My 5 year old is currently still on a wait list for a medical evaluation, but we are pretty confident he has ASD. He has an IEP that’s mostly behavioral - giving him breaks when he becomes overwhelmed, allowing him extra time to transition between tasks, a visual schedule, etc. He has a bit of a speech delay, he understands things fairly well but his vocabulary isn’t where it should be. He won’t recall his day, never asks questions, that sort of thing. If we ask him anything about his school day he just says “yeah” or says a phrase he heard earlier in the day. He is good at knowing how he’s feeling, but he isn’t good at handling his feelings. It’s his way or the highway.

At school he is hitting, screaming, and refusing to follow instructions when it comes time to transition from one task to the next during the day. Today he was trying to run from the classroom. He also didn’t follow his class outside for pick up, he didn’t want to come home so he sat in the classroom with the principal and teacher’s aid.

The school has been great about following the IEP, the principal reached out to me today to ask about ways we reward him, discipline him, and mentioned they may need to start taking away recesses if he won’t behave to help him learn. I’m not sure how I feel about this particular part though. His teacher is communicating with me very well and has told me when he has a particularly good or bad day.

While I’m happy the school is working with him well so far, I’m embarrassed and upset they even have to do this in the first place. It’s not that I’m embarrassed my son is who he is, I just never pictured myself here. I was always good in schools so was my husband. We’ve never done the conversations with the principal and all that, and I feel like I’ve failed as a parent or that I’m being judged for my son’s behavior. I’m also worried that he won’t be able to ever make friends because we live in a small town where there’s 16 kids in his class and they’ll be together until they graduate high school. What child wants to be friends with a kid who always screams and hits them? I feel so disappointed and on the verge of tears when I hear he’s had a bad day or get a call from the principal. He can’t have behavioral therapy until he has an autism diagnosis. He’s graduated from OT. I don’t know what else to do or how to be a good advocate for my son while also being respectful to the teachers who work hard to take care of him while he makes their jobs harder.