Showered in Praise

“Best behaved in the class…” “Extremely intelligent…” “Outgrow the program…” “Academic path…”

We had Little Bug’s first parent teacher conference and were astounded at just how well he is doing. The teacher stated that he is the best behaved in the class. Some of the other children, including the peer models, are “out of control” and at times he helps bring them back to a normal behavior range through his calm, quiet play.

She also stated that he shows a great aptitude for academics and is concerned that he will outgrow the program before he “graduates”. Speaking of graduating, when we wrote his IEP last year, we were told that he would be in this program for 3 years- when he is 3, 4 and 5. He would be expected to start kindergarten when he is 6 because he wouldn’t be ready emotionally or cognitively until then. He teacher explained that she will have a hard time challenging him until he is 5. 6 would be extreme. She feels that we should start looking into the K1 integrated classrooms now in order to find the best set up for him.

She stated that during class, he has demonstrated that he knows letters, the sounds letters make, and at times, possible word recognition. She has been doing “alphabet” cards in which she shows the circle a card that has the letter- capital and lower case- a word with the letter and the sound the letter makes. Little Bug is always first in line for this and always the first to answer.

We gave her some more supports- a picture schedule for sequencing for potty training- and a “choice box” based that I made based off a commenter’s suggestion (THANK YOU, by the way). For his choice box, I took a regular gift box and wrote “Little Bug’s Choice Box” followed by “FIRST” and “THEN”. I explained to the teacher our concern about his perseveration on trains. Basically, you put a couple of pictures of choices from a picture schedule and tell the child that first they can play trains, but in 15 more minutes, they need to make a choice from the choice box. He was incredibly excited for this yesterday and seemed really interested in it.

The conference went amazingly well. We came away with some great suggestions for supporting Little Bug in his letters and writing- Handwriting without Tears for Toddlers- and learned about a new teacher store.

We are so proud of him and glad that he wasn’t limited by people’s expectations of what a child with ASD should be. One of the specialists seemed surprised at all the things he could do while having ASD, which I have to admit made me a bit agitated. This person kept saying, "Well, it is shocking that he can do this. Normal ASD kids can't do XXX." (BTW, the whole NORMAL ASD KIDS made me laugh.) I think I said four times the following:

“ASD doesn’t mean that someone should have lower expectations of their potential because of their deficits. It doesn't mean that their obvious skills should be written off or abandoned. It means that they have challenges. Those challenges however do not limit the potential. While we spend time working on the deficits and challenges, we need to embrace the child’s strengths and encourage growth there. Many people on the spectrum, like Temple Grandin, have strongly encouraged this and we believe it.”

The teacher thanked us for our passion about our son, our willingness to help her and be his advocate. She stated she was excited for his abilities and that he was a fresh challenge to her teaching skills.