Hi everyone, I'm looking for some input and direction, advice, anything really. We had our IEP meeting yesterday for our son. Everything was addressed to my satisfaction with the exception of social skills. This is the area that we consistently have the most difficulty.
He is in 6th grade (middle school) and he hasn't had adequate social skills instruction / training since he was in sp ed preschool. In elementary school the counselor implemented a "friendship group" with Zach and parent approved other nt kids. I had given her my "Navigating the Social World" book but really, not much was done as she has no training in spectrum disorders and their difficulty with social skills. It basically addressed bullying, teasing, disagreements, etc. Not what we needed.
So, this year I want something implemented with someone trained. They are not sure what they can do, not sure when it would be done during his day, etc. He has a full schedule and obviously, these are core classes that he can't really be pulled from on a regular basis. He (Zach) is adamantly against missing class for any reason, he hates it because it completely screws up his schedule oriented mind. Plus, it would put him behind in whatever class he's pulled from (He is general ed all day in all classes).
We are implementing an anxiety scale chart for him because his anxiety builds throughout the school day and at home he is prone to meltdowns. He does a good job at keeping it together at school. Until yesterday. The sp. ed teacher came into the IEP meeting and said that there had just been an incident and Zach hit another student in the head with a dictionary. The kid punched him in the chest in retaliation. From what we could gather it started with Zach calling the kid "blondie" and then the kid called him a name (mama kisser) and it went back and forth until Zach lost it and clocked him. The blondie thing was probably something he had heard on tv, because most of his interactions with peers is based on scripting from tv or observing what others say. Hence, the real need for social skills training.
I'm sorry to write so much but I really need to figure out where to go from here and what I should or can do to see that something appropriate gets implemented. They are required to provide this right? Are they only required to offer something, even with someone not trained? We all agree that it would be restrictive and not good at all for him to be pulled from a class, so what direction do we go in?
Thanks in advance for reading all of this, I'll take anything anyone has to offer.
My son is in 5th grade and participates in a social skills class (friendship group). However, he does get pulled for it. A lot of schools don't even offer social skills training.
NorwayMom found the following site which has a social skills program for middle school students. I passed this on to my son's school. There seems to be a lot of stuff for little kids, but not as much once they are older.
http://www.cccoe.net/social/skillslist.htm
I wish I knew more. Good Luck!
Well, now I really don't know what direction to go in. She emailed me and spoke to the autism resource team and they think it would be a good idea to do a group thing once a week during lunch to discuss social skills and body language. This is the email I sent back to her:
http://www.socialskillbuilder.com/products.htm
http://www.difflearn.com/products.asp?dept=5
http://www.autismcoach.com/Software%20Overview.htm
Those are just three links that can provide some resources to use.
Perhaps taking an integrated approach might work - coordinating with a teacher or aide so they know what you are working on at home, and then they can provide guidance for him using those skills in the social environment at school might work best, particularly as he doesn't want to disrupt his school schedule. You can approach it with him from an "experiment" approach - i.e., working on understanding a particular skill at home, and then letting the school be the "laboratory" for practicing it with an aide who knows the software and current goals providing guidance and feedback.
Thanks so much for the links and your ideas, I appreciate all of it.
An integrated approach is ideal and I would love for that to work. With 7 different teachers, no aide and an altercation that started, escalated and got out of control (violent) in a matter of minutes with 2 teachers in the room and nobody noticed, I'm not confident that the subtleties of social interactions are going to be able to be monitored and guided.
I think what I'm going to have to do is try to recruit a child to work with us to implement this at home and purchase some videos and other supplements. I just can't have this go unaddressed waiting for the school. I was half kidding when I said that in the email about hiring kids, but I really think that is the route I'm going to have to look at.
The thing that makes me so upset is that adding a social skills curriculum for mainstreamed Autistic / Asperger's kids would make so much sense for the school district. Plus it would help the general ed kids as well. There are some valuable lessons to be learned in tolerance, helping others, etc. Plus they would fill a need that everyone seems to scratch their head about every year, and then only come up with inappropriate solutions.
The school program has helped my son somewhat. He connected with two of the other boys and they now sit together at lunch and play at recess.
We also involved our son in scouting, and this year he joined the school band. Both give him additional opportunities to connect with peers and work on social skills.
The social stuff is so hard, isn't it?
It is hard, probably the hardest aspect of it right now. He wants so bad to have friends and he thinks everyone is his best friend. He just doesn't know how to get there and all of the prompting and talking and role playing just doesn't seem to be doing the trick.
Zach is also in band and he really enjoys that. He's in an after-school program for the specific purpose of implementing social skills goals, but I guess they just thought sticking him in there was all they needed to do? Umm, he's not going to get it by osmosis, if he was, it would have happened by now. The after school program is actually doing more harm than good and that needs to be addressed too, but it's hard to stop him from doing something once it has become a routine. So, we have to tread carefully there, otherwise it could be bad.
One of their ideas was to tell him to initiate a conversation with a peer at some point in the day and then ask him later if he did it and how it went
I've known since early elementary school that he needed it but I just let it go because they were at least making an effort with the friendship group. He's really not any better off at this point because it was really not appropriate for his needs. Ugh, it's so frustrating. The older he gets the more appearant his social deficits are, while the desire to be social increases.
I wish I knew more too
Here are some more resources you might want to check out.
http://www.modelmekids.com/ - affordable social skills DVDs, some of them appropriate for up to the high school level.
http://www.bestbuddies.org/site/c.ljJ0J8MNIsE/b.933795/k.9C3 D/Middle_Schools.htm - the Best Buddies program. If your school doesn't already have one, maybe you could push for it.
Good luck with everything!
In our school, the Spec Ed kids have a class called Life Skills, in this class they are taught social skills and other everyday life skills necessary for coping in the real world. It is run by the Spec Ed teacher and the Speech Pathologist. THey hae had training in social skills and autism. It has been really helpful for Adam already and the school year is only 1/4 through.
It is unfortunate that more schools don't offer these types of classes. Adam has it in place of study hall. They group the kids by skill level. He has made a friend for the first time ever!!! And the friend isn't in his life skills, but in a different class. So I know it is working.
I liked the sample of the video on the modelmekids.com link. I just wonder if he would use it in real life. But the price was better than the other sites..
Thanks for the links
I was told here the life skills class here is a joke from a parent who came as a advicate for another family. She reported this school to tea. 2 other mom's reported them this year also.