Originally Posted by
hbridge
I may be the voice of dissent, BUT we have already vowed that NO MATTER WHAT the diagnosis, the expectations on DC are the same as we would have for any other child! We will do all we can to help manage whatever the issue is, but the expectations at home and school are the same! The world doesn't care about your child's diagnosis and not making high honors in grade school may just give him the incentive to figure out strategies that work for him that will help him in the areas that he is "struggling".
I totally understand your frustration, I do. BUT, as we help our children prepare for their future, it's important to make sure that we don't give them excuses...
I don't know your situation, your child's age or (potential) diagnosis, but I think this is very short-sighted. It's certainly not an approriate approach for every diagnosis. Adjusting expections based on a realistic understanding of a child's needs and abilities is NOT the same things as using a diagnoses as an excuse.
One of my son's current teachers told us that it is her goal to have him "be like a typical child". That is an unrealistic and unobtainable goal for him. Her ideas that she can somehow discipline his diagnosis out of him have turned my happy, thriving child into a miserable, lost little boy.
The idea that the world doesn't care about a child's (or an adult's) diagnosis is a reason to change the world, not a reason to try to force my child to be something he's not (a typical child).
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