2) She said that she would rewrite the amendment to reflect that my daughter has attended a DMH funded program for the past 1 1/2 years afterschool and during every school vacation to support her social/emotional needs.

If this change is actually made in the new amendment, I guess I am satisfied for now

DMH would not have agreed to take your child as a client unless they saw serious issues in need of intervention. You are pleased with the DMH services your daughter receives. But are they helping enough? After all, your daughter still doesn't have a friend, no playdates, no birthday invitations. And she thinks she gets teased at school. And I'm sure there's more.

Here's what I'm guessing: DMH does its thing and the kids in the program practice on each other. That's good. Does DMH keep you aware of what skills she is practicing? Do they give you suggestions on how to reinforce things at home? Do you see evidence that she is carrying the skills over into everyday life at home or in the community? What about communication between DMH and school so that DMH skills are supported by teachers/aides at in class, in the lunchroom, on the playground? If you do not see signs that the skills your daughter is practicing at DMH are being "generalized," or extended, to other real-world environments, then has she really learned the skill? (If a kid can do math at school but not at the grocery store, then has he really learned math? Same principle applies to social skills.)

If you aren't familiar with term "generalization," it's a buzzword that should become part of your discussions with DMH and the IEP team. Just because a skill (academic or otherwise) is "taught," "practiced," and "mastered" in rather contrived IEP or clinical treatment settings doesn't mean a child can extend the skill to settings outside the classroom or therapy room when a teacher or therapist is not watching, waiting, measuring, and saying "good job!" Here's an article to share with your IEP and treatment teams that calls for making generalization an important part of the discussiuon from Day 1:

http://www.pediastaff.com/resources-the-importance-of-generalization-of-skills--july-2009

I'm sure your IEP team is interested in your daughter's academic needs. Kids with PDD are likely to have trouble understanding figurative language and idioms. I would imagine the tendency to interpret things literally affects not only spoken language, but reading comprehension as well. (Will that get their attention?) Is your daughter receiving speech/language services at school? Has she had a recent speech/language evaluation that focuses on social skills and social pragmatics? If not, put in a written request for an evaluation. Here are some interesting reads:

     http://www.iidc.indiana.edu/irca/communication/LanguagePathologist.html
http://www.iidc.indiana.edu/irca/communication/challengePrag.html
http://www.iidc.indiana.edu/irca/ftrainpapers.html (left column has lots of topics)

Getting back to the IEP team's denial of social problems, I don't know how much of their "blindness" is deliberate and how much is due to ignorance. Either way, they need to open their eyes and offer help. Check this out:

http://www.massadvocates.org/uploads/ZF/yW/ZFyWYVesivpboW-TXwkQiA/AUTISM-PARENTS-TIPS-12-19-08-final-except-formatiing-_2_.pdf

I think you're going to have to help the team learn to recognize what they're seeing but not understanding. Start with a bit of research before the school year ends. Chat with your daughter's teacher, face-to-face if at all possible, and jot down notes. Questions:

   –  How many friends does Kiddo have at school? What are their names? (Once you know who all her friends are, you can invite them over for play dates, and of course, they'll return the favor. Then everything will be hunky dory outside of school too!)
   –  Who does Kiddo eat with at lunch? Who does she play with or hang out with at recess/lunch? (Names please.) What games do they play? (If teacher doesn't know, ask her who is on duty at those times and can share that information. If no one knows, this is valuable information.
   –  Do kids have free time in class, and if so, what does Kiddo choose to do — and does she do it alone or with others? (Again, names please.)
   –  Does your daughter participate in class discussions voluntarily? Doe she use polite appropriate, tactful language?
   –  How well does she participate in paired or group work? Tactful, polite, etc.?
   –  Kiddo says kids tease her or are mean to her. Have you, Ms. Teacher, noticed that? If not, do you, Ms. Teacher, think she's misinterpreting what other kids say or do?
   –   Concerns/advice for middle school next year?
You might also take a list of some specific types of communication/social difficulties that are common for kids with PDD and ask the teacher if she's noticed any examples of those characteristics.

Chat with your daughter, also, to find out how the teacher's answers square with her perceptions. What does she say about teasing or how other kids treat her? If she doesn't offer up info, have her look at a class photo or list of names and ask her who she likes/doesn't like. Jot that down, along with any little comments. Ask her to rank each classmate on a friendliness scale, something like "friendly to me, unfriendly, or in between" and jot down what she says. For the most positive responses, ask if she ever plays with that child at recess.

If your child's perception of things differs from the teacher's, you will want to bring this data to a future IEP meeting. Make it "official-looking." Label it "Parent Attachment # ___" and give it a title like "Kiddo''s Perceptions of Interactions with Classmates," date it, and include the data you noted. Classmate's names aren't important for this because it's her perceptions that matter. If she and the teacher don't see things the same way, that's evidence that your daughter isn't reading social interactions at school accurately — a deficit in need of correction, right? And if they do see things the same way, then there needs to be an explanation/further evaluation of why everything is hunky dory at school yet your daughter lacks the skills to invite a kid over and why kids choose not to invite her over. (Wouldn't you call that a disconnect. The differences in what you, your daughter, DMH, and the school are seeing need to be reconciled.)

After you've gathered your data and before school starts next fall, send a formal letter to the sped director asking for evaluations in speech language, including social pragmatics, and a functional behavior assessment that observes your daughter's behavior and social skills in multiple settings, with both of these evaluations conducted by professionals experienced in working with students on the spectrum. The letter can be short, with only a couple of sentences to explain why you want assessments at this time. The sped director will probably want to hold an IEP meeting, which is OK, but indicate you don't want to delay the assessment and want the meeting to be held within the first few weeks of the year. (Preferably less than a month, because they'll then take a couple of months to do the assessments). Also ask for a PDD/autism expert to participate. The school psychologist and speech/language pathologist should also be there, and they will be gathering info to to try to figure out what tests to administer. You have the right to meet with them and ask them, test by test, what will this measure? What test will you use to assess _______ (problem)? Make sure the IEP team/evaluators know that your daughter is not generalizing what she's getting at DMH, and you want them to figure out why that's not happening.

Daunna Minnich
Moderator, JBRF Education Forum