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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

OP, what a crock of lies you are spreading. As someone who had to fight tooth and nail to keep a false ASD  diagnosis off my kid, I know it makes a huge difference if you are incorrectly labeled. I've seen it firshand.

Parents should ALWAYS insist on accurate labels, even if lazy, incompetent school personnel try to tell you otherwise.  I've gotten every service we've needed AND forced them to use the correct label.

[/quote]

You didn't actually read any of the original post.  A medical diagnosis ISN'T the same thing as a designation to receive IEP services.  It's not a crock of lies; it's the law.  You can receive an IEP for only the following:

• autism;
• deaf-blindness;
• deafness;
• emotional disturbance;
• hearing impairment;
• intellectual disability;
• multiple disabilities;
• orthopedic impairment;
• other health impairment;
• specific learning disability;
• speech or language impairment;
• traumatic brain injury; or
• visual impairment (including blindness).

So your child may not have autism, but unless the school can attribute one of the above 13 potential diagnoses, he won't get an IEP either.  That is my point.  Until the law changes and has more inclusive language, the "label" the school uses may not be accurate but will get you accommodations and services.

But honestly, PP if you've been fighting tooth and nail to keep off an ASD diagnosis from your child, my guess is you are fighting the wrong battle.
[/quote]

Oh no, I read your whole post the first time.

You left out Early Childhood Developmental Delay. In my state you can be under that until you are 7 years old. At 7, my son was switched to Language Impairment. Specific Learning Disability also would have worked.

I well know a medical diagnosis isn't the same as an educational label. I had multiple medical assessments of my child saying he was not autistic, but instead severely language impaired, with processing issues and learning disabilities. But school districts do whatever is easiest for them. So if they have invested their resources in an ASD program, that's where they want to throw as many kids as possible.  Very few outsiders or even parents understand the difference between school labeling and medical diagnosis, though. Our school district outsources a lot of services, so to have an incorrect autism label leads to a whole lot of wasted, unhelpful therapies and approaches.

My school district personnel was also under the false assumption that Language Impairment would only get you speech therapy.  They were wrong, of course; any tick of any of the categories gets you ALL the services a child needs to access the curriculum. It took a parent with guts like me to stand up to them for them to realize they weren't following the law.

I've met only one parent who was happy they accepted an ASD label for their language-impaired child. The rest curse the day they let themselves be talked into it by the schools, or even doctors who were only trying to "help" because the inflated diagnosis brought more services.

[/quote]

x's 1000!

Our MCPS middle school just tried this shit with us.  This was after two COMPREHENSIVE, private neuro-psych evaluations (one just completed a couple of months ago) + detailed report from a top KKI developmental pediatrician stating otherwise...and 5 previous years of IEP meetings in his MCPS elementary school where this was never discussed or mentioned. Even after all of this, the school "psych" (insert under-breath cough here) insisted that we agree to adding the ASD label to DS' IEP at our last 3 year review.  I flat out told them that I would absolutely not allow it or ever agree to it and that if it meant that they would have to pull his services, then they had my permission and invitation to do so as we were already supplementing with private tutoring and other therapies.

I am so happy that I stood my ground and advocated for DS because we are currently applying to various private schools and[b] I know that they would not even give him a chance with the ASD label in his IEP.  These schools have more applications than seats and are looking for reasons to NOT admit your child,[/b] and this gives them an easy out - even if your private evaluation does not state ASD.

And I feel badly for those children who's parents do not know better or trust that their school is truly trying to do what's best for their child.  I used to believe this, but then later realized how sadly naive I had been all those years.  My DS is just an experiment to them.  [/quote]

How do you know?

We had lunch this week with the Ditector of Development at an Ivy.  It's all about grades and test scores and by the time your child is past elementary, they have an academic record for the schools to based their decision on.  Not sure why you think private schools will discriminate solely on the basis of having ASD as a disability but not other disabilities?!?  They don't care what the disability is as long as the student can do the work (with reasonable accommodation).

Most of the [b]top private schools i[/b]n the country explicitly state that they do no discriminate for disabilities in their mission statement.
[/quote]

Meaning schools like Trinity, Horace Mann, Collegiate, etc all in NYC and others like Exeter...[/quote]

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