Who has been through a Manifestation Determination Hearing?

TinyPinkBug

Background:  DS was dx with an ASD just after his third birthday, he has been in preschool since he was 2.  He is now in a behavior management kindergarten class.  However, despite having an EIP and BIP he has been received over 30 referrals, and missed all or part of at least 23 school days due to being sent home for safety or suspensions.  Because only 9 were actually called suspensions, we have not had a MDH yet.  I did ask for one recently and it is scheduled for this week.  What should I expect from it?  There is no question that the behavior is due to his disability.  Then what?  

 I really don't want him moved to another program.  Right now he is in the most restrictive program within the district.  The next option would be through BOCES, which he would need to be approved for by BOCES.  What I don't like about that program is not only the time on the bus where he already has huge problems in the 10 minutes he is on it now, but the fact that the program is not in a school.  It is in a training center with no typical peers.  The academics worry me as well, I know they still teach the core curriculum and administer state testing but I just feel like it would most likely be minimal.  My son has an IQ of 153 and I feel like there would be little room for him to be challenged in a program outside of a school.  He also currently picks up a lot of the negative behaviors of the kids in his class, I am concerned what he would pick up in an environment with more ED kids.

TinyPinkBug

Why is he in an EBD classroom? Does he have a cormobid that makes an EBD class LRE for him?

 He also has ADHD, he just can't sit still.  He is also impulsive and will hit students and staff if something doesn't go the way he thinks it should go, this could be him not getting to go first, losing a game, or even someone just making noises that bother him.  Then he throws a tantrum similar to a toddler

 

 What sort of infractions is he being disciplined for?

 

Hitting, or other assault on students or staff as the school calls it.

 

 I don't understand why you are so against the BOCES class, especially if it is an ABA-style classroom designed specifically to with autistic behaviors rather than those of kids who are emotionally or behaviorally disordered/disturbed assuming he is neither. A lot of parents would fight an EBD class placement for a kid with ASD. I would fight this one because it isn't working.

 Because the program they want to put him in is an emotionally/behavior disturbed placement at BOCES, not an ABA-style classroom for ASD kids.  There is an  ABA-style classroom but they wont even consider it for him.  I thought it was what he needed so I talked to various people including parents with kids in the class, teachers who have worked in the ABA program and with Tyler, school psychologist from his current and old school and everyone seems to think that my son would actually do worse there.  When other kids make noises, move around a lot, and are unpredictable, my son get agitated.  Right now, he pushes into a gen ed room several times a day plus sees typical peers going about their day.  In the BOCES program they are considering he would only be around EBD students all day.  I have also been told that the kids in the program are much worse behavior wise than where he is now, and now he is really bothered by the other kids' behavior and it creates a lot of anxiety.  His current team thinks it would really be best to keep him where he is and that they will keep working with him.

TinyPinkBug

I should also update from that last post back in Jan.  I did contact an advocate and brought her to the meeting we had back in Jan.  Myself and my husband did not like what she brought to the meeting, she basically insulted half the table within the first few minutes calling everyone too young to know what they were doing.  Then she got hung up on his OT needs and getting a one-to-one aid, both things that I felt were being met and not the reason we were there.  I haven't been in contact with her since.  

The district did bring in an expert from BOCES to work on the FBA and BIP, he basically said keep doing what you are doing.  However before that even happened, my son's behavior improved on its own and the outbursts declined to about once a month instead of weekly.  But now they have gotten much worse again since the start of May.  Nothing has changed other than the aids but they come from the preschool where he was thriving and I have a lot of confidence in their abilities.  Today is the start of a new teacher, his teacher was a long term sub and she didn't get the permanent position.  While I am optimistic that this new teacher will bring something new to the group, the adjustment with only 23 days left to the school year is going to be difficult.

  

TinyPinkBug

Auntie, what do you think of random reward systems for kids with Aspergers?  There are a lot of random rewards in place that actually seem to be a major cause of melt-downs.  We just had a big meltdown over a "secret student" award in music.  Each week one student gets chosen at the end of class, all year my son sat and watched every other kid in class get chosen except himself and his 3 SN classmates.  Last week he figured out that every other student had been picked at least once and assumed it was his turn, but instead they picked a different student from his SN class.  He was having a great day but suddenly turned and started screaming and attack the aid who was holding him back from hitting the student who got picked.  Within his room, they also have 2 reward systems for catching him making good choices, so one day he will get a reward for sitting and doing his work or walking quietly in the hall but then the next day he wont because it is supposed to be random.  Not always, but sometimes he decides he should have gotten the reward like he has other times and gets angry and starts yelling that he should have gotten it.  They also have a color system where if you break a rule your color gets changed which results in the lose of specific amounts of recess.  Again this system is a source of frustration.  I have expressed my concern over these systems as a source of frustration for him, but they keep telling me they are program-wide, that they are what works and that the behavior specialist from BOCES even agreed to them during the consult.

TinyPinkBug

-auntie-:

It sounds like your son is really rigid and has a highly tuned sense of justice. This is pretty typical of the most kids with Aspergers. I would expect an FBA to have revealed this about him.

The use of a positive behavior plan that includes rewards is a standard gambit. It's standard because it works really well for behaviorally disordered kids. For kids with higher levels of anxiety and an almost OCD-like compulsion to be the best, first or most awesome (like a lot of kiddos with Aspergers) rewards can be a distraction at best or a trigger for even worse behavior. Some kids can manage them, some who can't when they're younger can as they get older.

I find a lot of kids on spectrum perseverate on color charts and stickers as they relate to behaviors they really struggle to manage. Sometimes, giving the student a chance to re-do a choice to get the mark against them go away can be really effective. It gives them a sense that that can do this and it gives them practice doing the right thing.

I am appalled at the notion of taking recess off a young child for any reason. Kids with social delays need the unstructured setting practice and ADHDers need to run around so they can recommit to being focused. 

It sounds like your son gets stuck especially easily. Deliberate sabotage could help him be more at ease with that sort of thing.  

You basically just summed up and made complete sense of what I have been trying to say since the beginning of the school year.  Now, why can't I bring you to the meetings with me!  ;-)  Or at least find someone in my area who can understand it and help me in the meetings when emotions get in the way of clear thinking.  I am going to go down the list of area advocates to find someone who shares this insight as the one I worked with in the past seemed to be advocating for a different child during the meeting.

I get what you are saying with the deliberate sabotage and I actually think we do a lot of this at home to work on his problem solving.  Such as he only likes his cheese cut into tiny squares because he doesn't like the feel of his front teeth sinking into the cheese to bite off a piece, so I will randomly serve it in sticks or slices so that he has to figure out how to make it how he likes.  Also things like missing our street so we have to go around the block, or 'forgetting' to put out his clothes the night before.

 My son actually had a problem today.  He got mad that another classmate picked something from the prize box that my son had wanted.  He had a meltdown, head-butted and bit the new teacher and threw chairs at kids.  What would have normally happened would have been the principal would have went down and they would have carried him to the office and sent him home on suspension.  Because we are awaiting the MDH this Wed, the principal instead called me, explained what happened and said DS was still in the room and could not calm down.  He asked what I thought we should do.  Caught off guard, I said I was coming to the school.  I got there in about 10 minutes.  When I got there, DS was in the classroom sitting on the teacher's lap with the school psychologist and speech teacher in the room.  DS had calmed down, picked up the chairs, cleaned and reorganized all the mess he made, apologised to the teacher and reflected on what he did wrong and what he should have done.  I then looked at the psychologist and special ed teacher and asked what they thought but the principal cut me off and said it isn't up to them.  He then left the room and asked the staff to leave as well while he called the administration office.  He came back, basically asked me again what I thought we should do, I said let him complete the day.  He wasn't happy about it, but then I left and DS is finishing his school day.

TinyPinkBug

Auntie-  Question since I bet you have a brilliant answer.  Can they put my son in a time-out room with an aid for the entire afternoon?  There is nothing in his current IEP or BIP about time-out rooms.  Today, he had an issue about the same prize box he had an issue with yesterday.  It was at around 12:00, they removed him from the class and put him in a time-out room (just an empty classroom) with an aid for the remaining 3 hours of the day.  The school didn't tell me this, my son did and he is really accurate on his reporting of events that occur before and after meltdowns (but not during).  He did not get to go to special, did not get recess, did not get his scheduled afternoon services.  He had to do work.