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Rdmaggie
member
ASD mommas- preschool
Rdmaggie
member
How did you know what options were right for your child?
I'm really struggling with this. We had our first transition meeting today, which was mostly paperwork and setting up evals through the district. Our options are as follows: Our local school district inclusion preschool, 12 students 8 on IEPs, 1 teach, 1 aide, 2.5 hours a day 4 days a week or a neighboring districts TEACCH program, same time frame, same days of the week, no transportation but lower teacher to student ratio (I think they said currently its 4 students 1 teach, 1 aide). We also have the option of taking the Autism Scholarship and applying the 20,000 towards a private preschool. There is a ABA center about 20 miles from us, I believe their preschool is 6 hours 3 days a week. I just have NO idea whats best for her, what will make the most difference. I've asked our current EI provider numerous times and she is tight lipped. Shes states she cannot endorse any specific therapy, or location, only present them and let us decide. DD has some nice skill sets, knows colors, abcs, numbers etc. however she has zero interest in interacting with anyone on any level unless it is a preferred interest, and even then shes likely to wander off mid way through. i.e. she can finish a puzzle if shes sitting in her highchair, but if she were just sitting at a table she'd probably run off and sing songs or reenact scenes from Sesame Street. She is capable of doing many things, but it can be like pulling teeth to get her to do them (she doesn't really tantrum she just stares off in to space or starts singing to avoid doing things if she can't get away). She is crafty at times, will tell us she needs to potty just to get out of the highchair, or some other small "fib" in order to get what she really wants. When I spoke with the district today I explained that one of my main concerns for her is her lack of social communicaion, or desire to communicate and that I would like her to be in an enviroment where that could be facilitated as (like many autism kiddos) she doesn't model after her peers. They just kind of shrugged. Would putting her in a more structured enviroment like TEACCH help to provide her with the skills she needs to possibly mainstream one day, or is that more skill driven? The district reps I met with today said in TEACCH the only socializing she'd get would be on the playground when they mixed her with "typical" kids and that it would not be facilitated interactions. Should I look into the ABA preschool in hopes that they will offer social skills and attempt to facilitate more peer interaction? I'm beyond frusterated with this. I know ieps can be rewritten and I know that we can change our minds about preschools if the first half doesn't go well (she starts in Jan), but I would love some kind of starting point. Maybe I'm asking the wrong questions...How did you know what was right for your child? Is this all trial and error?
This discussion has been closed.
Re: ASD mommas- preschool
It is so difficult to try and navigate the different options and figure out how to allocate the hours in the day to get the most benefit for your kids. We are in this process also. The county offered DS an integrated preschool as well. 16 kids total and 8 with IEP's. I believe there are two teachers and then the therapists that come into and out of the room. Therapy sessions are mostly pushed in and done in the classroom. My DS also has some really nice skills in terms of imaginatary play, social interaction, and academic type skills. His weakest area seems to be group interaction and compliance. For example in larger groups he just seems to have difficulty focusing, understanding the group dynamic and heirarchy enough to sort of follow along and participate in things like circle time, story time, arts and crafts and waiting in line.
Since the preschool was not an option for the summer we found an ABA program in our neighborhood. Basically its a one on one preschool program where he spends time one on one in ABA therapy but there are also other kids at the center and there are group activities worked in as well as facilitation of social interaction, trips into the community, and social skills groups. He has been going there this summer and progress has been amazing. We hope to up his hours spent there in the fall. I wish we had a ASD scholarship program but this is basically all on us. For me the inclusion preschool at this point is still too large of a group. My DS really needs more one on one prompting in a group setting. Our county also was not including any ABA therapy saying that it was 'too restrictive' so that is another reason we looked elsewhere. Our feeling was that we wanted him to receive that type of therapy to see how it would work for him. We're still negotiating with our county but our preference at this point is too keep him in his current program. To Auntie's point we feel like the more progress he can make this year the closer he is to being able to go to a typical preschool.
Good luck deciding!
DD1, 1/5/2008 ~~~ DD2, 3/17/2010