[blindkid] Blind/Autistic child school placement/services

[Rene Harrell]

Dear Melissa,

I am also the mother of a child who is blind and autistic. She is 7 1/2
years old now :-) Clare was essentially nonverbal until she turned 5 1/2,
then we finally getting some words out of her and now at 7 1/2 her verbal
skills lie somewhere in the 20 month old range for pragmatic language
zooming up to the three year old level in some language areas. Over all she
is extremely mild-mannered, compliant, and sweet.

Figuring out the best type of program is really as individual as the child.
I would start with you, and your ideas of what goals you personally want to
see him master, both short term and long term. What skills are most
important to you right now? Having some goals in mind will really give you
direction and focus as you decide what kind of programming is most
appropriate for your son.

I'll give you an example from our family. For me, my biggest focus when
Clare was 4 and 5 was on language development. This was our absolute #1
priority. We knew statistics show that children who talk before the age of 7
usually continue to make progress in linguistic skills (the rate can vary),
but that children who are *not* speaking by the age of 7 have a 90% chance
of never developing verbal language at all. Our overall focus was on
communication in general, with the spearhead of verbal language. This was
the focus and all other goals either tied into this one, or were secondary
in importance.  (I.e. Braille was important to us because it tied directly
into communication). We wanted Clare in an environment where she would be
consistently encouraged to communicate, to have language modeled for her,
and to be encouraged to use verbal language when appropriate to the tasks at
hand. In turn, this was a big focus of our work with her at home.

There was a preschool class for children with autism in our district, but
ultimately we did not feel that was suitable for helping Clare best meet the
goals we had set for her, because all of the children were nonverbal, the
set-up of the classroom was not conducive to Clare being able to have a
clear understanding of what was going on, and they were very reliant on
picture communication and I did not feel confident that the modifications to
this PECS system would enable Clare to understand *what other children* were
doing around her, because she was the only one they would modify it for.

There was a much smaller "multi-disabled" preschool program that we felt was
a much better fit for her. Ironically on first blush it didn't seem as if it
would be all that much different: the children in this classroom were
likewise nonverbal. However, the classroom was *much* smaller--- Clare was
one of three students--- given that there was always a therapist in the room
(PT, OT, ST), a paraeducator, and the teacher, the ratio was 1:1. More than
that, this classroom was equipped for a much wider variety of augmentative
communication and all the children used devices with auditory output. We
felt far more confident in Clare's ability to be integrated into this
classroom in a way that would be meaningful for Clare, and we really, really
liked the speech and communication program that was embedded in their whole
approach. Because Clare is so well-behaved, she gets very easily lost in
larger crowds of children, especially children whose behavior requires a lot
more attention. She'd happily sit in a corner pressing buttons on a toy, or
pressing her eye, or hand flapping away for hours if no one was there
encouraging her to engaged and directly interacting with her. We were really
confident that in *this* classroom she'd be interacted with on a near
constant basis, which in turn meant that they would be working on that all
important communication goal far more often that they could have in the
autism classroom with 12 children.

Now, had our goals been *social* in nature for example, this classroom would
*not* have worked at all because of the small class size and because of the
population of children in this classroom. And if our goals had been
primarily *academic* in nature this would not have been a good placement
either. That is why it is so important to really know what you want a school
program to do for your son. There are no "right" and "wrong" programs, only
ones that are suitable and not suitable for your child's situation.

Is there any way we can help you brainstorm on what you might like to see
your son accomplish in the next year? How is ABA working for him in your
home program? What skills is he working on in that program? What is working
for him well in his current placement, and what is not working well?

(And as a side note--- I always like to put in a plug for Stanley
Greenspan's "Floortime" approach for working with autistic children. If you
google Floortime/DIR you'll come up with a wealth of information. We've used
ABA for a lot of specific skill sets but nothing has compared to Floortime
in terms of her language and social development.)

:-)
Rene

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 12:02 PM, Melissa Bruggemann <
melissabruggemann at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> Hi all,
>
> I have a 5 year old son who is blind and autistic. I am trying to figure
> out what sort of services/school placement he needs for 1st grade. He has
> been left behind in preschool for Kindergarten as the district could not
> find a placement for him. He has no usable vision, is nonverbal, not much
> receptive language and doesn't have that bad behaviors. He's currently
>  receiving ABA at home every day but none in school. Any thoughts on what
> type of program would be appropriate for him?
>
> Thanks,
> Melissa
>
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