[blindkid] Blind/Autistic child school placement/services

Fri Feb 20 15:36:36 UTC 2009

Dear Everyone,

Thank you so much for all the advice and suggestions. I've been trying to find an appropriate Kindergarten placement for Mikey for 1.5 years and still haven't found anything. It seems almost no schools in my area want to take both his disabilities into consideration. Our main focus right now is communication of any sort. We just got approved for an augmentative communication device so I hope it will help. Mikey has a repetoire of 5 to 10 signs , but is inconisistent with using them. He also will makes certain sounds for things like "e" for eat. He also has some words mama,dada,yiayia. I will try all your suggestions for communicating.

One of the battles we have with the therapists is whether to try to get him to request specific things (apple) or generalize like "eat". Any thoughts?

As for school - he's been left behind in his preschool until June where he is receiving a little ABA and OT,PT,Speech, vision, O&M. He receives most of his ABA at home. The school district wants to put him in a larger Vision Impaired/Multiply disabled class next year - 12 kids, none of which are verbal. There are no kids with autism in this class and he would be receiving no ABA in school. There are 2 schools that would accept him next year - a school for the blind and the rebecca school (all Floortime, all day). Both schools would require a 2 hour commute by bus each way to the city and moving is not an option right now. I have no idea what we are going to do, but I am in due process now. Has anyone been able to get a Floortime consultant at home or in school from the district? Can you mix Floortime and ABA techniques?  

Thanks,
Melissa

> Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2009 21:55:48 -0700
> From: rjharrell at gmail.com
> To: blindkid at nfbnet.org
> Subject: Re: [blindkid] Blind/Autistic child school placement/services
> 
> 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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> 
> 
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