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Special Needs
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The Old Guard
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I'm touring daycares to find a new social setting for the kid to practice his skills after school. After coming out of a beautiful Reggio Emilia facility licking my wounds, I stopped by a local cooperative today to check out their aftercare program. I was chatting with the teacher, tapdancing around, when she asked what the kid's issues are. I tell her he has HFA, but to picture preschool Asperger's.
"Oh, I worked with people with autism and schizophrenia for twenty years before I started here [she's been at this facility for another twenty]. Severe special needs. That was back when the numbers were one in a thousand. I think the diagnosis has lost all meaning now that we use it for everyone."
I stammered something about yes, well, diagnostic criteria. Ninety-five percent of the population would never know there's anything up with my kid, but if you know what you're looking for he stands out like a sore thumb. Then I went into his IEP goal for gestures as an example when she asked what we look for because I haven't mastered my thirty-second spiel on the kid yet: bright, verbal, no natural social ability, train obsessed.
"Children all learn those things at different rates. Is he verbal?"
"He tests at a five- or six-year-old level expressively. He had a receptive delay."
"In my day, there was no language. See--"
I felt full of shit and I know I'm not. Unfortunately, this looks like our best option.
"Oh, I worked with people with autism and schizophrenia for twenty years before I started here [she's been at this facility for another twenty]. Severe special needs. That was back when the numbers were one in a thousand. I think the diagnosis has lost all meaning now that we use it for everyone."
I stammered something about yes, well, diagnostic criteria. Ninety-five percent of the population would never know there's anything up with my kid, but if you know what you're looking for he stands out like a sore thumb. Then I went into his IEP goal for gestures as an example when she asked what we look for because I haven't mastered my thirty-second spiel on the kid yet: bright, verbal, no natural social ability, train obsessed.
"Children all learn those things at different rates. Is he verbal?"
"He tests at a five- or six-year-old level expressively. He had a receptive delay."
"In my day, there was no language. See--"
I felt full of shit and I know I'm not. Unfortunately, this looks like our best option.
11/10/10 The Kid
This discussion has been closed.
Re: The Old Guard
DD1, 1/5/2008 ~~~ DD2, 3/17/2010
"Has he ever heard the a-word?"
[Thinking: asshole?] "Pardon?"
"The a-u-t word?"
I explain that we've talked about difference, how people have strengths and weaknesses--
"--but you're never going to use that word with him, right? Because I don't think he should EVER hear it. It doesn't apply."
I share that the chief of developmental medicine at the local children's hospital Dx'd him, that he didn't respond to his name or acknowledge us in a room at that time, and that we did thirty hours a week of EI. I neglect to mention that I was up the entire night before stressing his ongoing fucking IEP issues and do not have time for this shit.
"Well, you really need a new word. What do YOU think he has? I don't even think Asperger's applies to him. He's just too social."
I tell her we were told that he would likely appear more Aspergic as he ages.
"I don't think they should have said that. Maybe they just told you that to scare you into working as hard as you did with him."
Failing to source a blunt object within immediate reach, I flipped her off inside my pocket, thanked her for her input, and blared some rap music on the way home.