Finding Our Place-- Successes and Setbacks in the School System. Chapter 8-- "The School Dismissed Us." Hi. My name is Audrey, and my son's name is Austin. Austin actually wasn't diagnosed until sixth grade, so that would put him at 12 at the time. The beginning of his school career certainly wasn't difficult, but there were times that were not very easy for us. It actually got more difficult after he was diagnosed, although you would think that it would be the other way around.

When he was born, I think, as his mom, I knew all along that he was autistic, as I was picking up on certain signs right away. The rest of my family just thought that it was me with postpartum depression. I didn't form that instant bond with Austin like most moms do. He just didn't seem to want to have anything to do with me, which was really depressing for me.

He was a very fussy baby. He never slept at night ever. He just cried all the time. He wasn't an easy baby. I just thought that I was a bad parent, and the fact that he didn't talk or become potty-trained until much later didn't help with those feelings. Where we live, they had something called an intermediary unit, which was a form of early intervention. So right away, they got in there and started working with Austin.

They did amazing things. They were sending people to our home. They taught him sign language. They were working with him through play. They got into a play group where I would take him once a week. But then, I don't know if the funding stopped or if Austin got to a certain age, but all of a sudden it was more focused on speech therapy.

I was running around at different places doing things like taking him two times a week to speech therapy while also trying to work a full-time job. We didn't have family that could watch him, so I had to put him in very expensive daycare. That's where the push to get him potty-trained really happened because, of course, you can't put your child into daycare unless they're potty-trained. So that was difficult because I felt like I was pushing him for something that he wasn't ready to do.

Outside of that-- and to skip around a bit, I noticed the sensory issues right away. He didn't like taking a bath. Water to him was acid, so bathing him was not an enjoyable experience. At the same time, he loved playing in water and would spend hours at the sink playing and stacking dishes like he was a mini plumber. In a similar way, he loved to go outside and be outdoors, but sitting in the grass was very frustrating to him because of the sense of the texture in the grass.

Once he started in kindergarten, they began to notice some of these things too. They had speech therapy and an aide. Any time that they had an activity, they made sure I was there too. I was the room mom and a chaperone. Then in first grade, we moved to a different state, and he had this teacher that was very, very mean.

We had a parent-teacher conference right off the bat, and the first thing she said to me was, your son is a major distraction in my classroom. You need to do something about it. He's distracting the other students and not learning the things that he needs to learn. It was an awful year. I think his first grade year was very traumatizing. On top of the move, they could not accommodate him and just made him feel like he was a distraction that didn't belong anywhere in the classroom.

He would try to participate in things, but he would get shut out, which was very devastating to him. For example, they had a breakfast with Santa, but you couldn't sit on Santa's lap unless you brought a gift in. That day, he mysteriously could not find the gift that he had brought in, so he couldn't sit on Santa's lap. So it was things like that. I couldn't even be there for him as a parent because the teacher just did not want to have anything to do with me.

Thankfully, we ended up being redistricted, so we got out of that school and into a better one. He got an IEP. They pretty much started right away with speech therapy and working with him one on one. They came up with all the cool things you can possibly imagine-- fidget toys, going down to the OT room and sitting on bouncy balls. Just working with him in every way imaginable. In the classroom, there could have been more accommodations, but we really loved that school.

When we moved into middle school is when everything hit the fan. The progression with reading, grades, and homework was difficult. His father wasn't on board. The rest of the family wasn't on board. My dad and my family are a farm family, so we're very traditional and hardworking. You don't really have a problem. You just need to work through it or put some extra effort in and things will be fine.

So for Austin to say, I'm having trouble reading; or, I can't sit for more than five minutes; or, the teacher said this about me, and to be responded with, well, that's on you, Austin; or, you have to put more effort in; or, you need to work with the teacher more so it works out better-- all that stung.

My father was really hard on him, and I think his dad had been really hard on him. At the middle school, they really started to press me. One individual actually came out and said, I think your child should be on medication. I think you should take him to the doctor so that he can be more successful in school. I now know that that's against the law, but we didn't think that we really had any options other than that, so we did.

We took him to doctor after doctor. We had some really good ones and we had some really bad ones. We wanted to find the best fit, like all parents do. One of the places we went diagnosed him with ADD and ADHD. After that diagnosis, the school really got down to business and started monitoring him.

It was actually way too much. It was like they were watching everything he did. They documented everything he did. He couldn't go to the bathroom without it being documented. He was lazy. He was tired. He couldn't stay awake. What was he eating? Was he sleeping enough? It was a lot.

We ended up taking him to another place, and it was there where we had two really kind doctors that diagnosed Austin with autism. It was continuing to be hard with the family. My family had never dealt with that before, and it very much felt like it was just me and Austin. No one knew what Asperger's was. No one wanted to deal with it. It was just one of those things like, you're going to straighten up; and, it's all in your mind.

I feel like I took the brunt of it and, a lot of times, I heard that I was a bad mom. I got, why can't you just do this? Why can't Austin just do that? I got that from my work. I got that from my family. I got that from my husband.

Outside of the home, after that second diagnosis, things got even worse. The school dismissed our diagnosis. They said that the tests that our psychologists and psychiatrists used were not compatible and that Alex had not met the criteria for their tests that the school used.

As a result, they said Austin was not actually autistic, so they tested him over and over again. He was constantly being pulled out of class because what we had done wasn't good enough. On top of that, they kept asking him to do things that, in my opinion, were out of the realm of what he was capable of.

I couldn't understand why I was pushing so hard for accommodations and things that I knew would help him but the school just fought me and fought me on it. For example, during his seventh or eighth grade year, iPads all of a sudden became a thing and everyone was allowed to have one to help with their instruction, especially if you had a disability or had an IEP.

Of course, I wanted one for Austin, but the school came back and told me that they could not provide one for him. I would have to cover that cost, so I did. But the school couldn't even help him keep watch of it. If it got stolen, it was entirely his responsibility. I remember that there was another student there who had disabilities and his aide set up his daily schedule on the iPad so that he could visually go in and find out what homework was what and what day it was due.

But then when I asked them if they could do that for Austin, they told me, no. Austin needs to do that for himself. He has learned helplessness, and all you're doing is contributing to that. So if Austin can't do it himself, then there's nothing we can do. At home, there was screaming. There was crying. He started to hit himself in the head. He started to hit walls and break things in the house. He would sit under the table, rock, and break pencils.

The teachers would say, oh, you only have to spend five minutes with him on his homework, and then whatever isn't completed we'll just mark it as he tried. The problem is that it wasn't like he wasn't putting in the effort or trying. He tried. He wanted to get good grades. His goal was the dean's list. He wanted to get all A's. There was just no support for him, and he would get frustrated about that.

In gym, for example, he had an A. And then one day, he didn't dress because he felt awkward in the changing room or something. They weren't able to accommodate that, so he got a B. There was always just one thing that was thwarting him from being successful. So he just gave up.

We were trying too many different things. Everybody was so anxious and upset. My father was starting to try to get on board. We were going to a billion different doctors, trying different medications, different diets, all these different things, and that continued into ninth grade. It got so bad that he tried to kill himself.

He put his hands through a glass window and we had to hide all the knives in the house. He developed tics where he was shrieking nonstop every day. Just shrieking like a wild animal. And that was really hard for me because even my husband could not understand where that was coming from. It created conflict because my husband could not understand where it was coming from, but I knew that it was all of his anxiety and fear and not being accepted coming out as a physical symptom.

"The Environment Was the Difference." The school was still refusing to work with us. I was calling the disability law lawyer's office every day for months until I finally got a free disability lawyer. I wanted what was right for my son. I wanted the accommodations. I wanted him to have a regular school life.

I came at that school with everything I had. We had advocates and lawyers. When we had IEP meetings, there must have been 20 people in the room. They finally took him out of the school and put him in a school specifically for autistic kids. Long story short, that was not a good experience either, and I ended up homeschooling Austin for his home school certificate, which is basically the high school diploma.

Around the same time when we pulled him, my parents-- bless their hearts-- were fully on board. They learned about autism. They learned about Asperger's. Things really changed in the family dynamic. My dad is very understanding now. He and Austin sit down and are great buddies. They work together on the farm, which has been a great outlet for Austin, enabling him to be out in nature.

I'm a librarian, and he goes with me to the library every day. There's not a day he's not in the library reading, researching, and working on computers. He helps out the librarians, especially with the technology stuff when we can't figure it out. He is just so amazing. He's in driving school right now, working on getting his driver's license.

We also found a lot of local agencies that have been very helpful. He is working with one now that helps kids transition into working and living. He's now looking at getting into college and taking higher education classes.

I think my story really goes to show the value and importance of having a support system, whether it was finding community in Asperger Experts or the work that his father and my parents have put in. Having that backing makes such a difference. Altogether, we've helped mold and make this truly amazing person.