IEP meetings, do they always suggest autism?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ Also, I know for certain that they all work on the same skills in the group.

then it's a really lousy group.

Why? It has 7 kids who need to learn to interact with their peers/classmates. DS even has a best friend from the group

We've been very happy with it. Free, no driving, and DS has improved a lot: About as good as it gets for a social skills group...

Because they should be working on individual needs, which is what an IEP requires, even in a group setting.

And a MERLD child's language needs are usually quite different than a child with ASD.

Yes, but this is at a language immersion school - not a school a parent would pick if they thought their child had issues with language. I actually know most of the diagnosis for the kids in that social skills class (from their parents) and none of them have MERLD although some also have one-on-one speech classes not just group social pragmatics.

Most MERLD kids get one-to-one speech classes not just group, correct? I would think an individual speech class would to tailored to the kid's needs no matter what the diagnosis...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid with Asperger's gets group pragmatic speech classes led by a SLP at school. They all learn the same stuff no matter what the diagnosis. All the kids in his grade go to this class if they have social pragmatic issues whether or not they have a diagnosis. My kid with ASD has normal eye contact, BTW.

The classes have worked well for my DS and his social pragmatics have improved a lot. He has been attending social pragmatic classes since preK at school and is now in 1st. He attends a language immersion school and they also have direct instruction in social pragmatics in the target language which also helps.

You are not going to get different speech/social pragmatics classes specifically tailored to a diagnosis and certainly not in public school.

The fact that all the children go to the same class doesn't prove anything. Even in a group setting, children can be working on different skills.

MERLD children have weak pragmatics for totally different reasons than ASD children.

I'm not saying it to prove anything but describing how a pragmatic speech class is run at our school. We are at a DC charter maybe it's different at other schools or counties?

This was also the case at our public MoCo elementary. Not just for speech, but also for reading intervention. Group classes with all working on one set of skills. Not at all effective for our child.

Our school only has group speech for social pragmatics b/c it's social skills and therefore it's better in a group. They run regular speech and reading intervention one-on-one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid with Asperger's gets group pragmatic speech classes led by a SLP at school. They all learn the same stuff no matter what the diagnosis. All the kids in his grade go to this class if they have social pragmatic issues whether or not they have a diagnosis. My kid with ASD has normal eye contact, BTW.

The classes have worked well for my DS and his social pragmatics have improved a lot. He has been attending social pragmatic classes since preK at school and is now in 1st. He attends a language immersion school and they also have direct instruction in social pragmatics in the target language which also helps.

You are not going to get different speech/social pragmatics classes specifically tailored to a diagnosis and certainly not in public school.

The fact that all the children go to the same class doesn't prove anything. Even in a group setting, children can be working on different skills.

MERLD children have weak pragmatics for totally different reasons than ASD children.

I'm not saying it to prove anything but describing how a pragmatic speech class is run at our school. We are at a DC charter maybe it's different at other schools or counties?

This was also the case at our public MoCo elementary. Not just for speech, but also for reading intervention. Group classes with all working on one set of skills. Not at all effective for our child.

Our school only has group speech for social pragmatics b/c it's social skills and therefore it's better in a group. They run regular speech and reading intervention one-on-one.

Group can be good if all the kids are working on the same thing, or even on things that complemented each other. But, just because all the kids are working on "social skills" doesn't mean that they all belong in the same group. For my child, the "social skills" group offered by the local public school was a waste of time.

Same with reading. My kid was in a reading group with a non-English speaker. My child has an LD and really needed explicit daily help with phonics and decoding. The non-English speaker was fine with decoding but had more of a vocabulary problem because of the lack of exposure to English in the home. He could decode fine, but once the word was decoded, he didn't understand it because he'd never heard it before. That kid needed help in defining words from context. For my kid, the emphasis on that was the worst. He needed to be directed away from gaining context thru meaning because he was already over-relying on that and it was taxing his available cognitive energy. Instead he needed to be directed towards reading every letter from a phonetic perspective with full automaticity. Once he decoded the word properly, he would know it instantly.

Group can be good if the target skill is the same for all. Unfortunately, IME, in MoCo, kids are directed toward groups because it is considered more efficient use of teacher time -- one teacher can provide 3-5 hours of sped time for 1 hour of salary. The problem is that this is very short-sighted. These kids then spend much longer in sped because they are getting 1/5 of the instruction per hour.

[Anonymous]

My shy kid was cleared of ASD. But his teacher suggested wee keep the label. She said it's the best way to get service.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My shy kid was cleared of ASD. But his teacher suggested wee keep the label. She said it's the best way to get service.

+1. Without the label, DS' services would've been cut in half. So yes, we agreed to the ASD label, even though his actual diagnosis is ADHD/Combined

[Anonymous]

Why would they receive fewer skills with a different label? Why would they agree to an autism label if they know your child had ADHD?

I'm curious because my hold has social and behavior issues, low tone, etc but nobody thinks DC is autistic.

[Anonymous]

No one thinks DS is autistic either but he is, he has Asperger's/ASD. Most of the kids I know who are on the spectrum primarily kids with Asperger's and PDD-NOS - most lay people couldn't tell unless they were told.

[Anonymous]

<<Without the label, DS' services would've been cut in half. So yes, we agreed to the ASD label, even though his actual diagnosis is ADHD/Combined >>


This is something I have been curious about for years. Why would services be cut in half without an ASD label? IF the kid has a non ASD dx but requires a lot of services based on evaluations, wouldn't he be entitled to them?

[Anonymous]

11:18 here. By nobody thinks my kid is autistic I mean that to include psychologists who have tested him. But he needs services and gets them. Are you guys saying he would likely get more services if labeled autistic? Puzzling . I thought SPED services were driven by need, not diagnosis.

[Anonymous]

<<11:18 here. By nobody thinks my kid is autistic I mean that to include psychologists who have tested him. But he needs services and gets them. Are you guys saying he would likely get more services if labeled autistic? Puzzling . I thought SPED services were driven by need, not diagnosis. >>

+1 on the above. I actually was told it was illegal for schools to deny services based on the code -- that if there is an evaluated need, no matter what the code, the child gets

[Anonymous]

11:18 again. I'm pretty new to this world so if I am missing something I would love to know what it is. How or why does "autism" open additional doors?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:11:18 here. By nobody thinks my kid is autistic I mean that to include psychologists who have tested him. But he needs services and gets them. Are you guys saying he would likely get more services if labeled autistic? Puzzling . I thought SPED services were driven by need, not diagnosis.

You would think so, but it's not the reality.

[Anonymous]

Could you please explain this? Sincere question. I am new to all this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Could you please explain this? Sincere question. I am new to all this.

Basically the school will use the term "least restrictive environment," and give the least number of services to go with it. Legally, they need to provide education AKA "access" not enable your kid to be successful at getting an education.

Some people's kids can manage with pull out/push in services in the mainstream. Some kids are actually qualified for the few specialized centers. But most of us will get screwed.

[Anonymous]

I think one has to be careful about distinguishing between "without a label" versus "with a different label." Every IEP needs a diagnosis or disorder. The three prongs of the legal test require 1) disorder, 2) adverse impact and 3) need for special education.

If a child loses an autism label and has no other diagnosed disorder, legally it will not be possible to provide an IEP.

On the other hand, if a child loses an autistic disorder diagnosis and has instead an ADHD diagnosis, then the school is legally obligated to do an individual analysis of the child's needs and provide the necessary support. It is illegal to deny services on the basis that a child does not have a particular kind of diagnosis, i.e. the school can't say, "we only provide social skills classes to autistic children and your child is not autistic thus he doesn't qualify."

However, I think many schools say the above and hope that the parents will either go away not knowing any better, or not understanding how to fight the decision or not having any money to hire legal counsel or other help to fight the decision. IME, schools do illegal things all the time and wait for the parents to force them to do what they are supposed to do. That is why burden of proof legislation is so important. However, even with burden of proof legislation, I imagine it will still be relatively harder for schools to deny services when a child has a label that has clearly delineated deficits and recommended "therapies" and easier to deny services when the deficits and recommended supports are less universally acknowledged.

In addition, I think that schools think rather narrowly -- they have programs which are recommended for certain types of kids/problems. Just like the mainstream area of the school, IME, teachers are largely unable to "differentiate" special ed programs to meet the individual need of the student. The teachers simply don't have the knowledge or experience, IME, with rare exceptions. So, if your child has an autism diagnosis, he may be eligible for the social skills program geared to autism kids. But, if your child has ADHD or a language disorder, auditory processing or executive function disorder or any other diagnoses that come with social skills deficits, the school simply doesn't know what to do because there is no special program. This happened to my ADHD/language disordered child. The school had a social skills group geared toward bullying, so that is what they gave him, even though it didn't at all fit his specific social skill deficits.