You need an advocate. I would call your local ASA to see if you can get one. The school is playing games with your daughters education because they do not want to spend the money.

If there are more than 8 kids in your daughter's class she just doesn't feel comfortable around all those kids and at age 5 should not be forced to answer questions or do anything in front of the class,

If you feel this school does not have the right type of learning enviroment for your daughter, you can look at other schools that may have smaller or better curriculum for your daughter.

Your important words to help get more for your daughter is REGRESSING. and for her to get an aide would be LEAST RESTRICTED ENVIROMENT. NO KIDS LEFT BEHIND ACT.

FIRST GET A DIAGNOSIS FROM YOUR NEUROLIST, ONCE you have that they are legally responsible to help her. Look up your states Head of special education and write a letter to the head of the child study team, cc. teacher, social worker, case worker ask for a meeting with a change in IEP. you can specify more speech, other aides in helping with classwork. Specifiy you expect to hear from by (date)(about 15-20 days) and if you do not hear from them you will politely cc them on your letter to ________(state head of special ed)

If you can give a little more specifics about your daughter and her difficulties, what therapies school is providing and is it a public school?

You should get all your ducks in a row before you request a change in IEP, this way they have no excuses.
What you are doing at home with your daughter, makes you a great mom and this is just one hill to climb and we are here to help.

You can also write accomondations in an IEP which would say that she can demostrate her learning through writing or other ways instead of speaking in class.

If she doesn't have an IEP, I recommend you get her one. Read the book "From Emotions to Advocacy" so you have the knowledge and skill on how to get your daughter the IEP she needs.

Thank you for the suggestions and tips.

We are finally talking to a social worker on Monday. The counselor of the school was trying to avoid us asking for a social worker. This morning I went to an autism awareness and support group. I found out the law is extremely confusing but the good news is that social workers try to keep a low amount of children in special education schools so they don't get over crowded. They view if the school really have done all they can and that there is no improvement in the child. I know there has been improvement and the school has done absolutely nothing to try help my daughter. Exscuses were made with suggestions we csme up with thst doesn't involve the teacher ignoring the other children or them working over time. Only that they have to do a little extra work during school hours itself. We were told months ago that the counselor would look for a person to have one on one contact with her for about an hour one or two days a week. Now she is claiming that won't be good for Caterina and she would need a person 5 days a week without even trying the original plan. I also don't see what the issue is doing it 5 days a week to start out with. Last year one of the teachers wanted to learn basic sign language to teach the children during the 8 months she wasn't speaking. She had to be approved but the school wasn't approving it. She happened to speak again about three weeks after the teacher brought it up to us.

I know I have made games since my daughter was a baby to teach her things. Currently I am working on teaching her to write, read, and do math. Writing gets better each time but still not at her age level, she seems to being doing good at slowly picking up reading, and the math seems to go well to. For math I will be saying something like one auto plus one auto is two autos while playing autos with her. Then she will pick up on it and start saying something like one auto plus one auto plus one auto is three. I then say it could also be two autos plus one auto is three auto.

She comes home telling us and showing us things she learned in school. Very happy and proud., The teachers and school counselor have seen what she has learned while outside, during one on one time, and during pick up time but they don't count it because she doesn't do it on cue. Yet, she's still only 5. We aren't talking about a 17-year-old heading off to college or the work field.

Video priming (modelmekids), social narratives (social story books on amazon). Learn the frequent vocabulary used in the classroom for prompts, teach them to her. Its a bog gap from her thoughts to the teacher's questions, do biomed for adhd and ask for a reward system for functional class participation. Voila done. :)

I learned not to ask the questions in the first place. There are other ways of testing knowledge. Questions shut down communication. They put the person on the spot with only one proper response - the right answer. If you want a communicator, try not asking questions so much. (This is easier said than done, our school systems are based on question and answer systems.).

See: http://jamesdmacdonald.org/Articles/MacDonaldSt...