DS is 10 and just finished the 4th grade. His diagnoses include: Autism (with features of Hyperlexia, dyspraxia, prosopagnosia [face-blindness] and savant syndrome), ADHD, Albinism (with mild visual impairment and severe photophobia), and a chromosome anomaly. He is considered medically unique by his team of specialists.
DS made great progress this past school year, both academically and in therapy. We have seen some new language skills and social-emotional skills. DS has been in the autism classroom, with an amazing teacher and an individualized curriculum, and joined the regular class for "specials". He participated in both the school spelling bee and the science fair. He worked hard all year and we proud of his efforts.
Next year we will try gradual mainstreaming him for science, which is his favorite subject. DH and I have managed to keep him on the diploma track, which is an argument we have with the district every year. The argument has become more difficult for us with the implementation of the Core Curriculum and PARCC testing.
The school district staff also consider him unique. His teachers and his therapists have many years of experience with autistic children and they keep telling us that they have never seen a child with DS's combination of strengths and challenges. He is so high functioning is some ways, and so low functioning in others. Some of his therapists find this really frustrating.
The IEP team admitted that we are going to have to come up with some creative approaches to middle school (starts in 6th grade), so we will be having a lot of meetings and discussions about that over the next year.
For the summer, DS is in special needs daycare, where he also gets therapies. He enjoys it, but keeps telling me he would rather be at school.
Gena
DS, age 11 and always amazing
“Autistics are the ultimate square pegs, and the problem with pounding a square peg into a round hole is not that the hammering is hard work. It's that you're destroying the peg." - Paul Collins, Not Even Wrong