Should My Wordless Kid Go to School with Your Normal Child?
I would like to weigh in as both a grandmother of twin grandsons who have severe disabilities and who go to separate public high schools with some inclusion, and as a chief executive of a non-profit agency with a non-public school for moderate to severely disabled children and youth with autism, without speech and with “behaviors”.
I agree with many of the posters here that it is not one-size-fits-all for special needs children. We believe that mainstreaming is best for most children and our goal is to work towards returning children to public schools wherever possible, but it is not often achieved. Our school is in the local community, not “away” nor an institution. Children are referred by the public school districts and children are transported by the “little yellow buses.” The children that we serve are the ones that the schools cannot serve or do not want to serve on their campuses. Our children need a range of ancillary services from speech to occupational therapy to one-on-one education aides besides a highly qualified teacher in special education. Our mission is to provide a caring program to fit the individual needs of each special needs child in a small classroom setting – and to work with their families. I do think that most public schools, whether in mainstreamed/inclusion or separate classrooms, do not provide quality services for our level of special needs even with IEPs.
Robert, my heart goes out to you having seen many families, including my own, go through the accepting/loss process of a special needs child through each life stage. Our special needs children are a gift to us all to remember our humanity.
