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Hi all. I have a 14yo with Asperger, developmental coordination

disorder, neuropsych profile: executive dysfunction (working

memory/planning/organization/initiation), borderline gifted/very bright.

Brief school background. Elementary school was pretty bad after

2nd/3rd grade--teachers/administrators would not believe he was

anything other than a badly behaved child from bad family and treated

him and us as such. Nothing they tried worked, and they just chalked

it up to being our fault somehow. They wouldn't listen to anything I

said. Jr High has been very different. The staff is very

professional and listens. Takes them awhile to be convinced, but

overall MUCH better. My son has gone rapidly from having no

accommodations at all, through informal accommodations, a 504 (which

has never really been followed too much since it doesn't work), and

now they have decided to send him to the Autism Team for a possible

IEP. Since it is their idea--the school administration, counselor,

diagnostician--I think he will probably end up with an IEP. He had a

token IEP eval in the last year of elem--they claimed there was no

need to go further.

Brief home background. Since I've been on my own for so long, all his

interventions and evaluations have been done by us. He's had OT,

speech therapy (a waste of time), cognitive behavioral therapy (also

didn't do much), and social skills training. He's had neuropsych, OT,

psychiatric, and speech evals, and we're about to start Autism eval

(couldn't work out insurance before)--ADOS, ADI-R, and others. We've

had some success with strategies from our OT/neuropsych (and from

groups like this), but one thing I've learned is that we can't do this

on our own. He needs intervention from all the everyday people in his

life.

My question. Has anybody gone through such a fast change in school

situation so late (he's in 8th grade--goes to high school next year)?

I hear what interventions they do with younger kids in SPED, but what

about older kids who have never had school interventions? I might add

that he is getting worse and worse from the lack of intervention. He

keeps getting more and more socially isolated, won't do any work at

all unless someone sticks right with him. Kind of how Roxanna

describes her son (although I don't know about the social piece)! I

don't know what to expect or what I should ask for in this situation.

One thing that particularly concerns me is the lack of challenge in

his school work, which I think is only making things much worse. He

was identified GT in all subject areas, but they kicked him out of all

of them between 5th and 7th grade. How do you prove your child needs

more challenge when he won't perform? Things I have done so far:

gave them an out-of-level test that he took in 6th grade (test was for

8th graders), and I will point out that he would probably score the

same or worse if he took the same test today; his state exam scores

have gone from commended and down and down--he used to ace them; and I

found an article from the publishers of the WISC-IV IQ test on how to

determine if the difference between IQ and performance is

statistically significant--he is in math, writing and reading

comprehension.

The point I'm trying to make--according to IDEA they are not supposed

to be using an arbitrary measure such as grades at grade level to

determine academic disability--but schools often do since it works for

most SPED kids. I'm trying to get them to understand this is not

appropriate for him. This is very ingrained in our school district.

I'd love to hear from anyone who's been through something similar. It

might help to hear what they do at the private therapeutic schools in

high school, I don't know.

Thanks in advance!

Ruth