The struggle to be understood

[camptys]

My little girl is 8, she has a dual diagnosis of DS and Autism. I have been struggling to get meaningful speech therapy for her at school but they admit that they are clueless as to how to work with her. She disengages and has challenging behaviour - throwing things off the table, not responding, refusing to sit quietly, grabbing other people's food... the list goes on. They cannot "reach" her and now are considering "all options".

I have done a lot of work with her and she is well advanced with her vocabulary and now using a system I developed she is able to read lots of words. Yet she is unable to put sentences together. Such a struggle!

is she at mainstream or special school?

Have you looked at any special schools which do more advanced speech and language therapy?

If the existing school have admitted that they do not know what to do, then that would help you to persuade the LA to fund someone who does.

By the way if you re-post this under the 'child' tab and pick 'chat about my child' you will find lots more support over there.

She is in mainstream school but we have been seriously considering moving to special.

I would suggest ABA, if you haven't gone down that road. a good consultant should be able to design a good behavioural plan as they try to redirect or stop any behaviour coming in the way of learning. Our consultant also helped us more with communication than any speech therapist. I started with no tutor, just consultant training me.

Sorry forgot to say, well done for finding a way to teach when all professional have let you down [flower]