Hi,
The social skills teacher who oversees Bug's aide and generally coordinates his life at school is driving me crazy. Her program officially is the "autism inclusion program" and Bug is the only kid in the program with-o an autism diagnosis. In general, this is okay and I think the social skills intervention is helping.
However, this teacher seems to have no clue about Tourette Syndrome. Bug is having two different facial tics these days--an exaggerated smile and a grimace--and the teacher is hell bent on eliminating them. First, she and the school Occupational Therapist (OT) decided he should be given things to chew on in class to prevent the tics (didn't work) and then she embarked on a course of "smile therapy" (as husband and I call it), trying to teach him how to have natural smiles. Ummm...that's not the problem. The Cheshire cat grin is a TIC...smile therapy won't make it go away.
Oh...and she never told her floater aide (who covers for his regular aide at lunch and recess) that he has Tourette's Syndrome or tics, resulting in Bug getting a red stick (for bad behavior) from the floater aide this week for "making mean faces at her." Turns out it was the grimace tic. The floater aide was truly upset and very apologetic when I talked to her about it. She had no idea. It definitely was not her fault (she is a very kind person), but now Bug has decided he "hates" her because of the red stick. He told me it was just too embarrassing to speak up and tell her it was a tic. After all, he is only 6.
I'm irritated on a couple of fronts. First, the teacher needs to train her aides properly. It is important that anyone who works with Bug knows that he has tics, esp facial tics, since it does look like he is making faces at people. Second, she and the Occupational Therapist (OT) are not qualified to do behavioral interventions for tics. When Bug is a bit older, we will find a CBIT therapist to do that. For now, we feel that he is too young and we are trying to work with him on feeling comfortable with himself, advocating for himself, and minimizing the pain associated with some of his tics.
I have already talked to the sp ed teacher about this twice in the past week and she seems not to get it. I'm going to try again tomorrow and then follow up with an e-mail to the school psychiatric. Does this sound like a reasonable approach? What else can I do?
Thanks.
The social skills teacher who oversees Bug's aide and generally coordinates his life at school is driving me crazy. Her program officially is the "autism inclusion program" and Bug is the only kid in the program with-o an autism diagnosis. In general, this is okay and I think the social skills intervention is helping.
However, this teacher seems to have no clue about Tourette Syndrome. Bug is having two different facial tics these days--an exaggerated smile and a grimace--and the teacher is hell bent on eliminating them. First, she and the school Occupational Therapist (OT) decided he should be given things to chew on in class to prevent the tics (didn't work) and then she embarked on a course of "smile therapy" (as husband and I call it), trying to teach him how to have natural smiles. Ummm...that's not the problem. The Cheshire cat grin is a TIC...smile therapy won't make it go away.
Oh...and she never told her floater aide (who covers for his regular aide at lunch and recess) that he has Tourette's Syndrome or tics, resulting in Bug getting a red stick (for bad behavior) from the floater aide this week for "making mean faces at her." Turns out it was the grimace tic. The floater aide was truly upset and very apologetic when I talked to her about it. She had no idea. It definitely was not her fault (she is a very kind person), but now Bug has decided he "hates" her because of the red stick. He told me it was just too embarrassing to speak up and tell her it was a tic. After all, he is only 6.
I'm irritated on a couple of fronts. First, the teacher needs to train her aides properly. It is important that anyone who works with Bug knows that he has tics, esp facial tics, since it does look like he is making faces at people. Second, she and the Occupational Therapist (OT) are not qualified to do behavioral interventions for tics. When Bug is a bit older, we will find a CBIT therapist to do that. For now, we feel that he is too young and we are trying to work with him on feeling comfortable with himself, advocating for himself, and minimizing the pain associated with some of his tics.
I have already talked to the sp ed teacher about this twice in the past week and she seems not to get it. I'm going to try again tomorrow and then follow up with an e-mail to the school psychiatric. Does this sound like a reasonable approach? What else can I do?
Thanks.