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[quote=Anonymous]My child who is on the AS is going to college this fall.  He is on the mild end of the spectrum, although if you are familiar with the spectrum it will be obvious to you almost immediately.  He never had the hand flapping or other tics.  His issues are mainly in peer to peer relationships and pragmatic language issues.   For example, in 1st grade he was not invited to one birthday party.  He was bullied and ostracized in ES and bullied some in MS.  HS was much better.

We were clueless until 2nd or 3rd grade, but apparently the school knew from K and neglected to tell us.  DH is also on the mild end of the spectrum and I have since figured out that my norm is being surrounded by people on the spectrum.  i grew up in a town near Lincoln Labs in Massachusetts and it had more physicists per capita than any other place outside of Lawrence Livermore, Oakridge and Los Alamos.  We also had tons or professors from the Boston colleges.  Then I went to Virginia Tech and all my friends were engineers.   I thought I was an empath for a while.  :)

In 3rd grade he went to a school social skills group that fell apart at the end of the year (we had asked for one at the start of 2nd grade).  We started sending him to a weekly social skills group in mid 4th grade and that was the key to the success that followed.  Part of the weekly program included monthly parent group.  We became educated as well as him.  He was in it from 4th grade to the beginning of 12th.  At first, it was the one place where kids his age looked forward to seeing him and he them.  they learned some of the social "niceties".  then the progressed to figuring out what they needed to work on and then it was more of a trouble shooting group.  You can not solve everything at once.  We learned to concentrate on one thing at a time and slowly things progressed.  However, a once a week group is not enough.  Kids on the AS should also be in groups like band, chorus or orchestra, scouts or sports teams (if they are athletically inclined).  Group activities are essential and the more exposure the better.  We found our community of faith to be a great resource too, it has an active youth group.  DC was in scouts, orchestra and our church youth group as his main activities.  Finding tent mates was difficult in scouts, but he persevered and attained Eagle status.  Finding hotel mates for orchestra was difficult, but luckily there were other boys that he was able to connect and they became  hotel mates for all overnight orchestra trips. One week in scouts camp in 6th grade was by himself and it was a disaster.  We worked up to going on trips without us (I chaperoned freshman year only and DH went to scout camps in ES and MS). One week in scouts camp in 6th grade was by himself and it was a disaster.  He did a two week canoeing trip in the boundary waters with his scout troop and a 10 day trip to Eastern Europe with a church group.  Both of those were successful.

He never had an IEP or a 504, although this was choice that we made since we felt the private social skills group was better for him.  His grade was always good.  5th grade was another bad year socially, so we transferred him to another ES in FCPS for 6th grade to give him a fresh start.  His particular grade was imbalanced toward mean behavior in the boys and the girls.  It was a notoriously bad grade as they made their way through ES, none of the special ed aides every requested that year.  It was an unfortunate mix.  (My other DC's grade was the opposite, its mix was incredibly nice, inclusive and encouraging and a pleasure to be around- yet it contained at least 25% siblings from other grade and all the same teachers- the aides clamored to be in the that grade.  It was a fantastic mix)  Anyway, 6th grade in a different school turned out to be a good choice, DC was the same kids, but he had some breathing room and was allowed to progress (and wasn't kept at the bottom of the social ladder by force).    MS was tough, but they run it like a prison and he survived.  HS was excellent.  Enough movement in and out of students and maturing of others meant that the meanness seen in ES was mostly gone.

DC is a smart cookie and took mainly Honors/AP course in HS. However, because of his language issues, he took general ed English and that was fine.  He made it out of Spanish with a gentleman's B- and was done with foreign language.  He is a math and science kid and is going to an engineering school in the mid-west.  I think the east coast mentality has not helped him.  I am hopeful that he will find his tribe in college.

He still can be annoying and alienates some people, but it is less every year and hopefully will be considered "eccentric" soon.  :)  I would say, time, the weekly social skills group and ongoing continuous participation in group activities has helped him progress.  I would describe him as halfway between Leonard and Sheldon from Big Bang. [/quote]

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