Labelling Children

Autism is noit a DISability, it's a different ability!

Well said Hilda!Acceptance is the only requirement.

If only Greenfinch.
Do you know of adults with Autism/ASD that are in long term jobs?
Because I dont.
And if you know, and others know how to get them into the jobs market, and they are able to stay there and be happy, please do tell.

I do know one pupil who went to uni, did well, went on to do a part time job, and coped well for a bit.
But that is it amongst the adults I know with autism or ASD.

The other end of the scale, I know a young woman in her 20s, has done college to some degree or other, volunteering, part time jobs etc etc, who really is basically unable to cope with jobs and life in general. And often talks about suicide. Sadly I dont think it will be long.
Oh and has had an autism support worker who has given up on her too.

So if anyone has some bright ideas, or any ideas at all, I am all ears[I was going to start a thread about it soon] but now dont have to as people with knowledge about this sort of thing are mostly on here already.

It's quite a few posts up but when Ninathenana said to me " how do you know I haven't got a child with special needs" I was not referring to you or your children or grandchildren in my post Nina or else I would have used your name

Yes dd there is a brand new school for autism opened in our area.After a long wait a place was found at an excellent one a bit further away though, and he had been there a year when they offered him a place at the new one....spoilt for choice suddenly!
He is happy where he is, so will stay there until he leaves school.
adaunas You have my sympathy, having children with special needs ( and so many) makes teaching difficult, even with the help of TA's.5-6 children in one class is far too many.

Blinko. Yes I've read that book "the curious incident etc" which is on my list of favourites. Brilliant!*

Yes, I know Anya but I hope that people who haven't come across autism in their lives, and are not decrying labels, may read our comments and mull it over, and even those who's first thought was that labels are bad may also do so, and maybe read a bit on the subject.The least they can do is to keep an open mind.

The worst thing for me about this thread is the lack of knowledge on some parts of how difficult it is to get support. Having 5-6 children in class (or last year more than 50% of the class who had an IEP does not mean that you get extra bodies sufficient to support those children, whose needs are not all the same and sometimes behavioural and often complex.
Listen to the news about cuts in budget - it isn't just now, successive governments have made it harder and harder to qualify for support and I wonder if the proliferation of 'named' problems is a result of this because it gives you a firm starting point to try and get what used to be called a 'statement'.
You do your best to provide education which takes account of the differing needs (and sometimes, having a label does make it easier to do that) whilst at the same time trying to make sure that children and parents understand that their problems means that they may find things more difficult but that we are doing our best to enable them to achieve despite this. I have only come across a few parents who see a label as a reason for a child not having to bother.
Instead of complaining here, spend some time campaigning for funding for appropriate support for all those who need it. The impact on a class of having even only one, or often more very disruptive, sometimes violent children who take up teacher/TA time because of lack of support even though that has been applied for but not granted can affect the progress of ALL the children.
Picture arriving home to prepare the evening meal and finding, before you start, you have to calm a violent dispute between children, the resulting mayhem caused by the fight, the distress of the children not involved but frightened by the noise and the mess the dog has left on the floor because it managed to eat the contents of the bin and it made it sick!
That's what it feels like when you enter a class wanting to teach, with children with behavioural difficulties. Incidentally I'm typing this with my fingers strapped together thanks to the 6year old diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder who suddenly slammed the door as I reached out to open it further. He knew I was there but he just said "I was cross".

roses, I expect you know that many of the new wave of 'free' schools are for autistic children. With a bit of luck, the building can be designed with quiet areas and specialist staff are employed.

Some children with high functioning autism cope very well in main stream schools, but I agree with you that a specialist environment is best for many.

DD x-posts. We both moved on from that

roses, Jane et al there's no point in trying to explain to some people. Perhaps as a very young, unexperienced teacher I might have shared some of their views.

Shame on me.

My years not just trying to 'shovel' knowledge into young heads taught me that every child is different, every child deserves a chance. Yes, there is poor parenting in some instances (not a cause of ASD, etc) but then when it's genuinely a case of poor parenting all the more reason for the classroom to be the place of safety and warmth, and offer an environment condusive to learning and making up for the inadequacies of home, rather than looking down on children who are disadvantaged.

I cringe when I think back to my attitude when I started teaching in the early 1980s. I thought children who didn't do well were just lazy or deliberately naughty.

Over the years, it was certainly true that more youngsters had labels and there was a better understanding of certain conditions, although I don't think it was necessarily because there were more of them. Psychologists became better at diagnosing and special schools were closed, so more children with SEN were thrown into mainstream schools, without training for teachers or resources.

Labels can be helpful in identifying special needs. However, it's frustrating when learning plans are unrealistic and no resources are provided. It was very common to know what problems an individual child had, but not be able to do much, because there were 30+ other children in the class, many of whom also had individual needs.

It doesn't help when some parents think that a teacher can focus just on their child and abdicate responsibility for the others. It works best when parents, teachers and specialists work together. This isn't easy in a secondary school, because so many people are involved.

All I can say Quizqeen is thank God you are no longer teaching.If you can't differentiate between children with real problems and those who are normally well behaved but are naughty now and then ( most children) then it's a poor do.
The defiance disorder that you laughed at is well known and my own DGS has autism as well as that ( quite common) and also ADHD.The defiance is to everything.....not just to the odd thing as would be normal, so much so that if you say black they say white.Children like this will not comply with any instruction or order, and you find ways of suggesting things, and hopefully they will do as you want, but more often than not they won't.To say it is wearing is the understatement of the year.This is not normal child behaviour.His parents and ourselves were strict but soon found this didn't work.
Much reading on the subject showed that picking your battles, and rewarding often and suggestion worked slightly better.Autism often comes with a raft of other
behaviours.In the past, children were put into institutions where parents couldn't cope,
And if they went to 'normal' schools, their lives were a misery of loneliness and misunderstanding sometimes leading to exclusion.
Even experts don't agree on what is best, and normalisation was much championed a while back, but our own experience is that this is akin to ignoring their problems and leads to them being bullied.
A good caring school for autism is the best for them, and DGS is now lucky enough to be at one.

Speaking as someone who has "a label", sometimes it's helpful for people to know what extra support you need and sometimes you find yourself struggling, not just wth the condition, but with the expectation of limitation that the label brings. And, no I'm not going to say what my label is, because on this site it's simply not relevant.
I would prefer for the support needed to be the emphasis because any "difference" can vary widely from individual to individual, as indeed can their own attitude towards it.

There are none so blind as those that will not see. I feel sorry for them.

I'm with you on this, Lisalou, but not surprised by the attitudes and some of the negative comments on here towards your post. I'm retired now from teaching but still help out at a local nursery having spend most of my career working with children who had special needs of one kind or another, including difficult behaviour and learning difficulties. Since it has became the norm to find a label to give to people it seems to me this has coincided with people not needing or wanting to take responsibility for themselves. I was in a meeting once and the head teacher said a particular child had Defiant Disorder. Yes, being naughty (sorry, showing unacceptable behaviour) is now a disorder. I actually laughed out loud and everyone glared at me in a very disapproving manner!! In this world, there are naughty children, there are children who are not very bright academically and there are parents who have little idea how to bring up their children to be good citizens. While there are, of course, genuine children who have severe disabilities, in my opinion, the majority of problems do not need labels. I am fed up with most of the resources and welfare benefits of this country being more heavily weighted in that area instead of rewarding those who choose to do right in society or are gifted in any particular area, not necessarily academic....and, quite frankly, I don't care a toss about any negative comments which may be directed towards me for saying this. I know I have bought up a great family myself and been praised by parents for my 'tough love ' approach to child rearing and education and the results I have achieved. Only recently an ex parent of the nursery came back to tell me that his daughter had been offered a place on a gifted maths program at secondary school and that I had spotted her potential when she was 3 years old and thanked me for the good early start I had given her.

Having worked as a teaching assistant for 30 years I have to agree that we have an awful lot more children with educational problems then ever before. I am now retired but what makes me cross is that we were expected to work with the children all the time and that a lot of younger teachers didn't want to know. The interesting thing was that when offsted or visitors came to the school they would then work with them. When I was a TA you needed no qualifications,now you do but it's still the teachers job to work with the children as much as they can.

Some of the views here just make me
Everyone is entitled to an opinion and I'm not going to waste time trying to change opinions.

We are all struggling to do our best for our children and grandchildren and do not need to be told it is naughtiness when it clearly is not.Lets hope this thread helps to educate those who have no real experience of these conditions.

Those who label these children as 'lazy' or blame poor parenting are just showing how totally ignorant they are. Normally I'd welcome different points of view, but there are times when, if you don't have a clue what you're talking about then 'it's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt' in the words of Abraham Lincoln.

I think Lisalou might be my GS's head teacher. He is waiting for an assessment - there is a very long waiting list - and meanwhile his education is suffering. He is one of 3 children and the others do not behave like him so very unlikely it could be poor parenting as suggested earlier. He gets no support from the school, just continued punishment from the head teacher, yet when he had his initial meeting with CAMHS it was immediately noticed that he was displaying symptoms of ASD/ADHD just by his general behaviour (not bad, just different). Life can be very difficult and to find out the reason for his behaviour would be a great relief.

teenager. Gah!

Lots of conflicting views. I have had a child with Tourette's before it became well known and it was a long hard journey to get an official diagnosis even tho my dr brother in Canada, where it was well known, said she had classic symptoms . This was forty years ago, I eventually had to get a private consult for diagnosis. It helped me enormously to have her condition recognised as she was being treated badly by others. I worked for a great many years with children with special needs, and with children and adults with autism and Asperger. It helped parents get a diagnosis as they could push for the right "treatment/placement". But I am still unsure that there may be some parents pushing for an official diagnosis where symptoms are not extreme, in order to get funding. I've seen both sides and there is no clear answer, it's a minefield.

sorry...'an autistic teensager'

Btw, has anyone come across the wonderful book 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime' by Mark Haddon? It's told from the perspective of and autistic teenager who sets out to track down a murderer. The stage production is also quite remarkable, if ever it comes your way. Both gave me an insight into autism which I found very valuable and very moving.

I see where the OP is coming from, yet welcome the recognition of conditions such as Aspergers, ASD and Dislexia. The education system seems hugely more complex nowadays, than when our GSs were at school in the 1970s and 80s.

Both DiLs are teachers/education development specialists and we have benefitted from their expertise in this area. They have identified that DH is dyslexic, as is DS2 whilst DS1 is apparently on the Aspergers spectrum.... Even so and despite this late diagnosis, both DSs are good husbands and fathers and hold down well paid, responsible jobs.

I'm wondering whether, left in the hands of experts, we might all be on some spectrum or other....unbeknownst.

Sorry this is a late post and I've skipped the middle two pages but I'm absolutely horrified at the replies you've received. It's blindingly obviously to anyone of any intelligence that this labelling has lost a whole generation which in the past would just have been called learners and helped or punished for laziness as appropriate. It's the poor parenting seen so often today - otherwise known as the me me me generation. Well done for bringing it up - have courage to tell the truth.