is a classic Asperger/PDD-Nos situation. The child who does pretty well early on in school who hits the wall in late 3rd/4th. Back in the olden days- say 2000- this was the most common time for a child like yours or mine to get an ASD dx. 

A lot of kids with ASD who were strong students in the primary grades with their strong decoding, pattern recognition and rote memory skills who starts to do less well when the curriculum starts to morph  from learning to read to reading to learn and from arithmetic to math applications. It's not a coincidence that the curriculum changes at this age; his peers have, or soon will have, a burst in emotional and cognitive maturity that makes them ready for this kind of learning. They're also going to become more sophisticated in their social behavior and thinking, parsing rules in a more and more complex  manner. This is also the stage when tweens start thinking as a group; at this age NT kids are hardwired for conformity and can be harsh in their opinions of those who don't behave in a way that is expected. For all these reasons, I refer to 4th grade as the ninth circle of hell.

It's interesting that he's in a self contained class; in my district self contained is reserved for kids with a lot of challenging behaviors- the kid who is aggressive, doesn't interact with peers at all, has significant comorbids, or who has behaviors that put him at a safety risk. DS has an LD around reading and math; he spent his intermediate grades in a resource setting for math/RELA only. He also got ESY in these subjects until middle school. His social skills group at that age was pulled out with similar boys who were a bit older than he was. But mostly he was with his grade.

Trevor was new to this district last November and his main teacher focused a lot of his "behaviors " in the mainstream classroom. He made noises, was out of his seat, got in kid's personal space, etc.  We came from an urban district who refused any ASD social skills or even acknowledge that he was on the spectrum even though they told us to go get a medical dx.  We did. They refused to service. So, Trevor really has only been receiving the proper services for 1 and a half school years. We agreed to the small setting to help target those "behaviors" and for the academic support he needed. He has come so far. So far that he no longer fits in this classroom , but he skews young and is having difficulty with the comprehension and pace of the curriculum. 

Reading comprehension is difficult to "fix". And it can be more complicated in kids with ASD. Sometimes kids on spectrum are strong decoders but can't get information out of some kinds of writing. Many such B&W thinking kids struggle with implied and inferred information- DS thought is was somehow underhanded to expect people to know things that weren't spelled out. (we had to help him reframe his thinking on this to get from being tricked to seeing it as a kind of puzzle to solve) Sometimes they have issues with literary devices like symbolism and foreshadowing. And the lack of ToM that makes the motivations of real people a mystery impact literary characters.

There's a Lindamood Bell program V&V that addresses comprehension. We did Orton Gillingham. DS teachers and psychologist suggested reading aloud to him nightly and talking about the meanings in the text. I read about an hour nightly- we did a lot of books that had complex characters who weren't always what they seemed. The HP books were great for this. Reading aloud is probably the best thing you can do to build vocabulary, auditory processing skills and develop academic stamina. 

We added LMB 1:1 reading last summer and he has made huge strides in decoding. He will be switching to V & V in the fall. An SLP has also been added to help with comprehension.

Another thing we did was watch movies where plot devices and character development are easier to "see". Star Wars and The Godfather (in high school) is great in this context- how did Darth Vader get to be Darth Vader? 

To your question regarding "retention".

There's no right answer. I've seen this play out a number of ways-

I red shirted DS which is a kind of retention. Like you, we didn't have a dx going into kindie but I knew he was less mature and emotionally robust than the other boys in his class- plus he had a birthday just before the cut-off date. It was a real benefit in kindie but by the end of first it wasn't enough. Aspergers brings a delay of about 1/3 chronological age- an immature six looks pretty much like an "almost five" so he pretty much did OK. But the gap widens. The kid who acted 8 among twelves is going to struggle socially for all kinds of reasons.

Despite DS's obvious intelligence, there are certain kinds of subjects/skills that he has not been able to master at the expected age, that came along with almost no effort when he was older. I think this is neurodevelomental. Brains are still maturing until about 25; I suspect DS's will continue a bit past that. DS really struggled with math- dyslexia impacts equations in algebra and before that he couldn't master his "math facts" until middle school when one day they were just there. So DS believed he was congenitally bad at math. He did pretty well in math in high school, but he was behind his peers by 2 years. He doubled up as a senior and ended up getting as much math as most students who aren't heading off to be STEM majors. It's not a race. More recently he's been learning to drive. He just wasn't ready until now. We did make a stab at 18, but at 20 he's doing much better with it.

I agree! He is struggling with memorizing facts which held him up in other parts of the curriculum. Some skills he probably will not be ready for until middle or high school.

While the extra year didn't bring much to the party past kindie, it was very useful in transitioning DS to college and adulthood. Again, YMMV. DS had a huge leap in executive function and focus his senior year of high school which carried over into college. I don't know that he would have been successful in college had that not occurred in high school.

Bottom line is, you can keep him on an IEP and in school until he's 22 if that's what he needs. He could potentially walk with his same aged classmates and spend a couple year getting services around college prep vocational choices and adaptive skills. 

This makes me feel better actually. It just  may take him longer. He has average IQ scores and his testing 3 years ago also put him about where he should be. He is due to be tested in the fall. 

Downside to that is, once he's 18, he's the one signing the IEP unless you've taken legal steps around conservatorship or guardianship. Once they're 18, you're parenting an adult who can tell you to go f*ck yourself. This recently happened to two Asperger-mom friends of mine. 

D is a very bright kid with Aspergers; his parents started him "on time" because he was so verbal and didn't have any obvious delays.Mom's a college professor and dad is an orchestra conductor- they had every reason to expect a smart kid. He crashed and burned in kindie, so his parents had him repeat it. He found this humiliating and it became a real bone of contention between them. He dropped out of school at 18, at the start of his senior year and sat the GED. He's taking classes PT at a local college and doing just OK. 

I's was another super verbal/super bright kid with Aspergers. He was a super-preemie; like under 2 lbs. He was started on time, and did well academically but really struggled socially. His mom and I talked about how valuable that extra year in house was before college, so she designed an IEP that broke his senior year into 2 years. He took a lighter load the first year along with some vocational and adaptive skills training; he didn't satisfy the requirements for his diploma but was allowed to participate in graduation. The next fall he took two morning classes at the high school to satisfy his grad requirements and two courses at the nearby college. He never shared with his mom, but he found this strategy humiliating and didn't put much effort into any of his classes. He nearly missed graduating because of his crappy grades and he'll have to retake two of the four classes he took at the college. His mom is really anxious now because her plan was to move him onto campus for the real college experience and she's afraid he'll flunk out without her scaffolding and prompting.

I will also say that in talking with adults son spectrum who were retained, especially for social reasons, the pain, frustration, shame and humiliation is still raw and on the surface years later. So while I'm chill with an extra year of preschool, I would not retain a kid later unless there was a really compelling reason that could not be addressed in any other way. 

I am very aware of how it plays out later in the school years because I teach in the high school he will most likely attend. I am very reluctant to do this.

The thing is, retention is an elementary issue. Once he gets to secondary, classes will be set up based on ability and he could be included in classes for kids who are a year behind their peers. In high school, things are even more fluid.

In your situation, I'd insist on differentiated instruction to meet his needs for catching up. I'd also lobby for ESY in these academic areas. If they won't fund it, consider doing a summer academic camp or LD school summer session. Lindamood Bell does summer programs- there's one in Arlington and Norwell. Use the summers to narrow the skills gap and to avoid regression. 

We have been offered ESY academic and social programming.  I also will continue reading aloud and discussing what we read aloud. 

When you say "behaviors"- what are the concerns? Are you seeing stigmatizing stuff? Out of seat/ADHD type stuff? Or is it strictly ASD clueless immaturity? At this age DS was doing MGW's "Thinking About You, Thinking About Me". It was life-changing for him.

He's really a mixed bag. The behaviors teachers initially were concerned about have disappeared in the small setting.  He has made connections with peers and is happy going to school. We are now dealing with personal space, fidgeting,  and things like curling in a ball or putting his hands in his shirt. Immaturity is an issue as well. This is a very difficult decision. I finally feel we have all the support he needs to make progress in all areas.   I just can not decide if repeating 3rd grade is the answer.  Any other thoughts after hearing more?