[cnote]

Nathan HATES sweets. It's like you a torturing him to try to get him to eat a cookie, cake or chocolate. At his typical preschool they have a snack each day. Sometimes it is foods he likes such as pretzels or various crackers but for the most part he says "No thank you, I don't like....."

The teachers keep a box of goldfish crackers and they give him those on days where he doesn't like the snack.

Is he getting special treatment? I don't know. I hate to see him have to sit through snack time and not have anything to eat except a glass of water. I imagine it would be really tough to get him to sit still.

I am lost on this. I really don't want to take away the goldfish but at the same time what if a kid there didn't like crackers so the teachers gave him a cupcake every day? Is it the same thing? Help me wrap my mind around this.

Or is this really what I have to accept? Will there be more accommodations for Nathan in the years to come? Is that just how it works with IEP's? I am so freaked about the school years. I think he will be okay early on but once he hits the preteens I am terrified what on what things will be like. If he is treated different then I feel like its even worse than just being different (as far as the teasing factor goes.) Not that teasing is an issue now, but I want to set the tone for the future so that we have a clear path of what to do and what not to do.

Accommodations like Nate sitting on a big therapy ball at story time have come up before and my DH was like "NO WAY!" I guess his thoughts are if we need to make accommodations they need to be sneaky and unknown like going to the bathroom to stim, or taping velcro under his desk for him to get tactile stimulation, or being asked to carry books from one room to the other for pressure input etc.

[Mod-quietsong]

I think, when it comes to food, it depends on the hunger issue. Danny, if he doesn't get any snack, gets too hungry to focus and actually accomplish much at school; his behavior declines. Eric is much the same when he's hungry. If you feel Nathan needs the snack to get the most out of school, I don't see it being a big issue that he gets Goldfish instead of the regular snack on some days. It's NOT a cupcake or something totally out of the ordinary, it's another typical snack food, and as long as he's not carrying the behavior over (refusing full meals to get something different) I don't see any harm in it, personally.

[picklesmama]

Ditto what Kel said. Think of it this way - if he was diabetic or had a food allergy, he would get to have a separate snack if he couldn't have what the rest of the class was having ... and yes, that is special treatment, but some kids have special needs, right?

[picklesmama]

Accommodations like Nate sitting on a big therapy ball at story time have come up before and my DH was like "NO WAY!" I guess his thoughts are if we need to make accommodations they need to be sneaky and unknown like going to the bathroom to stim, or taping velcro under his desk for him to get tactile stimulation, or being asked to carry books from one room to the other for pressure input etc.

Hmm... Angus is in a mainstream first grade class, and the kids in the class understand that he gets do do some things differently. He wears a pressure vest some days, and uses a special vibrating pencil holder (he is hyposensitive and writes really hard, without it he breaks pencil tips and tears through paper). I believe in being open about differences, and that if accommodations for those differences are made openly matter of fact, without making it a big deal or trying to keep it hush, that it takes the stigma from them. If you make it seem like the accommodations must be hidden, then that makes it seem as if there is something to hide, kwim? With my permission, Angus's teacher read the class a book about autism. They understand that just as some kids need help seeing so wear glasses, that Angus needs help sitting still and not breaking his pencils. Those are good ideas for ways for Nathan to get the sensory input he craves without being disruptive to the class, but I also believe that if there is adaptive equipment available that can improve Nathan's school experience and behaviour without being disruptive to the other students, then why not use it?

[cnote]

Thanks so much gals! I totally see what you both mean and it makes perfect sense to me.

Crissy I get the not making it hidden and exposing the kids in his class to autism but at the same time I wonder if that opens up a can of worms about teasing and getting bullied and picked on as he gets older kwim? I have heard so many horror stories about ASD kids getting taken advantage of, but I guess that can happen no matter if we are open about Nathan or not.

I guess either way he is unique and certainly stands out, maybe it IS best to go at it head on and be overly open about it?

Gosh this messes with my head sometimes.

[picklesmama]

Originally Posted by cnote

Crissy I get the not making it hidden and exposing the kids in his class to autism but at the same time I wonder if that opens up a can of worms about teasing and getting bullied and picked on as he gets older kwim? I have heard so many horror stories about ASD kids getting taken advantage of, but I guess that can happen no matter if we are open about Nathan or not.

I guess either way he is unique and certainly stands out, maybe it IS best to go at it head on and be overly open about it?

Gosh this messes with my head sometimes.

I totally understand - I agonized over whether to have Gus in mainstream or keep him in Special Ed for that very reason. But when I thought about it, I thought, if kids are going to pick on someone, they are probably more likely to pick on the kid they think is just weird and dorky than the kid who has a known disability, I mean, picking on a disabled kid is just low, kwim? If he just doesn't quite fit in and the other kids don't know why, they may think it's OK to make fun of him, whereas if it's known that he has autism, that explains to them why he is different in the ways he is, and that will probably make him less of a target, at least in my opinion and from what I've seen in the time my kids have been in school.

There will always be mean kids - we can't completely shelter our kids from them - but one of the ways we can help them defend themselves is by teaching them that their differences are nothing to be ashamed of, that they are just as good as any other kid and deserve to be treated so, and that no one has the right to make fun of them. By trying to keep mum about the fact that he has autism, you may be unintentionally telling him the opposite - not in words, but in how he may see it. If he thinks his dad wants to keep his autism a secret, he may feel like it is something to be ashamed of, that he is less than what he should be, and that maybe the teasers are better than him, therefore justified in teasing him. JMHO.

Of course, you know better than I what kind of environment his school is. The school here is big on inclusion and tolerance - but that may not be true everywhere.