Letting Kids With Autism Off The Hook
October 10, 2008 / 4:09 pm • By Dr. Melissa ClouthierIt’s not a good idea generally to be to easy on kids. Like all humans, they’ll go toward pleasure and away from pain, and choose the short-term pleasure path even if it nets them long-term pain. The problem with a kid is that they don’t have a long-term perspective. They don’t know that the short-cuts today will hurt them tomorrow. Parents who let their kids off the hook do them a disservice.
Autistic kids often suffer with lowered expectations. I remember one ARD where a teacher said to me, “He does really well for an autistic kid.” Hells, bells! The autistic spectrum is wide and there are children who don’t speak, interact, can’t learn and are profoundly mentally retarded. If that’s the litmus test, he would succeed no matter.
This isn’t an isolated problem:
In fact, one of the reasons we pulled our son out of public school was because of the lowered expectations placed on kids with autism. Every “I can’t,” every anxious wince, every meltdown, was rewarded with fewer and fewer demands.
Finally, by the middle of October of our son Tom’s second grade year, Tom had achieved precisely what was easiest for him: his 1:1 had withdrawn him from art, music, gym, and all mainstreamed classes – and sat alone with him in a classroom rather than support him in a challenging environment.
Of course, it’s easier – and often pleasanter – to allow our children with autism to simply opt out of challenging situations. And sometimes there’s really no choice: as we all know, for example, melt downs and airplanes make a poor combination.
Right. But the classroom isn’t an enclosed airplane (something I’ve written about before) and the educational system is required to teach. It is not always easy, granted, but lowered expectations result in a child never reaching his potential. And, ironically, it results in the taxpayer being responsible for the care and keeping of a person dependent on the system when some investment early could have prevented that.
It is everyone’s best interests, not just the child’s, to expect great things.
