A hair-dryer kid in a toaster-brained world...
Wow. This is a fantastic set of blog posts I've been reading in stages over the past week or so. Today, the author was kind enough to make a post with links to all the connected pieces in one place (oh yeah, that's called a Table Of Contents, right). My brother had asked me for stuff to read to help him understand Angus a bit better, and while I've been meaning to sit down and make up a list, I think this is a great place to start. I would encourage reading even if you don't think you know anyone autistic, because chances are, you do, and you (or even they) don't know it.
http://momnos.blogspot.com/2010/03/toast-to-inclusion-autism-education-in.html
(Series of posts linked to in this post is what you want to read)
Angus is not exactly like Bud; he's a couple of years older and fairly good at talking - although he does use some scripts and echolalia, he's not dependent on them. He's in a regular classroom for subjects he's good at (so far, science, social studies and computer lab), and in core classroom for subjects he's not so good at (language arts and math). He's now in middle school where classes in different periods are arranged like this anyway, so he's actually had a headstart on getting used to that. He's had an aide for four hours a day to keep him on track, but his latest IEP plans for aide time to be faded to about half that. He's not on any medication. However, there are quite a few similarities - he gets anxious and frustrated easily, gets very anxious when he realizes an adult he knows is not in view, does not deal easily with sudden changes -i.e. family changing their minds on what movie they're going to watch. He hums a lot (so do I). Loud environments stress him, although he's getting better at that. He definitely needs the movement breaks; we call it gallumphing and he's done it almost since he started walking; the spinny thing is fun, too (hell, I used to do that when I was a kid). His shoes wear out in front first, because he still tends to walk more on his toes. We have never made a big deal out of his issues, which are fairly mild compared to some; he's just Angus to us and quite frankly we had to have them pointed out to us to realize he had them. However, with people who get impatient with him, maybe this will help. I wish I had been creative enough to come up with something like this. I also wish everyone could have the kinds of teachers Bud's seem to be.
http://momnos.blogspot.com/2010/03/toast-to-inclusion-autism-education-in.html
(Series of posts linked to in this post is what you want to read)
Angus is not exactly like Bud; he's a couple of years older and fairly good at talking - although he does use some scripts and echolalia, he's not dependent on them. He's in a regular classroom for subjects he's good at (so far, science, social studies and computer lab), and in core classroom for subjects he's not so good at (language arts and math). He's now in middle school where classes in different periods are arranged like this anyway, so he's actually had a headstart on getting used to that. He's had an aide for four hours a day to keep him on track, but his latest IEP plans for aide time to be faded to about half that. He's not on any medication. However, there are quite a few similarities - he gets anxious and frustrated easily, gets very anxious when he realizes an adult he knows is not in view, does not deal easily with sudden changes -i.e. family changing their minds on what movie they're going to watch. He hums a lot (so do I). Loud environments stress him, although he's getting better at that. He definitely needs the movement breaks; we call it gallumphing and he's done it almost since he started walking; the spinny thing is fun, too (hell, I used to do that when I was a kid). His shoes wear out in front first, because he still tends to walk more on his toes. We have never made a big deal out of his issues, which are fairly mild compared to some; he's just Angus to us and quite frankly we had to have them pointed out to us to realize he had them. However, with people who get impatient with him, maybe this will help. I wish I had been creative enough to come up with something like this. I also wish everyone could have the kinds of teachers Bud's seem to be.