WELCOME TO JIM'S AUTISM BLOG





Hi everyone and thanks for visiting our blog. My wife and I created this blog to chronicle our experience while raising a son with Asperger's syndrome. Since our son was diagnosed with an ASD at age 5, we've had a lot of questions. Lucky for us we have a great support network in place. And our blog gives us an opportunity to share what we've learned with our readers. We hope you find our blog informative and interesting. Thanks again for visiting.


"It seems that for success in science and art, a dash of autism is essential." Dr Hans Asperger 1906-1980



Tuesday 27 November 2012

JACOB'S NEWLY TWEAKED IEP

This afternoon, we had a meeting at Jacob's school to discuss a couple of updates to his IEP.  For the past 2 weeks, there's been a couple of ASD specialists in his class to observe his behaviour, and to help find new ways of controlling Jacob's in class behaviour.

Jacob's biggest issue is that he hates when people get angry and raise their voices.  It doesn't matter if a mother yells at her child out in public.  If Jacob hears it he has to make a point of telling the person how it's mean to yell at someone.  And the most common place for this to happen is in school.  If Jacob's teacher even suggests that a student quiet down, he'll become progressively more and more angry until the situation has been resolved.

So at the meeting, there was both of us, the SERT, the school's principal and one of the ASD team members.  The ASD specialist told us about a woman named Michelle Garcia Winner, who has revolutionized the way we deal with kids who have social issues.  Her program is in fact called social thinking, and we can't wait to research her work on line.

From her work, they ASD specialist is going to implement some new types of visual cues that will hopefully help Jacob work through his problems.  For instance, if Jacob yells at a teacher, he needs to be guided through the process of cause and effect.  It he yells the teacher, the teacher will then become upset, which will cause them to get upset with Jacob, which will then in turn make him upset.

The goal is to help Jacob understand the consequences for his unexpected in class behaviour.  Jacob has no issue getting upset, but he doesn't fully understand what happens when he gets mad and yells at someone.  So the school is going to create some strategies to help move Jacob away from yelling.  He has begun to write his feelings down when he becomes upset, which has worked so far.

Together we decided to create a "social thinking" chart to help Jacob focus before he gets to school.  Because we all feel that if Jacob could learn to control his rage, the he would in turn become a much better student.  We may not be able to stop his behaviours, but any time we can limit his anger, it's a good thing.

In the past, anytime we've had a school meeting, there's always been some anxiety that we've had to deal with.  But this year has been different.  I think it's the fact that Jacob's improved so much, that we have less fear when it comes to attending a meeting.  It's also nice to have a new path to follow, because sometimes when dealing with a child with an ASD, you can often loose direction, but now things seem to be on track, and heading towards something positive.

2 comments:

  1. Hopefully the meetings will get easier and easier as Jacob gets older and everyone is on board. Good luck!

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    1. The meetings do get easier, but it's nice when everyone is on the same page. We're happy that Jacob is doing so well.

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