When a child is placed in an inappropriate setting at school, it affects the child in more settings than school. My son N is 10 years old. He has been in typical classes since he was in preschool. He was diagnosed as autistic when he was 3. When trying to get hims services we were told that he wasn’t disabled enough (whatever that means) or that he is too smart for services. He gave me permission to write about this to try to help other kids.
After educational testing, we found out that N is Twice Exceptional (2e). Here is a video explaining what that is.
The story of his struggles in school can be found here.
Life At Home
Behavior is communication. He was trying to communicate with my husband and I but we did not understand what he needed. This pressure from school did not just stay at school. At home it was not easy. I would be feeding the baby and N would be starting with every one of his siblings 7 years or older. The baby is only a month old and if he said anything to her, she would not understand.
N would be hitting, biting and throwing things at his siblings or at my husband and I. He would hide A’s phone who needs it to monitor blood sugar (A is a type one diabetic). We took him to a psychiatrist to see if there was an underlying mental health issue that needed to be addressed. We found a wonder psychiatrist who is 100 percent against ABA. She is great with all my kids. He is on a lot of medication but he was placed on these before being placed in the new school. We just wanted to help him. Never once did we make this about us, it was about N and what he was going through.
None of these behaviors were punished. We had to separate him from his siblings until he calmed down so no one would get hurt. Once things were calm, he was able to play with his siblings again. I knew something was going on with him but was not sure what. His pediatrician sent him to a neurologist. Nothing outside of the fact that he is autistic and I know that him being autistic does not make him aggress like this as he really is a really sweet boy who cares about other people. The neurologist tried to get me to put him in ABA and that was the last time we saw him.
Fierce Autie 