Angry over IEP - how to help do what school fails to do

[Guest guest]

My son has been in a public pre school disabled program for 2 years, from age 3

to 5 (he'll be 5 next month). Our district is supposed to have a great, highly

touted program, daily 9-3:30, lots of ABA, discrete trials, OT, speech, APE,

music, art computers etc - lots of " specials. " I foolishly thought, I will do

the biomed and the AC chelation and they will take care of the learning and

teaching. He has made lots of progress, knows hundreds of words, his letters,

his numbers, basic personal info etc However, at his IEP, they applied

standardized testing methods and tests involving non verbal cues and of course

he ended up scoring in the 1%. I was really angry and expressed my anger and

frustration at the IEP. He will be in an autistic kindergarten class, and I

understood that he is not ready to mainstream yet - however, I was annoyed at

what I perceived to be their failure to recognize his learning differences and

properly test his abilities and address his differences.

I said to them that their testing modalities are useless and they all jumped in

to say that clinically he can do much more than the tests showed etc. I

expressed concern that he labels a lot - and why don't they work on verbs and

linking concepts together etc, and more " wh " questions - and it seems that the

teacher has a binder and an " approach " where things must be taught in a certain

order. Anyway, it rapidly became clear to me, that looking to the people who

think autism is a " genetic disorder " and that what I do with biomed, is just a

pathetic hope of a desperate parent, which is the attitude I get when I intimate

anything about diet and vitamins, and trying to " reverse " his autism, to really

teach my son, well, what was I thinking of? Anyway, I know that I need to do a

lot more on my own, in terms of retraining his brain. I thought just getting Hg

out of his brain would be my task, now it seems I need to more actively involve

myself in helping to retrain it as well. I have read here a bit about things

like Fast Forword, Samonas, the Listening Program, etc Can anyone suggest which

of these types of programs would be good to help increase language - in terms of

getting longer more complex sentences expressively and helping with receptive

understanding?

Also, financially, well biomed is really stressing us out a lot just for supps,

can any of these systems be purchased and done by a parent at home without

paying for expensive therapists? I know I can't take these test results to

heart, and I should just view the IEP as a means to an end - to get my child

services that he needs. Nevertheless, I know my son has come so far and is

doing so well, and often deliberately pretends not to understand so as not to be

forced to do tasks he finds uninteresting. I know the school helps him,

however, they are too set in their ways, and approach learning and teaching from

one angle, and with autism, more creativity it appears is required, if he is

going to really realize his potential. Arguing with the school is like beating

your head against a wall I can see - I know I have to do more on my own to

enrich and encourage his learning/language abilities. I am just at a loss as

how to do so. So any suggestions would be appreciated. I figure we are more or

less on our own to reverse the vax damage, and we have been doing well in this

regard, so I know I can do this too.

Thanks in advance.

Irene