Autism Thoughts

From ABC affiliate WCPO, channel 9:
Reported by: Lance Barry
http://www.wcpo.com/mostpopular/story.aspx?content_id=1faaed2c-0902-4c23-8d9a-52c47e6bd24f
(Click link for story, video and parents response...)

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A six-year-old autistic boy has been charged criminally after an incident inside his school where he allegedly assaulted a teacher's aide.
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Alas, you will have to click on the link above (which may not even have the story anymore by the time you read this) to get the full story because of the copyright notice I am unable to print the whole thing. :(

What happened was a six year old child with autism (who has the mental capacity of a three year old) apparently had some kind of altercation in his mainstreamed kindergarten classroom that resulted in him physically attacking his aide. Details of what started the incident are not given, but what we do know is the aide has pressed criminal charges against the child. The superintendent of the Bracken County, KY schools is backing the aide, and the courts have decided there is enough evidence to go to trial.

Here is what I find to be the key sentence in this article:

His parents believe Schiltz and other teachers there are ill-prepared to handle special needs students.

Well....DUH!

The kid is six years old. As far as his little noggin is concerned, he may as well be three years old. Don't try to tell me the aide (and the teacher) didn't know this? His parents are doing all the right things, at least as far as I can tell from the (VERY) limited information available in this article. He is integrated in a regular classroom and he has an aide.

The little guy is just a kindergartener. Wasn't there something this woman could do to protect herself? Seems to me as small as he is, there must have been something she could have done.

Then again, we do need to take into account the possibility of the "rage factor." It is unclear from this article what was going on, but I have seen in my travels pure rage in some kids with autism, and, unfortunately, when they get that way they somehow also have the strength to back it up.

BUT...

This rage usually tends to come more from sensory overload than it does from anger. My observations are the overload is usually (though certainly not always) auditory based.

Hard to tell who is at fault here. But the first and most obvious thought I am having is that there must have been something that led up to this incident. There must have been something building up that eventually erupted into what happened, so the aide should have been trained to see it coming and to deal with it appropriately before it got out of hand, even if that meant the two of them would leave the classroom for a while so he could settle down and get it together.

I have seen this in more than one IEP. Looks like it should be added to his.

Certainly the other students did not need to see what happened.

The kid is definitely not innocent in all of this, he was indeed most naughty and he was absolutely behaving inappropriately. But I am thinking the majority of the fault here lies with the aide, who knew her charge had problems and who did not do the job she was being paid to do.

I am sure there is more to this story than what was reported (there always is), this opinion is based solely on the facts in the article linked above.