Parents who won't accept testing or help for their child. GAH!

[Ember]

I have a child in my class who is exhibiting classic signs of being on the autism spectrum. Without going into detail, the child is clearly in need of help. Mum and Dad have flatly refused all testing for their child and have done so for several years.

The child is starting to exhibit concerning behavior such as a physically hurting classmates. The principal is now involved and is saying the child gets tested or will be expelled as there is now a threat to the other children in the classroom.

I feel so badly for this child, it breaks my heart. It is not their fault and there is help available, the parents just won't access it. As a result, it looks like the child may be expelled. How does this help anybody?!

Just needed to get that out...

 

[kendall]

Denial by the parents. Sad. Has the school tried a meeting with parents, counselor, special ed services staff, doctor, psychologist, social worker, etc. - everyone at the table and laying out the evidence and symptoms and strategies? Think of it as an intervention. Sounds like the child needs an advocate.

 

[java]

I don't get that either. There was a boy in my daughter's class that had "issues". The school was trying to have him tested. Parents refused. All the ?ing I guess got to them. They pulled him out of the school this year. He's going to Catholic School. They think that will help him. He's 12 now and it makes me sad.
Thank you for trying though.

 

[Eeyores Butterfly]

I know how you feel .When I taught preschool we had a kid we were sure was on the higher end of the spectrum. The parents just couldn't see it. He was their only child and they assumed what he did was normal. I was sure if they could see him like we did with other children, they would realize there was something going on. It was frustrating. Hang in there. Hopefully the principal can get things worked out for the child.

 

[Ember]

Denial by the parents. Sad. Has the school tried a meeting with parents, counselor, special ed services staff, doctor, psychologist, social worker, etc. - everyone at the table and laying out the evidence and symptoms and strategies? Think of it as an intervention. Sounds like the child needs an advocate.

We have done everything we can legally do without parental consent. Which, unfortunately, isn't really a lot. There is a great deal that could be done, but the parents would need to sign off on it, including any actual testing or diagnosis.

 

[AKL_Megs]

I don't get it either.

I know a girl, who when she was a little girl, talked like a baby... you know, rolling R's and such. I ALWAYS said that if it wasn't taken care of, she'd sound that way as an adult and nobody would take her serious.

(Have you seen Baby Mama... the birthing coach lady... yeah, it's a joke in a movie AND in real life, people are harsh.)

By age 10, she still talked like that and I knew it was a lost cause. Now she is almost 13 and sounds like some 3-year-olds I know. Sometimes we have to ask her to repeat herself. I can't imagine the process of correcting her speech would be an easy one at age 13 when her words and speech is so far developed. I just hope she can avoid being stereotyped as an adult with that speech issue.

It's sad how denial or parental ego gets in the way of taking care of their childrens issues. Sad.

 

[kehlyrsmom]

As a parent of two children on the spectrum I don't understand the parents who are in denial. We want to give our children all of the resources that are available to them to help give them the best chance of being going to college living on their own etc. If that means having them tested and giving them a label so be it.

We were told when our sone was 2 1/2 - at this point he had been receiving speach and OT services since the age of 15 months that he would never talk. We got him as much help as possible and he finally called me mom for the first time at the age of 3 1/2. His diagnosis is moderate autism and apraxia of speach and his sister's diagnosis is aspbergers.

I am fairly certain if we had not gotten him the services as early as we did he would not be verbal or have very limited speach.

 

[janette]

I've had people tell me they didn't want their kid labeled; my youngest is dyslexic and we needed the "label" to get her the help she needed. It worked and she does very well, I can't imagine where she'd be without that help.

One of my nieces has many autistic qualities; probably not autistic but on the spectrum. Her parents did allow the school to test but didn't do any on their own; thought her social issues were just shyness. The school just classified her as mentally impaired and tracked her into life skills training. She's an adult now and unlikely to ever be independent. Hard to say what she might have been able to do with more help early on.

 

[Liberty Belle]

We had a child like that in our class last year. He was clearly autistic. I mean he was textbook. Parents would not consent to testing for autism. They did let him be tested for ADHD and that became his sole diagnosis, so he did at least get some services, but not what he needed. It's sad because the boy is really smart.

 

[minkydog]

I've had people tell me they didn't want their kid labeled; my youngest is dyslexic and we needed the "label" to get her the help she needed. It worked and she does very well, I can't imagine where she'd be without that help.

.

Same here. I remember when my youngest son was being evaluated. It was so bad--I sobbed for hours afterward. Then came the written eval. Holy cow! He looks so bad on paper! "Nonverbal, vision/hearing impaired,sensory defensive, profound intellectual impaired." I wanted to scream until the teacher explained that they have to make it look as bad as it really is to get the PT,OT, SLP, and other services that he needs.

That said, I have two sisters who have children on the spectrum. One refused to have her child tested until after he entered kindergarten, when it became crystal clear to EVERYONE that this child was REALLY different. She "doesn't want him labelled" and still says he's not autistic, he's just learning disabled. My other sister has a very weird 11yo who I know in my heart is probably Aspergers. She refuses to have any developmental testing done because "if they're looking for autism, they'll find autism." Really?? In the meantime her daughter has extreme ritualistic behaviors and cannot carry on a conversation about anything except Pokeman. And even then it's a monologue. Sheesh. This kid gets weirder and weirder with age and the sad part is that no one is doing anything to help her fit in. Her parents think she is just a child prodigy because she can recite long passages from Star Wars, Pokeman, and Star Trek movies. She just can't talk to you about what she did in school that day or pets or her extracurricular activities or anything else that a normal person might talk about.

 

[golfgal]

Well, you know it is a direct reflection on your parenting if there is something "wrong" with your child . It is funny because you see both extremes, those people that refuse to have their child tested and those that push to have every test in the book so they can have an excuse why their child acts like they do. Then there are the kids that really DO have a learning disability and can't get help because there are kids in the program that are taking up space when what they really need is a parent that will tell them no.

We have a friend that refuses to admit there is anything wrong with their daughter. As an infant she never looked you in the eye, never hit any milestones, etc. She is now 10 and can't talk, eat, walk, toilet, nothing-but she doesn't have anything "wrong" with her. It is really sad to see that level of denial.

 

[s&k'smom]

Unfortunately this happens all the time. I see it every day.

 

[lemondog]

I am a teacher and I see it too. So sad. The thing is I work with 3 year olds, and that is a GOLDEN time to seek help. I have seen some miraculous things happen with early intervention. But you always have those parents who refuse to seek help. Selfish, selfish. Those poor children.

 

[eliza61]

It is very hard for some parents to except their child is not "perfect" or "normal". My son has asperger's and I remember quite vividly sitting in the testing office and having the psychologist say my son would never go to college.


It hurts!! Also many parents are scared, face it disser, in our society we don't treat "differences" really nice. If you are a kid and you are in anyway "different" school can be a tremendous challenge.

And remember, just as other posters have said, having a "label" for your kid like "special ed" can be devestating to both parents and kids. My son is in H.S. and believe me some of his classmates can be cruel. They may not know what exactly is wrong with him but they know he is in a "special" class,
he's gotten all the cruel remarks like "stupid kids class", "retarded kids class" etc etc. Luckily my son has a circle of friends that have been his friends since elementary school and are great kids.

I was the other way around, I was determined that my kid was going to get at least the chance to succeed to the best of his abilities and that meant he would need professional help and accepting the fact that he cannot learn like other kids. Once I accepted that it was amazing the support I recieve.

 

[freckles and boo]

I have a second grader with autism and ADHD. She is very smart, but she very likely would still be non-verbal and disconnected from the world had she not had a lot of intervention. At the age of four she was placed in a TEACCH classroom and became best buddies with a little boy whose parents were in complete denial. I didn't realize this and said something about autism in casual conversation with his mother. She just about bit my head off. Her kid WASN'T AUTISTIC. I wanted to ask her why she had him in an autism classroom if he wasn't autistic but I thought better of it. As long as he was getting the services he needed it didn't matter.

 

[diznygirl]

I have a second grader with autism and ADHD. She is very smart, but she very likely would still be non-verbal and disconnected from the world had she not had a lot of intervention. At the age of four she was placed in a TEACCH classroom and became best buddies with a little boy whose parents were in complete denial. I didn't realize this and said something about autism in casual conversation with his mother. She just about bit my head off. Her kid WASN'T AUTISTIC. I wanted to ask her why she had him in an autism classroom if he wasn't autistic but I thought better of it. As long as he was getting the services he needed it didn't matter.

That could be a friend of mine, but wrong state. She will admit that he has seizures and may be epileptic, but stops short of admitting he is fully autistic. She knows that what his "label" is so he gets the extra help he needs in school and she's happy about that - like she's using the system in some way.

 

[BeachGirlFLA]

I don't get that either. There was a boy in my daughter's class that had "issues". The school was trying to have him tested. Parents refused. All the ?ing I guess got to them. They pulled him out of the school this year. He's going to Catholic School. They think that will help him. He's 12 now and it makes me sad.
Thank you for trying though.

Interesting....the Catholic school I went to wouldn't have taken him, which makes me sad as well.

 

[Becky2005]

I've had people tell me they didn't want their kid labeled; my youngest is dyslexic and we needed the "label" to get her the help she needed. It worked and she does very well, I can't imagine where she'd be without that help.

That is my son too. I gladly took the label as without the label there would be very little help. We found out the reading problem in 1st grade. It took us a while because we couldn't figure out if he was stubborn or really wasn't getting it (drove me crazy with one second he would know a word, flip the page & be clueless on the same word) but after testing, it was determined that it wasn't him just being stubborn, he really DID have a problem.

However, he's in 7th grade now and at the beginning of the year they had him in the special reading class just like he was in 6th grade. They took a pre-test just to see where the kids were at & he did so well on it that they have now moved him into the regular 7th grade English class still with accomodations though as he would never survive it if they just let him do it without some help. My DD had the same teacher, I *know* he wouldn't be capable of that class on his own. She had to work hard in it & she doesn't have the extra issues. So far, he is finding it OK. We will look how things are going at the end of the quarter. It's still not easy for him & I doubt reading/writing ever will be easy for him but we are making progress with all the help.

I'm pretty sure if we hadn't done all the years of summer school, continous intervention, he would not have progressed as much. I'm sure he would have gotten labeled unofficially by the teachers as not a very good student and such if we hadn't had the interventions that let them know he wasn't being just a rebel student about things.

It even works the other way -- when my DD was in first they wanted to test her reading because she was ahead of the kids & they wanted to see where she was at. They had to get my permission to test her. I was surprised on that & couldn't imagine NOT letting her get tested.

 

[Ember]

I think one if the problems this child has is that they're very high academically. The child is several grade levels ahead in both reading and writing, so a lot of the basic skills tests show nothing wrong and these are some of the only tests we can have done with out consent. Mum and Dad see how well their child is doing academically and don't see why there is a problem.

I think the whole issue of being expelled is really getting to me. I understand why is has to come down to this because the child is becoming more physical and has hurt classmates, but I want to shout that it isn't the child's fault! They're probably feeling overwhelmed and stressed and who knows what else...

It shouldn't be like this.

 

[MM27]

This is one of the most frustrating parts of teaching. I teach in an urban district where unfortunately many kids are performing below level anyway. Every year I must have at least 4 or 5 kids (I teach two classes so about 46 kids) that really stand out as needing some sort of assistance. After going through the referral process, to have a parent hear what their child struggles with, and then have them refuse services blows my mind.

As others have said, I think many times it's the label that they are afraid of. They think back to their own education and think about what special ed was then. They don't want their child to be moved from their friends, to have that label on them, and I think more than anything else, they're afraid that getting this label means that they have failed as a parent. Sometimes we can convince them otherwise, but many refuse and the child suffers. You don't want the label because of what other people might think, but your child is sitting in a 4th grade class reading on a pre-k level and that isn't embarassing for them?