Social skills/laptop on IEP

[mirandah]

So I thought today was just results of DS's learning disability evals, when it was in fact both that and his IEP- they noticed me incorrectly (they called it an IEP Planning Meeting). I was pretty well prepared anyway so I guess I'm going to let that go.

But now I have to mull on their suggestions and decide whether or not to sign the IEP when it is finished in a month.

The short version is: we're probably moving to an assistive device for writing, (womp womp) and despite my desire for social skills push-ins, we're compromising by putting him in a new social skills group for older kids. Anyone have any advice to share regarding the practical use of a laptop in the classroom? He'll be using CoWriter, and they were looking for an organizational software for executive functioning. Also- thoughts on MGW's Social Fortune curric? It's for middle/high schoolers, and it's what they'll be using with DS, in a group of ASD kids a grade or two older than him.

If you're a glutton for details- read on, it's therapeutic for me to spew all the words!!

Writing: The kid won't write. He CAN write, as evidenced by another OT eval, but his writing is nonreadable unless you hover over him and force him to concentrate 100%, or if he's copying text. It is severely inhibiting his seatwork assignments. Out of necessity, his writing pullouts have morphed into him learning how to use cowriter (word prediction software). That's two pullouts a week. The OT (who gives him indirect services based on finding appropriate accommodations in the classroom) with whom he has worked since he is in kindy, is now of the mind it's time for assistive tech- a laptop with certain software. This would help him with one of my other big issues- executive functioning. His planner comes home empty or unreadable because he won't write in it, and he lost or threw away 90% of his science papers this term.

Result: My gut is telling me this is the time to resort to a laptop. Even he can't read his own handwriting probably 50% of the time. I'm feeling a bit defeated, since we've worked so hard at handwriting all these years, but he has been writing much more descriptive sentences on his laptop. A bonus- he won't have pullouts for writing any more. Some stigma around using a laptop, I'll have to give him some easy descriptors to respond to peers.

Social skills: I went in really wanting social skills push ins, which school has balked at. Right now they are pulling him out with other ASD kids and going through MGW material. I pushed against this again. She asked why- I said because I want to see him in an inclusion setting for social skills, getting more pragmatic in the moment assistance. Plus, he's really burnt out on Superflex. He despises  social skills and thinks he's above all of it. I love the MGW curric but we have been doing MGW since preschool (his first private setting modified it for a younger group), and he's had social skills privately. She asked if we'd consider adding him to her 4-5th grade social skills group (he is in 3rd), which uses MGW's social fortune/social fate. She showed me the material which is sortof anime/manga-like (which DS loves). She did acquiesce that DS was getting bored with the material they were on now and seemed to have most of it down pat (e.g. they are currently working on zones of regulations, which he knows and demonstrates appropriately).

Result: She is going to try to get him to join this new older group. While I really want a teacher who can advise him "in the moment" this is probably the best option for now. I did like the concepts I saw in this social fortune book (e.g. there was a manga comic about why we don't constantly kick the back of the kid's chair in front of us incessantly, and how that would make others feel). I told her I want a way to measure the success of these pullouts. DS reports consistently that he hates social skills pullouts and simply doesn't participate. She reports that he loves social skills and is her most prized student. Maybe I have to go in and observe a class.

[mirandah]

Oh- and as suspected, no learning disabilities. I was wondering if there was a writing disability but he's at grade level. Average IQ, not enough standard deviation on his Woodcock Johnson. Only his reading comprehension came up below average, at 48th %.

[akafred]

Is 48% not considered in the average range?

[mirandah]

Not enough standard deviation to be considered learning disabled, is what they told me.

ETA: because of that score, tho, we are getting additional service time and goals around reading comp.

[jmski]

Sounds like a good plan to me. I use CoWriter with my students and it helps. Will he be getting keyboarding/typing instruction to build fluency with typing?

[mrsbuttinski]

First, let me quibble with the notion of "resorting to" a laptop. This is not a failure. Am I resorting to glasses every morning rather than working harder to overcome my myopia? A laptop will level the playing field so he can focus on getting his ideas organized on paper instead of drawing letters.

mirandah, said:

Writing: The kid won't write. He CAN write, as evidenced by another OT eval, but his writing is nonreadable unless you hover over him and force him to concentrate 100%, or if he's copying text.

This has the aroma of a student who is drawing letters. Not a good use of anyone's time. I know kids who have described this exercise as both physically painful and humiliating.

It is severely inhibiting his seatwork assignments. Out of necessity, his writing pullouts have morphed into him learning how to use cowriter (word prediction software). That's two pullouts a week. The OT (who gives him indirect services based on finding appropriate accommodations in the classroom) with whom he has worked since he is in kindy, is now of the mind it's time for assistive tech- a laptop with certain software.

I agree on giving him access and training on this technology. By the intermediate grades a lot of kids are working on keyboards for bigger assignments. This should relieve the power struggle and may even improve his attitude around school. I have friends whose sons did all their work on laptops- math included.

This would help him with one of my other big issues- executive functioning.

Not to piss in your cornflakes, I wouldn't bet the rent. IME, EF deficits are waaaay bigger than just not wanting to write.

His planner comes home empty or unreadable because he won't write in it, and he lost or threw away 90% of his science papers this term.

OMG. I could have written this back in 2004, and 2005, and 2006, ... This was a challenge at Chez Buttinski as well. And most of my friends of kids with Aspergers report the same except for Laura and Libby whose sons' special interest was school performance and who were kind of anal retentive about this kind of thing.

YMMV, but IME, this was something we worked on very aggressively in the intermediate grades, and was basically the gist of DS's middle school IEPs as the result of a missing science paper that was in his backpack all along. What worked was a combination of human intervention and consequences. Early on his IEP had an accommodation where his teachers would initial all his assignments in his assignment book and at the end of the day, his home room teacher/IEP custodian would prompt him as he packed up his backpack using the list. This wasn't a quick fix; it took a couple of years of this "hand over hand" to click. At home, work would be completed independently and packed under my watch/initialed. As we faded the prompts, we put a consequence of calling a peer to request assignments in place. DS hated this, and got a whole lot better at remembering his materials.

Our district gives all students a graphic organizer/handbook so it wasn't a stigmatizing strategy once DS got away from the teacher over his shoulder. In late middle school we tried using technology as many of his peers were using smartphones and iPods to record assignments, TBH, he did better with paper.


Result: My gut is telling me this is the time to resort to a laptop. Even he can't read his own handwriting probably 50% of the time. I'm feeling a bit defeated, since we've worked so hard at handwriting all these years, but he has been writing much more descriptive sentences on his laptop.

I'm sorry you are sad about this. Writing wasn't a hill for me to die on. I did find that relieved of constant writing drills, DS's penmanship continued to improve. He still writes like a child, but so do a lot of young men I know from scouts. I felt badly about DS's handwriting until I saw that of a number of my scouts while working with them on their Eagle paperwork. This are boys who went on to become teachers, engineers, PTs.

Relieved of the burden of physically producing written work, you may find he produces better quality work. But, it's likely some of the EF and ToM stuff will still impact his writing especially around more fictional assignments.

A bonus- he won't have pullouts for writing any more. Some stigma around using a laptop, I'll have to give him some easy descriptors to respond to peers.


I don't expect much stigma around using a laptop. He just needs to say he prefers it to using a pencil and paper.

He should be getting keyboard instruction and be taught Word at a minimum. He needs to become fluent on a keyboard so he can keep up. This took a while and TBH, the most useful practice came from allowing DS to participate on a couple of railfan forums.

We deliberately avoided word prediction and composition software because we wanted DS to hone his writing chops without if possible. He used rubrics for written work instead. He rose to the challenge. But I have friends whose kids did really well with Kidspiration/Inspriation software. A couple of the kids eventually moved beyond needing the software by high school but at least one of them still does. The latter has a lot of language-based LD issues and attends a cyber hybrid charter- college probably isn't in his future.

Social skills: I went in really wanting social skills push ins, which school has balked at.

What would that look like? It is increasingly difficult to push-in social skills beyond the primary grades without stigma.

Right now they are pulling him out with other ASD kids and going through MGW material. I pushed against this again. She asked why- I said because I want to see him in an inclusion setting for social skills, getting more pragmatic in the moment assistance.

This is a tough situation. I know sometimes DS's SLP would push-in services for cetain kids at lunch or the playground to help them use their already mastered social skills. But this didn't happen until the kids had rote instruction and a base-level of skills. It's difficult because the SLP or aide has to be very discrete to avoid stigma in practicing social skills in a mainstream setting much beyond 2nd grade. DS did MGW with a couple of older boys from 2nd-4th/5th grade. This worked well because they had very similar presentations and were served in mainstream settings. The SLP and psych gave us homework around social skills to be done at playdates, camps and scouts.

Plus, he's really burnt out on Superflex. He despises social skills and thinks he's above all of it.

As I recall, your DS doesn't like being treated differently than his peers. Nothing like a social skills group to make a kid feel judged and different so I am not surprised you are getting pushback from him. DS was like this as well.

That said, not enjoying it isn't really a reason to ditch a curriculum. I don't know your kid, and there are so many ways a boy his age with ASD can present in the context of peers, that it's hard to say whether he's being well served by Superflex or not. I find Superflex is often chosen for kids who have stigmatizing behaviors that interfere with them interacting successfully with peers who are younger. At this age, DS had moved onto TAYTAB which was awesome. When he took away as much as he could there, he moved onto Social Behavior Mapping.

I love the MGW curric but we have been doing MGW since preschool (his first private setting modified it for a younger group), and he's had social skills privately. She asked if we'd consider adding him to her 4-5th grade social skills group (he is in 3rd), which uses MGW's social fortune/social fate. She showed me the material which is sortof anime/manga-like (which DS loves). She did acquiesce that DS was getting bored with the material they were on now and seemed to have most of it down pat (e.g. they are currently working on zones of regulations, which he knows and demonstrates appropriately).

I am not familiar with that program; it's newer. It's designed for tween/teens. I'm not sure if it covers the same ground as TAYTAM. I feel like TAYTAB is critical because it teaches the concept of ownership of what others think based on your behavior. Until a kid truly appreciates that he's treated like an "outlier" because his behavior tells people he is and that his tribe is wary of those who act differently, social skills is just a set of rules of etiquette. It's kind of like the difference between ABA and CBT- ABA trains/CBT teaches. Some kids need training (a set of rules) before they can be available for teaching (applying those rules to more global situations). Being with a slightly older group could take some of the sting out of the pull-outs.

Result: She is going to try to get him to join this new older group. While I really want a teacher who can advise him "in the moment" this is probably the best option for now. I did like the concepts I saw in this social fortune book (e.g. there was a manga comic about why we don't constantly kick the back of the kid's chair in front of us incessantly, and how that would make others feel). I told her I want a way to measure the success of these pullouts. DS reports consistently that he hates social skills pullouts and simply doesn't participate. She reports that he loves social skills and is her most prized student. Maybe I have to go in and observe a class.

Maybe your kid hates being the kid who requires social skills pull-outs but actually enjoys being a leader in that setting. I don't think there's anything to be gained from you going in to observe- your kid wants out and is negotiating to that end. If he sees you sitting in the room, he will put on an Oscar-worthy performance. Better to send in someone from your team. DS's psychologist observed him a couple of times- he brought a lot more insight to the process than I would because of his background as an educator.

DS wasn't a fan of social skills either. Part of the problem was that he was always one of the more subtle presentations relative to some of the other kids. But he needed them. So we explained the need for being able to be comfortable socially in group projects and later in the workplace and slogged on. We also made a deal that if he behaved more appropriately in social settings as proof that he had mastered what he needed, we could talk about fading them.

[mirandah]

Dec 2, 2016 6:34:50 GMT -5 mrsbuttinski said:

Am I resorting to glasses every morning rather than working harder to overcome my myopia? A laptop will level the playing field so he can focus on getting his ideas organized on paper instead of drawing letters.

I appreciate that analogy and plan on using it when we talk about how to tell his peers. You're right, I'm probably overblowing the effect it'll have on him stigma-wise.Our district gives all students a graphic organizer/handbook so it wasn't a stigmatizing strategy once DS got away from the teacher over his shoulder. In late middle school we tried using technology as many of his peers were using smartphones and iPods to record assignments, TBH, he did better with paper. I'm curious how they will handle this- the OT mentioned something of an "App" that will go on the laptop for his executive functioning / planning piece. She said she would "work with the caseworker" to implement this piece, but I want to make sure the classroom teacher is well supported too. They do so many handouts at this age, still, and I can't figure out how he'll be able to type those. They also do the "pass your paper back one" so the person near you grades your paper; this is humiliating to him and he regularly gets things wrong because another kid can't read his writing. Again, the typing will hopefully address this, but is the class going to wait for him to print it so they can grade it? I'm having a hard time seeing how this will play out, and to that end, I'll probably come in and observe once they get it in place after winter break. 


Social skills: I went in really wanting social skills push ins, which school has balked at.

What would that look like? It is increasingly difficult to push-in social skills beyond the primary grades without stigma.His previous caseworker (whom I adored) suggested push-ins. She suggested something like an inclusive book club, or something like the "lunch bunch" of the early primary years but updated. I like the idea in theory, but I don't think his current caseworker, who is pretty curmudgeonly, is up to the task- hence my decision to let her "do it her way" with old school pullouts. I agree, it's a fine line to keep it from looking odd to the other kids. 

 DS wasn't a fan of social skills either. Part of the problem was that he was always one of the more subtle presentations relative to some of the other kids. But he needed them. So we explained the need for being able to be comfortable socially in group projects and later in the workplace and slogged on. We also made a deal that if he behaved more appropriately in social settings as proof that he had mastered what he needed, we could talk about fading them.

Same here,  and I do agree he needs social skills. And he loves being "good" at something, which make sense why his caseworker said he seems to enjoy social skills because he is so much more verbal and engaged that the other kids. LOL, we actually promised to let him come to his IEP meeting this year because he was so hell bent on "graduating" from the program. Thank goodness he forgot about that promise, he is not at all ready to attend his own meetings.

Thanks again for the feedback!