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	academic goals Hi My son goes to spec ed preschool and we just got the drafted IEP goal and for his preacademic they are focussing more on his playskills and telling that he already knows all his alphabets and nos and so they are not going to give one on one with his teacher  but all the other kids are.  I am thinking won't it affect his self esteem if all the other kids are getting one on one with the teacher and he is left with the aids, can I let the school IEP team know about this??  Any ideas how to go about it?? Thanks UV You are part of the IEP team and should have your say and I think it is reasonable that he gets 1:1 time with the teacher if that is what everyone gets. If he is doing well academically personally I think it is good that they focus on playskills because those are the areas that we need to push since they are the building blocks of social skills I would make sure that they do some actual playskill teaching and have a plan. Playskills are harder to teach than academics. Is the aide trained in how to do that? Hi Micki I am not sure that the aide is trained in it.  He does play well with most of the toys .  But he is not interested in  trains and cars, and they are insisting that he learn how to play with it.  I am just concerned that if they ignore the academics and he forgets all what he has learned by the summer.  They might do another assessment on him and tell that he has lost his academic skills and we are not going to promote him.    Thanks UV You know if it an IEP ,you are part of the IEP team and you get to have input. Again, from the perspective of having an older child on the spectrum (almost 10) and having an asd teaching certification Iwould tell you not to make academics your major worry. He sounds like he is ahead if anything and those won't be the things in life and school that hold him back and knowing all your letters and being able to count to 100 is the goal for typical kids at the end of K and plenty perfectly smart kids don't get there by end of K. I would not want a pre-K special ed program to spent too much time on academics if my kid seemed to be fine in that area. What I think they need focus on is some of the core skills, like organization, imitation , non-verbal social interaction. I would want to know what the goal for playskills look like and how do they teach them. What a teacher or aide needs to do is play in a way with your child that strengthens back and forth interactions, teaching him to join or have others join, opening and closing loops of communicaton and interaction....'Do-Watch-Listen-Play' for example is a great curriculum to explain all this and have activities for kids. http://brookespublishing.com/store/books/quill-4536/index.ht m So if it was me: I'd ask for a meeting and ask them specifically how they teach playskills, let them show you the activities they do and get a feeling if they are teaching the skills that are the building blocks of social communication. From the perspective again of having an older kid: If he does not have communication skills academic skills are basically worthless. Focus on the social and communication skills.   Thanks for putting it into perspective Micki.  His IEP is tomorrow and I will find out how they are going to teach him playskills UV Micki had a lot of great advice for you! I just wanted to throw in that if you use the argument  that 'all of the other kids are getting one on one', the school's automatic response will be that IEP's are individualized, and that no two kids are getting the same services. :/ I also can't see them not working at all on academics. I'm sure he'll be doing the same academic activities that the group is working on, I'm just assuming that they wont' be pushing anything new with him. This can be something really important for him to be doing, as it will teach him to be patient when he's participating in an activity he might already be able to do/not want to do. This is when we see a lot of behavioral issues coming out of students at school, becuase they're not sure how to be part of a group when they're not totally enmeshed with the group. If they're able to work on this with him while the other kids are working on academics, this could be of huge benefit to him.
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