I have a son about to enter middle school in the fall, and they have *some* supports in place, but it just isn’t enough for his level of social processing and executive function/organizational skills. It is our opinion (his dad and me) that he needs to remain in a small classroom until these skills can be increased. This can only be offered in private school settings. The other option may be home-schooling, but of course this is not ideal either due to the need to generalize social pragmatic skills.

It’s the unstructured, unsupervised times that are the most difficult for these kids- and where my child seems to struggle the most already. Add to that the confusion of a larger school, changing classes, maintaining a locker and agenda, social pressures and bullying… it’s a recipe for disaster.

I think ideally the regular education placements need to be reformed, BUT kids need to be there to endure the growing pains of these programs – to subject their families to the real-life consequences they will face through those growing pains.

Even typically developing young people are becoming depressed and worse due to the pressures that exist in the middle schools – add to that a developmental disability – higher anxiety and lower frustration levels – I give credit to parents who will keep there kids in the public school placements and endure, advocate, mediate etc. to make lasting changes in their districts. Special Education is truly the next Civil Rights Movement.