Interview One: (Parent Interview)

Interview: Parent of a 7 year old with autism and a 3 year old with pervasive developmental delay

Question: What is your general outlook on inclusion? Do you feel inclusion benefits all students? How do you think it affects you and your family?

Parent Response:
-Overall my opinion is that inclusion should be the ultimate goal of any child on the spectrum. All parents should be working towards moving their child into the public school system and into a typical classroom even if it's with a support of a TSS. But I don't believe inclusion should be forced. The child needs to be ready or you will take the risk of the child regressing.

For Z (7 year old)- We had to fight to have Z's placement be at Vista. When Z was 3 and he transitioned to the IU, the IU recommended placing Z in an Early Intervention (EI) classroom. This classroom had children with varying special needs - not all had autism. They said that although Z received an autism diagnosis their rule was to place children in the least restrictive environment and they thought at the time he didn't need to be in an autistic support (AS) classroom. Of course as his mother, and knowing nothing about autism, I was just so happy to hear that they didn't think my son needed that extra support so I agreed. After 3 months in the EI class, we noticed that he had regressed and started pushing for a Vista placement. The IU quickly offered to place him in one of their AS classrooms but since the IU had already failed us once, we weren't willing to take the chance that they would fail Z again. Vista had such a good reputation with proven results. Our fight with the IU ended in Mediation (one step before taking them to court). We had the data to prove that they failed Z and were ready to go to court and they finally agreed to pay for Z's placement at Vista. Once he was there, the IU and eventually Manheim Township didn't fight us on keeping him there. I think it was clear to them that Z needed to be in this 1:1 setting and had needs that they wouldn't be able to address within the IU or the public school system. For us to force inclusion for Z would not benefit him nor the other students in his class. He would require more attention from the staff which would just take away any 1:1 time with the teacher from the typical students and he would most likely disturb the rest of the class during lessons. We've tried including Z in a Sunday school class with kids his age and it didn't go well at all - even with a TSS assisting him. So now we don't send him to Sunday school anymore.

For T (3 year old)- Although he was high functioning we were super conservative and insisted on an IU AS classroom placement when he turned 3. I'm pretty sure the IU was just happy we weren't asking for a Vista placement so i think they would have been willing to give us anything we wanted :) This past year we transitioned T to a daycare where he is with typical children with the support of a TSS. We were very excited for T to be included in a pre-school and believe it has greatly helped him. He's really improved his imaginative play and interaction with peers (not just parallel play). And he's learning the typical pre-k skills. We are hoping he'll be able to start kindergarten on time in a typical classroom - possibly with the help of a TSS. The only affect T being included in a typical pre-school has on the other students is that they may think he gets special treatment because he has a TSS with him and is treated slightly different because the TSS and daycare following his treatment plan on how to deal with different behaviors and not the school policies - specifically self-coping skills, compliance in following a direction and transitioning between activities.