Hi all, thanks for your support - it means a great deal to me.
I'm not long home, the meeting itself took about an hour and a half. My Dad was great, he pointed out that some people are naturally extrovert and some people are introverted, and crucially, does that exclude my son from going on the trip? My Dad also pointed out that both he, the retired teacher, and the student teacher, are not qualified to make any judgments on any autistic tendancies. Regarding my sons future relationship with the host family in America, I said that nobody can predict that. The arrangement is that each teenager goes out to america and lives with a host family who have a teen who is the same sex ie, a boy stays with a boy and they are matched a bit like a dating agency. I went on the scheme myself a long time ago.
Just to clarify, the scheme has been running for 26 years, it is not school based, but an application form needs to be submitted and a selection takes place. My son was chosen possibly on the strength of his participation in scouts and the church youth club. I do not know exactly why they chose him to participate but there was no interview as such, they chose from the application forms, essentially from paper.
My Dad also challenged the retired teachers perspective, because he is really working with second hand information. The group has two young leaders, the student teacher is the female of them - they have a male leader too. They are both in their early twenties. The retired teacher is part of the overall organising team, which is voluntary.
So we put forward the idea that the student teacher may be one of those people who've received a wee bit of information in training and suddenly think they know everything, and he being a retired teacher, has come to agree with her based on her assessment. The retired teacher has observed my son himself, but not very much and not one to one - it was at a bag packing day which was quite an intimidating environment for an introverted lad anyway. I wondered why the retired teacher was hovering close by that day! He had to admit that most of his information is second hand.
I told the guy that I had told my son about the comments about Aspergers or Autism. He was quite shocked and said there are some things that shouldn't be said, to which I said that my son and I are so close if I held something back he would know. I said, so you mean I should keep secrets from my son?
The second half of the meeting my Dad left the room and my son was brought in. At first the retired teacher and my son were on the same sofa but facing forward. The retired teacher asked my son if he could turn round a bit and face him, and then he was asked some questions such as what would he do if he was unhappy in America (he said he didn't think he would be unhappy) and a few questions about how he would organise himself, in terms of time keeping and having the correct things with him at the time. My son said he would keep a notepad to take notes with as a reminder.
When he left he turned to me and said that he would recommend that I shoudn't say anything to my son about the autism theory, to which I again said, If I held anything back, he would know. I think he's very annoyed with me for telling ds about those comments.
Essentially the retired teacher had to admit that most of his information is second hand, and that he is not qualified to make a judgment or give a statement. He left my son saying that he should not feel criticised or that he had done anything wrong, he simply does not want him to flounder in America.
Personally, I think he will flourish in America - he's quite used to time away from me as he spends weekends with my inlaws, he's been away on scout trips and school trips - ok none of them for a whole month. I don't think he'll be one bit homesick, he'll be too busy having a great time.
I think he could be going to America as a boy and coming home as a young man.
So - the result is - for now, my son is still participating in the group and going to America at the end of June. I really hope they don't spend the next 7 weeks waiting for him to fail, or not take part, or be a little shy, and then come back to me saying it is his own fault that he can't go to America.
Sorry for the long post.