Good communication between teachers and parents is essential—-that might not be the first thing one thinks of, but I think having good and open communication between home and school can be help to build a strong foundation for a sound relationship among all parties. (And the main person I wish to have a good relationship with when it comes to Charlie’s education is his teacher—who spends so much time with him, thinks about how to teach him, writes up his lessons and trains the aides and strategizes……) Trust gets built up this way, too—so essential.

And there has to be training in pragmatic matters. So that, if a child hits an aide, or hits their own head, the mentality is not “this is a terrible crisis!” but “we need to figure this out.” Not exile the child from a mainstream setting, or call for various protective measures.

The teachers need to know we are with them, not against them. Seems so obvious, yet can be so hard.

the concepts that Mika described above and that Charlie’s school seems to understand so well should be presented somewhere in a formal way that can effect change for all.

How best to do this?

The education system is buckling under the weight of all the need on top of a very tenuous special education system not designed for children with ‘behavioral’ (non-compliant) aspects.

Sometimes the answers in working with kids are so simple but we all forget in the crisis moments of a meltdown, for example.

Maybe we should all draft something practical about education strategies that work and present it to the organization ‘poised to become the largest autism organization in the U.S.’

sometimes a lot of money is spent on children when they are very little, but when they ‘age out’ of EI or preschool special education, the services and school placements dwindle to nothing if the child is ‘non-compliant’ and cannot test well. All that is left to the families is to ‘home school’ or send their children to classrooms in public or state approved schools that use similar methods. These classrooms are no better than outpatient institutions. I think this is what Alison Singer was referrring to when she talked of her despair. It wasnt her child that caused her despair, but the fate that could befall her as she grew older. Lets face it , the scary reality is that little kids are cute and managable, but older children, not always. It takes dedicated people to work with students. Sometimes the staff are wonderful and dedicated even in the worst schools, but they need to receive proper training.

If children and adolescents are treated as a ’set of behaviors’ and not taught with patience and understanding the student will suffer. Thousands of lives are being ruined by poorly run and underfunded programs. It really should be a federal program and every district, every state should get the same services.

That said enough (and a lot) to us.

a) Is a really bad person who must be punished, no matter what it takes, or

b) Doesn’t understand proper human behavior, and thus is not human, and thus exists outside the “rules” for how we treat other humans. It is therefore OK to torture them when we are unfortunate enough to have to care for them.

It is never the case that the student’s bad behaviors are simply a sign that our teaching methods are totally inappropriate, we have absolutely no clue on how to deal with a particular student, and our view of special education students is so jaded that we have absolutely no business being in the same room with them.

And Finland is by no means at all anywhere near perfect.