Told my son may be on autistic spectrum - so now what?

[karlahine]

Ok so after a few weeks of ups and downs, we've now been advised my son may be on the autistic spectrum, this was told to us a week ago and to date nothing further has been said! I've done a lot of research etc on the net and to say the least I'm not impressed with the school at all. I contacted the SENCO dept. yesterday only to be told they had no knowledge of this!! What I am supposed to do now?

Insist on the school bringing in an educational pshcologist to see ds and you should then get a written report, this is what happened with my ds dyslexia, keep on top of it hope you have a break through soon

Who told you that he may be on the autistic spectrum if it wasn't the SENCO?

How old is your DS?

I have been through the same thing with my DS1 who, after literally years of vagueness eventually received a diagnosis of Aspergers. I'm afraid things do normally move very slowly in terms of referrals and proper diagnosis IME - well, the referrals can be done quickly but the waiting lists are long.

Do you have Autism Outreach in your area? (They may well be national, I'm not sure). They were always very useful to have in attendence at school meetings as, sadly, some mainstream primary schools (i.e. ours) still seem not to understand ASD properly & the Autism Outreach lady used to be able to pinpoint why DS1 was reacting to certain situations in the way he did and what the school should be doing to help. The school certainly took more notice of her than they did me .

On a lighter note, DS1 is now 14, in a mainstream secondary school and doing very well. His evil Headteacher at age 5 told us categorically that "he would never be able to cope with mainstream". Thankfully, he moved schools and received the right support - hence his ability to be where he is now .

Good luck. It can be a scary thing to go through (especially with knobhead less than supportive Headteachers) but there is help out there. It's all about accessing the right help & support for your DS, to enable him to cope at school.

Also, I am sure some other MNers will be along shortly to offer advice - there are many, many of us on here who have DCs on the Autistic Spectrum. Some have multiple children with ASD and will have had different experiences and other pearls of wisdom .

You need to think about what support your son needs at school at the moment and then ask for a meeting with the teacher and the SENCo to arrange it.

Support in school should be based on what he needs rather than his diagnosis so don't expect anything to happen automatically. Chances are he will be offered the minimum they think they can get away with.

If the school say they don't have the resources to offer the support you feel he needs to have equal access to the curriculum then suggest that they request a Statutory Assessment of Special Education Needs.

The lovely people on the Special Needs board will help you through the process if you ask.

You could also list what you think are your son's biggest challenges and hopefully you'll get some suggestions about the best way to support him and what help other children with similar difficulties have in school.

HTH

hi there

you might want to repost or have this moved to the SN children's section?

lots of us there have experience with ASD and school so you'll probably get more traffic.

in the meantime, who has suggested autism to you and how old is your DS?

my DD is 4.11yrs and at 1st her teacher disagreed with US! she now has a dx of ASD and school are slowly coming up with some support, but this seems to be dependent on availability ie, if they feel the TA is 'needed' elsewhere then she's taken out of DD reach