@A MyAutismTeam Member mine is not on a schoolbus. we haven't started any services yet with school district. I don't know know how effective our path will be, so stories from parents of older children will be most helpful for you. I can tell you why I choose our path. We made the decision based on FAPE philosophy of LRE- least restrictive environment. He can function in his non- special ed preschool right now with 1:1 ABA support. If we find that he gets to a point where he can't function in that environment, then we would look for the next least restrictive environment- a mixed classroom of special ed and other kids. I want him to learn how to play with kids with minimal prompts. I think we can learn that faster in a non-special ed school setting. He has a friend in school that he really likes. They chase each other around. We want to expand that to other kids. If you are considering a regular preschool, look at one with less structure and lots of activities and outside playtime. Mine was in a more structured preschool before he got diagnosed and he showed lots of aggression towards other students. The teachers, while they were well-meaning, did inappropriate stuff like tried to force him to eat food he didn't want. One teacher asked me one day if there were problems at home. I knew I wasn't beating my kid so I took him out of that school the next week and put him in a better environment. I tell you that story because this is my trial and error approach. If something is not working, I look to adjust his environment. You will want your kid to be happy in school- he will let you know. Wherever he goes, you will be most successful when you are highly involved in his care and talk with the staff everyday.

Mentioned Users

A MyAutis...

@ HongKim My son is 42 months. we have had in home ABA for 1.5 years & moving to center based ABA. Reason being - we have seen lot of new skills acquired by him with ABA, however he needs to practice those skills & build up on those in controlled setting. We feel pushing him to next level is to send him for ABA at the center. He does attend school 5 days a week, 5 hours each day. However we have not seen so much success with goals / skills in school although student teacher ratio is 2:1. Motivation, Scenario planning and follow thru seems to be a problem at school.

Since we will do intensive ABA this year, we'll pick him up from school early by 1/ 1.5 hours. (Last hours seem to be less productive with lunch etc). Hope all that down time relaxes him before he does his ABA at the center.

We have to weigh in and see what's working for our child and decide. Ultimately we all want to see progress.

The IEP meeting went well. I had sent the existing ISP that my son is using for ABA and the school has used many of the same goals. It looks as though my son will be in a class with all special education kids. I plan on attending some to get a better idea of if/how the kids interact with one another. My worry is that if all of the kids are special education, they will not have much interaction with one another and would defeat one of the main reasons I had hoped to send my son to school. The teacher has not bee assigned yet so I was unable to meet her. I signed up to have my son take the bus in the morning and my wife would pick him up in the afternoon. LikesElephants and KorneliaLapinskiPeck, do your kids take a bus to school or do you drop them off and pick them up? I am anxious/worried on sending my son on a bus alone for the first time.

I should add- I think we are seeing the most progress because of the preschool environment as opposed to our home environment maybe because there are peers there so the therapists have more social skills they can work on there

We have 1:1 ABA with him for four hours everyday in a typical developmental private preschool and we do home. I would say it's extremely helpful in a school setting, as it's more structured environment and that is where he can tend to get overwhelmed and tantrum. We are one month in, seeing a big improvement in his communication.