IEP meetings, do they always suggest autism?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In short: They don't. But in order to service a child with a "Social Communication Disorder" and the other co-morbid conditions they need to choose the educational diagnosis of autism... and frankly, this combination screams autism to me.

Do not confuse the educational diagnosis with the ultimate identity of your child, I'd say if it gets him the extra support accept it and go from there. Do not buy into the myth that kids can't get rid off their label.

I 100% agree with this. Forget the word autism since for some people on here it seems to be horrifying. (I personally pushed for the label to get the services we felt dd needed.) Pretend it's some word with less meaning like "Frogs." Kids with the educational label "frogs" are known to be in need of social skills/pragmatic language help, language therapy, OT, etc so the educational diagnosis helps you push for those services. Many kids labelled "Toads" are much less likely to need pragmatic language support so it may be harder to access that and/or for those who just briefly glance at the IEP they may be more sensitive to the pragmatic weaknesses of the frogs.

Deep down I do wonder if certain labels do get a child more or better services though nobody will ever outright share this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In short: They don't. But in order to service a child with a "Social Communication Disorder" and the other co-morbid conditions they need to choose the educational diagnosis of autism... and frankly, this combination screams autism to me.

Do not confuse the educational diagnosis with the ultimate identity of your child, I'd say if it gets him the extra support accept it and go from there. Do not buy into the myth that kids can't get rid off their label.

I 100% agree with this. Forget the word autism since for some people on here it seems to be horrifying. (I personally pushed for the label to get the services we felt dd needed.) Pretend it's some word with less meaning like "Frogs." Kids with the educational label "frogs" are known to be in need of social skills/pragmatic language help, language therapy, OT, etc so the educational diagnosis helps you push for those services. Many kids labelled "Toads" are much less likely to need pragmatic language support so it may be harder to access that and/or for those who just briefly glance at the IEP they may be more sensitive to the pragmatic weaknesses of the frogs.

Deep down I do wonder if certain labels do get a child more or better services though nobody will ever outright share this.

I think it goes both ways. Generally kids who are disruptive with behavior issues get the most attention for obvious reasons. Followed by those with academic issues and those that need remediation. If your child needs help mostly with social pragmatic issues and have HFA/Asperger's, a lot of people may question why they need an IEP at all - as has been demonstrated by the recent thread on FCPS who turned down a kid getting an IEP even though they acknowledged the child was on the spectrum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We didn't receive an autism "label" from the school system until my child had been receiving services for several years. I think it is hard to generalize esp in this area with so many different school systems.

What I have noticed after two children with IEPs and many years in the special needs community is that some parents will do anything to "avoid" the autism label. Pretty much any diagnosis is preferable to autism. "No, my child just has severe SPD and needed speech therapy for three years--and we are really working on eye contact--and is a little obsessed with trains, but don't all boys love trains?" And I think a lot of professionals do parents a disservice by not being 100% honest with them (cue vague developmental pediatricians and greedy OTs).

But, there are also kids with less-common language issues like OPs that aren't understood very well by your garden variety IEP committee people. So its tough.

I hate to laugh at this, but I have had the same convo with other parents. My child is on the spectrum and I don't consider it something to be fearful of.

[Anonymous]

I sometimes find that an autism label implies to professionals that your child is limited -- as in, well this is because he is on the spectrum -- whereas without it, they seem to act as if his issues are worth addressing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I sometimes find that an autism label implies to professionals that your child is limited -- as in, well this is because he is on the spectrum -- whereas without it, they seem to act as if his issues are worth addressing.

I've never experienced that. Maybe you need to change professionals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

This is it except we didn't "lose" an autism diagnosis. We were never given one. But the school is trying their best.