Helllo all. I have posted about my DS from time to time, but not regularly. He is 7 and half, going to a mainstream school with full time ABA support. We live abroad, but it is that time now where we need to make a decision on our next move. We have the choice of coming back to the UK or move to another country. Moving to another country will be the best option for us financially as a family, but I can't help thinking whether coming back to the UK will be the best thing for DS. DS was diagnosed with classic autism at the age of two and a half.
DS has had intensive ABA from the age of four. He never had problem with routine or sensory issues, but his communication and speech are very delayed. He has functional language, can ask for whatever he needs, but can't express his feelings. He can pretty much answer all the 'wh' questions except 'why', although will only ask 'what and where' questions. His receptive language for everyday things are age-appropriate (but has comprehension issues when reading a story). You can have a little conversation with him like-DS how was school today, what did you do, where did you go etc. His speech is very disordered, so we suspect he has undiagnosed expressive language disorder.
DS started school at the age of four (summer born) at a mainstream school, but regressed so badly that we took him out after six months and home-educated him for another six months before putting him in a ABA school. He spent two and half years at the school which was sub-standard ABA, but I would say still better than what we got in the UK. Things changed a year ago when we had a new supervisor who immediately changed things around and asked us to put DS into a mainstream school with an ABA shadow. So DS has been going to this new school for two terms now, he has settled in well. He is able to do most things independently now in the class. He will play by himself most of the time but will sometimes play with other kids when encouraged by his shadow. He needs his shadow to complete works, otherwise he will not follow the teachers directions without being prompted. He is learning to read using phonics (headsprout and Edmark comprehension together) and can read 3/4 letters word comfortably. He has learnt to do addition and subtraction at school. So I would say he is learning and following most of the things at school despite having severe speech delay with the help of his shadow teacher.
Now the problem is his ABA supervisor told us that the school is completely inappropriate for a child like DS as their method of teaching is sitting and learning from a white board for most of the six hours. So DS is engazing in inappropriate behaviour like making noises, laughing for no reason (he did not have these behav before starting schools), his eye contact is not so good any more. This is why my thread is. I have few questions to ask and need on your opinion on the best option based on what I have written. I appreciate that you do not know DS, so you can't really say what would be best without knowing him personally, but I would still like you to say what you think.
Our options are:
- move back to the Uk and put him in an indepedent specialised school for couple of years (we will get help from the company with this) and probably can continue ourselves for another two years (if we remortgage our house like starlight then probably for longer)
2.stay abroad, but continue with the ABA shadow. We need to find a better school for DS (schools here are not very SN friendly, so highly unlikely we would get into a british curriculum school). In other words, he stays in the crappy school he is atm, so does not learn anything at school apart from getting the social opportunities and we continue with ABA teaching at home.
- we move to another country and hope that we find a better school. Our supervisor is willing to travel and train staffs.
I have another question. We never had a proper educational psychologist report on DS. Do you think it will be good for him to have one? I can travel to the UK to get one done. Would you recommend a good educational psychologist in or around london or Surrey please. And what type of things do I ask the Educational psychologist to assess?
Sorry about the long essay. I did not want to drip feed. Please help.