Yesterday, after finding excuses for the better part of year, Tommy mustered the nerve to take his test to get his learner’s permit for driving. He passed with 100%! The test administrator said in the 5 years she had worked at the DMV, she could recount only one other teenager who passed without missing a single question. Tommy’s head swelled so big I did not think he’d fit back in the car!
Tommy is thrilled with his accomplishment. As a parent who has lived through having your child child told he’d never read, to being told to lock him away for the sake of the other children, and similar negative outlooks on his fate, this step toward adulthood and independence is wonderful! Coupled with the fact that he will walk the graduation stage with a regular education diploma in May 2008 and that he not longer stands out as different, I have high hopes for Tommy’s future.
I must preface this post by saying I love the teachers and their aides that work with Tommy. He would not be where he is today without their sacrifices.
Last week one of Tommy’s teachers was out. Substitutes and unplanned schedule changes can really throw an Aspie for a loop. Tommy was with a familiar teacher but we had a report of unusual behavior from Tommy. It just did not sound right. An email came in to request a time that Tommy could serve detention for his behavior. I did not respond because something did not feel right. When the second request I replied with the following message:
>Hi Guys,
> When can Tom serve his detention for the low he earned last Thursday?
Hello!
I am sorry for the lack of response to your question. I am not sure what to say here because of Tommy’s adamancy that he wasn’t as bad as reported. In times past, I would tell him he was absolutely lying but neither the lying behavior nor the total irreverence that was described in last weeks actions match the behavior that we are observing and that you, yourself, are reporting to us of late.
That coupled with the fact that {teacher} and Tommy were alone and the story cannot be collaborated, that the reports from {teacher}’s daughter and {teacher} herself regarding History do not match the stories of Tommy and {friend}, that the story regarding the {incident long passed between Tommy and teacher} changed from detention to suspension because a headache developed overnight (which is silly), and early in the year I was told from an adult, and disregarded as hearsay, information that {teacher} had a heightened intolerance of Tommy all make me want to argue that Tommy should not have a detention. In this I am not trying to belittle or be disrespectful of {teacher}. I appreciate what she does for Tommy. I appreciate the difficulty of her job. I like {teacher}! I simply do not have any degree of confidence in the accuracy of {teacher}’s reports. I have never said these words before because I have nothing to collaborate them just like we have nothing to collaborate last week’s story (unless I am mistaken).
Tommy has spent a life of being accused of things he did not do because of things that he has done. I have found myself more than once harshly punishing him against his adamancy that he was innocent only later to discover that he was truly innocent. Tommy is good at heart and has matured in ways that I only wish some regular ed children could. Our society frequently beats a man when they are down and a person can only take so much beating before they are relinquished to change into that which their accusers claim in the first place. That said, and with the amount time that has passed since last week, it would be my recommendation that we give Tommy the benefit of the doubt and let this one go. However, you are the teacher and the rules are the rules. If you still wish him to have a detention, let me know and I will let you know a good day.
Thank you and please understand that I mean nothing assaulting, mean or belittling in my words! There is no emotion written into these paragraphs.
Doug
I really debated not sending that letter and re-read it many times before sending it on. I really did not want to hurt anyone’s feelings (which it did) and I had hoped to be as pragmatic as possible. The school responded by not giving Tommy detention. Instead they have him a full day of in-school suspension. Yes Knox County, that’s a mighty fine penis you have!
We have had such vicious fights with Knox County Schools that our names are known in the administrative offices and I am sure nice things are not said. We have had m-teams and ieps go from brief meetings that barely legally qualified to 3 hour sessions with 14 cranky people trying to deprive our child of his rights. We have come close to getting legal on several occasions.
Knox County Schools has grown and changed for the positive. Despite budget and resource challenges, Knox County Schools has created and provided decent Asperger programs. Our child has grown too. And our meetings have become less frequent and needed fewer people.
Yesterday we had an m-team to discuss Tommy’s problems in history only to find that there really is not a problem. I actually felt guilty for having pulled these people away from their jobs for our silly meeting. Are we missing the fight that much? No, Tommy seems to be holding onto some things being falsely accused of disturbing his history class’ mock trial while everyone else has moved on. With Tommy reporting to us that he was still being blamed, coupled with the lost/theft of his ring, the confusion over transition planning, our lack of involvement with the school this year, and other frustrations led us to believe it was time to have a meeting. We were wrong. Tommy is really doing well! He has grown into quite an impressive young adult.
It’s a familiar joke in the industry that many of the hardcore programmers in IT strongholds like Intel, Adobe, and Silicon Graphics – coming to work early, leaving late, sucking down Big Gulps in their cubicles while they code for hours – are residing somewhere in Asperger’s domain. Kathryn Stewart, director of the Orion Academy, a high school for high-functioning kids in Moraga, California, calls Asperger’s syndrome “the engineers’ disorder.” Bill Gates is regularly diagnosed in the press: His single-minded focus on technical minutiae, rocking motions, and flat tone of voice are all suggestive of an adult with some trace of the disorder. Dov’s father told me that his friends in the Valley say many of their coworkers “could be diagnosed with ODD – they’re odd.” In Microserfs, novelist Douglas Coupland observes, “I think all tech people are slightly autistic.” Source
Many articles and blogs reference the possibility of Bill Gates as having Asperger’s Syndrome but it is a spectrum disorder. I think we can look at anyone and declare, "ah ha! You did ___ so you have it too!" and I think that people in extraordinary circumstances, be it special needs like Asperger’s or needing a wheelchair or deaf or whatever the case, find comfort in associating with celebrities in the same situation. And that is ok because we all need our heroes!
The upcoming meeting dates for the Knoxville Asperger Support Group are:
January 22, 2007 (Please note this is the 4th Monday, not the 3rd, as the library is closed on January 15th)
February 19, 2007
March 19, 2007
April 16, 2007
May 21, 2007
The support group has a Yahoo Group which can be found on http://groups.yahoo.com/ by searching for Knoxville_Aspie_Support. It meets the third Monday of every month unless there is a conflict or holiday (such as this month) at the West Branch of the Knoxville Public Library (map) at 100 Golfclub Rd from 6pm to 7:30pm.
Parents, educators, advocates, and attorneys come to Wrightslaw for accurate, reliable information about special education law, education law, and advocacy for children with disabilities. Wrightslaw has thousands of articles, cases, and free resources about dozens of topics
In 2004, against the wishes of my wife, I started off every day with a reference to Paypal. Both the anti-breeders and Juliet Pain have called me out on it. I explained the paypal links here. I put the Paypal references up against the better judgment of my wife. They were tacky. They don’t show up in current posts and hopefully over time will disappear from the archives.
As I remember my teen years I recall seeking independence, never wanting to show weakness, and touting knowledge where I had none. So, this morning I ask Tommy to boil some water for me and 15 minutes later or so it occurs to me that I still had no boiling water. Upon inspecting the stove I found the tea kettle on a burner on medium heat. Our knobs are labeled 1 to 10 with 1 being low and 10 being high. Tommy chose 5.
Tommy loves to cook and does a very good job. He particularly likes baking cookies. He has been in the kitchen enough to know his way around.
When we label someone, Asperger for instance, we create an outlet to funnel excuses. "He does that because of his Aspergers." This is ok because the child does have Aspergers and the parent needs a coping mechanism to deal with the child’s behavior. Unfortunately for the child, and the parent, the funnel is sometimes too large and sucks normal things into it; our children fall under a huge microscope. Where an undiagnosed child many do something, like set the burner to 5 to boil water, we laugh it off and declare it "cute" but with a labeled child we sigh and feel the need to teach, counsel, and tutor the child over something normal.
Today may have been the first time Tommy has boiled water. Perhaps he was not fully awake and turned the burner to the commonly used medium heat. Maybe he simply did not have the knowledge and like any other teen would rather risk being wrong than show weakness by asking for help.
A couple of years ago we took all the children to Harry Potter’s birthday party, or maybe it was a book release. I took a moment to objectively look at the coward. I saw my family not as my family but just as other people in the bookstore. My children were having fun but each of them exhibited more discipline and better behavior than many of the other children. It was at that point that I realized the techniques, fights, disciplines, and micromanaging of Tommy over the years had trickled down through all the children. I had to ask myself if we had been overbearing parents and I honestly answered no; they are simply well adjusted, happy children with good manners. However, I did come to the realization at that point that Tommy had succeeded where many people thought he would fail. And we as parents could lighten up and not assume every little behavior is related to Aspergers. For instance, there is nothing in our DNA that inherently makes us know that you boil water on high.
As Tommy approaches graduation from high school, the question of "what will he do?" comes up more frequently. He has such talent. Can he apply himself?
We have officially moved the blog to http://aspergerteen.com/. We have not yet been able to move the comments but those will follow soon. We also need to work on the template but that will come. Now that the blog is moved, we can begin posting again.