Inclusion

I am stealing this quote from a diversity training webcast at work...

"Inclusion occurs when we value others for their uniqueness and see their differences as positives."

I love that quote. I love the idea of everyone seeing my son's differences as positives.

I was thinking about this on the way home, and about inclusion in school. When Monster went into kindergarten we were SO naive. Here we had been told after his diagnosis - BY THE PRESCHOOL AUTISM SPECIALIST - that all we had to do was put my son into this special preschool they had and he'd be "all set" for kindergarten.

All Set?

I think she was lying to me at the time because I probably looked as if I were ready to self-destruct. She must have thought it would be too much to tell me that kindergarten would only be a whole new set of horrors for my son and me.

Anyhow, the law is that they practice inclusion as much as possible - that means placing children with disabilities into a classroom with 25+ other students, a teacher, and if you're lucky, a one-on-one aide for the disabled child. This is the law. The kid has to start out in this setting if at all possible, and then from what I've seen they work toward proving that your child doesn't belong there and needs to be in a less-inclusive environment. This, by the way, can take years for the school to prove.

In those years, a child like mine in a regular classroom would regularly;
Be removed from the classroom
Be separated from the other children
Be blamed for all the troubles in that classroom
Be suspended for behavior issues
Be told by other students that they are bad or should just shut up.

I have no problem with inclusion. I think the parents who fought for the inclusion of their disabled children are amazing, incredible people who changed the nation and probably had to fight every step of the way.

But now I think it may not be the right thing for every child. I don't think autistic children should automatically be placed in a regular classroom. But it's the law.

I think about the things that set off my son - large groups, lots of noise, kids brushing against or bumping into him, bright lights, transitions - and I think, your regular public school classroom is set up to make my son and others like him a failure. And not only will they fail at school, they will fail at making friends and they will decide they are stupid and they will internalize everything. They will decide they are horrible, rotten people who can't do anything right. Because if you can't sit still and learn in school, well, what CAN you do right? Kids spend a huge part of each day there.

Many parents of Aspie kids want their kids in the regular classroom. I know I did. I know I was led to believe it was my son's "right" by many, many people. But one person was brave enough to tell me directly, "your son is in the wrong place. The school cannot tell you this because you could sue them. There are laws that tie their hands. But your son isn't learning, and he isn't happy there, and he doesn't feel good about himself because of it."

Thank god for my parent advocate. Nobody else would have told me, and I would be sitting in more and more IEP meetings trying to figure out what we hadn't tried yet and what we knew didn't work, when really the whole system was wrong for my child, and nobody in the school was allowed to say so.

It's wrong that a school counselor can't say to a parent, 'of course, your child has rights, but have you considered maybe that this may not be the right place for him?'

I know that the school felt absolute relief when I called my son's social worker and told her, I want to talk about putting my son into special ed, because an IEP meeting - which almost always took over a month to coordinate with everyone involved - was called for 3 days later.

Someday maybe my son will be in a regular classroom. My wish is that our school district will set up a special program for high-functioning ASD children so they can learn parallel to the NT children but not in that same space.

Where my son is now was not my ideal. EBD children are not the same as ASD children, and their needs are not the same. How you treat and discipline them isn't the same. There are two totally different places these kids' problems are coming from in their minds.

But my son flourishes in there. He learns. He was suddenly doing math and reading at higher levels than the second graders in his room. His teacher is accepting of each individual child and really does see the goodness in each of them. She values them.

I wish every classroom could be an inclusive classroom. I wish every school was set up to work with NT children learning alongside ASD children. I just don't see it happening any time soon.

If I knew where to start, I would fight my city to give my son and the others like him their own program. But our school's funding, like every public school's in this country, has been slashed to bits and I don't want to fight for this until every regular kid is getting a decent education, because that is more important.

And yes, there is always homeschooling. I will freely admit here that if I stayed home with my child and tried to teach him every day, one of us would end up murdered. Not necessarily him.

Private schools? We can't afford one.

Charter schools? There is an amazing inclusive school too far away for bussing that we are on a waiting list for. I don't know if we'll ever come to the top of the list.

Besides, I do feel like, I pay taxes, my son deserves an education.

But an inclusive one?

Maybe someday in the future it will be possible, when all teachers have learned to see the promise and uniqueness of kids like Monster.

For now, I want my child to feel happy and smart and supported. I want him to know he can be special AND successful. I think it's more important at this point in his life than "inclusion" the way the law defines it.