blooming in spite of the planting

I was talking to a fellow parent last night who has a kid who is not officially diagnosed but who presents in many spectrum areas. She's outwardly quite normal. But she has always struggled in school not academically, but socially and behaviorally and has lots of autism quirks. They had her tested through MNPS, but because the public school system has its own definition and parameters for what constitutes autism that doesn't follow the one that the medical world uses, the DSM, this kid is perpetually stuck in a no-man's land of those who have plenty of problems and symptoms, but no help. She's unable to get an IEP,  and so the expectations for this child are no different than for any other typical child. She performs well in school because she's razor sharp and crazy smart, but she's miserable, has no friends, and is riddled with anxieties at the age of ten years old. Her parents have bitten the money bullet and have had to send her to private school where, within a couple of days, anxieties lessened. There were lots of kids there like herself, and her education plan was individualized without there having to be a legal documented plan put into place.

What's your recourse as a parent if you have a kiddo that's miserable in public school because they aren't receiving the support they need? Not much. If the school says that they don't fall within the definition of what they consider a real need, then tough luck. And what do you do if you aren't a parent that's able financially to send your kid to a small private school? How many kids like this are there out there, completely stuck in a middle zone of undiagnosed and struggling? Or even (like my own) diagnosed through Vanderbilt with the gold standard of autism testing through the Simons Simplex project, but unable to simply add the diagnosis to his record and IEP because he has to go through MNPS's own battery of testing to get their diagnosis before any IEP will be considered. As it stands we have to just go with an IEP that covers his very severe ADHD (which will quickly take any kind of productivity out of a classroom), and if we add autism, we could lose his gifted learner status, which would take away the classroom modifications available to him for that. Goodness forbid I should ask for a classroom aide. There's no way to win, really.

One time I turned a lengthy report from Vanderbilt Child Development (who monitors his medication and has done 2 full evaluations on Truman) to the school just thinking that it would be helpful to have in his record. I mean, to my (very naive at the time) way of thinking, the more information you have on a kiddo the easier it would be to teach them and the better chance a teacher would have in running her classroom smoothly. But I got a message back through the teacher from the MNPS psychologist that said, "What exactly does the parent want us to do with this information?"I get it that it has lots to do with money and budgets, but I didn't realize that it had to do with plain old obtuseness.

Truman is incredibly lucky in that he goes to a school that performs well, is safe and full of enthusiasm, help, motivated teachers, and more other fabulous things that I could list all day. But it does all of this in spite of the fact that it's an MNPS school. I went to public school, I strongly support the schools that my kids go to both with money and time, and it makes me sad to know that if I just happened to have my kid in another school (and he's not even zoned for the one he goes to - another topic for another day) he might not be nearly as happy and successful as he is in school.

Some can, but most can't afford private school for their ASD kiddo. Many also can't afford private testing, evaluation, and therapies. Homeschooling is an option for some, but is a luxury many can't afford. Hell, MNPS just fired its para-pros recently even. And so, with those individual options limited, and schools very limited on what they can officially do for children suspected of being on the spectrum, the child certainly suffers, the parent suffers for his or her child and the teacher and classroom environment suffers.

I say all of this as I watch him bloom in summer. I'm lucky in that he's in a place where blooms year-round. But blooming takes cultivation, and if you block the paths to cultivation, not many parts of the school system grow. It's 1 in 88 now, MNPS, and the odds narrow every year. Might be worth a evaluative glance at your very needy system, and it certainly deserves a better response than "What exactly does the parent want us to do with this information?"