According
to my son’s school district, once you have autism, that’s it: you only
get one diagnosis. Any other problems you might have will just have to
stand under that umbrella with you in the rainstorm. And if you have
dyslexia or dyscalculia? They will not diagnose those at all, but you
are welcome to drop a few grand on a specialist to do the evaluation and
send it to the district for consideration. But if you have autism AND
dyslexia or dyscalculia? Well, go ahead and go to that expert with your
mortgage payment, and the district might add something about that in the
comment section on page 26 of your IEP.
As
you might have guessed, my nine-year-old boy has autism AND a learning
disability -- dyscalculia. We have known this for years. You could spend
five minutes with him and figure it out, if you yourself got past the
third grade. We’ve clamored for documentation. We’ve spent years in
private educational therapy. We pay our therapist a fortune not just to
teach our boy math, but to then go to the schools to teach our son’s
teachers to teach our boy math. We want it in his IEP that he has
dyscalculia so that each fall we don’t waste for first month or two
re-establishing and wasting precious time. How could we get this
documentation? At the last IEP we were told, “Request a district psych
eval.” And we did.
Finally, this
past week the school psych read her tome to us for 35 minutes. It said:
your son has autism. “Any questions?” I had one: where does it mention
his math disability? Then I learned what you now know. The district is
comprised of a blind people groping only at disparate parts of
elephants. They feel social awkwardness and shout: Autism! They come
upon knotty verbal pragmatics and scream: autism! Can’t add, subtract,
multiply, divide, or COUNT? AUTISM!
But,
no, my son is not a math equation whose sum total is autism. It’s just
one factor. Another factor? Dyscalculia. Know what other factor he has?
Infinite creativity. Vocabulary to the millionth power. Potential cubed.
He deserves to have specialized support for his math disability based
on what works for how he learns. And yes it’s challenging and expensive,
but he’s a good investment.
I
had another question. There quite a crowd of us in the room. I’ve been
in education for almost two decades, and we had the teacher, resource
teacher, AP, OT, BID, ed therapist, and my husband. “Who here would go
on record saying you believe my son does NOT have a math disability?”
Everyone looked at their feet. No one spoke.
“That,”
I said, “is because we all know he has a math disability. And I want it
documented. And I want supports in place that specifically address it.
And if you won’t document it, I will pay a reputable expert who
certainly will, and then I will bring you the bill and ask for
reimbursement, but that is a waste of time and money. I know he has
dyscalculia, you know he has it, and he has a right to the proper
services. Put that in the IEP.”
If they do, I will sign it.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Rooster's Mom is a parent, educator, wife, mom, and writer. She blogs at roostercalls.blogspot.com.
Wow. I can't even imagine - what good does an IEP do if it doesn't have all the information on it?? Good for you for standing up. I don't think our state is like that, but if it is, I'll be the first school psych to stand up and scream, once I start in the fall....
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