Monday, March 23, 2009

Distracted Genius

So, April is Autism Awareness Month. I realize that we still have 8 days left of March, but I didn't want it to sneak up on you...My goal this April is to include a fact or story or educational tidbit about autism in every blog post for the month. That doesn't mean that I'll only blog about autism next month, just that all my blogs will contain a note in recognition of Autism Awareness Month. 

Feel like joining me? The more people we can educate, the better the world will be for my little Owen and everyone living with autism. 

Speaking of Owen, today was the big 3-Year IEP Reevaluation Meeting. 

First of all, I just want to say how much it annoys me that these meetings are always so f*ing disorganized. It's not like this is a party planning committee or a casual get-together with friends. Note to public school system: When I walk into a room of supposed "experts" to hear what you have to say about my son and his educational future, I expect you to have your shit together. This includes actually reading what it is that you contributed to the report so that you can speak about it intelligently rather than reading it verbatim (grammatical errors and all) off the sheet of paper I have in front me. 

Alright, now that I've gotten that off my chest, I should say that overall the meeting was good. Or, at least, the information given at the meeting was good. He aced the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scales of Intelligence test (phonetically known as the "wipsy" by educators). As we've known for years, the kid is a genius, only now he's got a documented IQ score of 125 to prove it. (Alright, if you want to get technical, a 125 is actually just the "very superior intelligence" level, not "genius," but whatever.) The psychologist who administered the test added that she thinks his score might really be higher, but by the end he was tired and distracted, so he didn't score as high on the final sections. 

The gist of the meeting was the usual: He is brilliant and he is socially awkward and has trouble focusing. How will all of this play out as he gets older? That remains to be seen. He will continue to get social skills support. We will continue to work with him on when he has to exert every ounce of his energy on focusing and when it's okay to relax and be silly (or stare off into space). We will try to help him learn to interpret facial expressions so as to avoid some of the embarrassing and awkward situations that such misunderstandings can cause. We will just keep doing everything we can and maybe the school's well-meaning, yet sorely underfunded and understaffed efforts will help a little too. 

All I can hope is that no matter how hard it becomes to navigate the social structures and classroom dynamics as he gets older, he can hold onto the knowledge that he is exceptional and always will be. And that we love him just the way he is. 

For more information on autism or to find out more about Autism Awareness Month, visit the Autism Speaks website.

2 comments:

China said...

Obviously he'll do great things and be just fine.

E Erickson said...

Congrats on your smart son...I have been there, too!