This week I’ve been fairly preoccupied with finding a secondary school for Nicholas. He’s only in Year 5 (that’s like 5th grade) but here in the Uk you have to select a secondary school from Year 7 forward, and you have to do it well ahead of time if you have a child with special needs.

The whole idea of finding a secondary school for Nicholas feels somewhat absurd to me, and I go along to the schools with a mixture of dread and the kind of guilt you feel kenneling your dog. When I ask Nicholas how he feels about secondary school, he gives a very appropriate and honest answer. "I don't like change," he says. Because Nicholas is a "statemented" child -- that is, he has a legal document that accompanies him telling whatever school he goes to that they pretty much have to help him or will find themselves in a whole world of trouble -- we have to choose the school earlier than the other children. This is not really meant to punish us. It’s meant to make it easier for us to get the school that we want for him.

One of the nice things about living in the UK if you happen to have a child with special needs (and there are very few nice things so you need to celebrate those few) is that you get priority when it comes to school placements. This is not to say that all parents get what they want, but in the county where I live it isn’t too bad. There is this one problem, however, which is that any school that you put your child in will likely have 1000+ children in the school. In fact, 1000 is considered “small”. 1500 is quite normal. Some have up to 1800. I cannot see how a school of 1000+ (and again, it is likely to be a greater number) can benefit my child. The entire point of the intervention we are now trying out for Nicholas is to help him to learn how to establish meaningful relationships with others. In a big school like that, a school in which it is quite possible to get lost in the chaos of an ordinary day, I suspect the only meaningful relationships he will likely develop will be with the teaching assistants.

And then there is the question of how they manage his education within the school. I am not doubting their intentions (people working with special needs kids tend to be a pretty nice bunch) but if their goals are to ensure he can learn information, we are just not on the same page. It isn’t that information is bad. In fact, information is good. But if he sits in the classroom absorbing the information given, then survives the chaos of transitioning to the next lesson only to find that he has to sit and absorb yet more information, I cannot see his autism being addressed in the slightest.

But therein lies the difference between me and many educators now in the mainstream who are taking children with ASD under their wing. I want the autism, itself, addressed while they are going to deliver to the child the information within the curriculum such that they can be a “success”, that is, do well on tests. I spent some time trying to explain this to a woman who is with our Local Education Authority. She’s a very nice, bright woman who is ambitious for our children. I explained that Nicholas needs to learn to “borrow the perspectives” (one of Dr. Steven Gutstein’s phrases) of other people or else he’s going to find life very difficult, however good or bad his grades are. She agreed, but it wasn’t until I explained how this might become a crucial issue within the classroom that she really “got it”.

I explained that you could have a teacher in the classroom trying to teach this vast, diverse group and struggling a little with one of the students who is really playing her up. The student (let’s call him John) is mocking the teacher, drawing attention to himself, tipping back on his chair, being slightly obscene, etc. So the teacher (God help her) is annoyed. She is stressed. She turns to John and lays into him, at which point the boy stops being quite as difficult (for the moment). The teacher, who is only human, is still riled, but has maintained her composure.

And then, at that exact time, my son pipes up with some sort of odd remark, inappropriate question, or just the general confusion of not understanding what he’s supposed to be doing right now. So the teacher (by now thinking of early retirement) turns to Nicholas. She has a hard, angry expression on her face – not because she is angry at Nicholas but because she is generally distraught. Now, if Nick were not Nick, he’d know that the teacher’s mood had nothing to do with him, but due to the behaviour of John (who is still very much on the teacher's mind). But Nick will not know that. He’ll think, That teacher is angry. I must have done something wrong. He will go silent. He will withdraw. The teacher will then say, “What did you want, Nicholas?” He’ll start playing a video in his head to block her out, and suddenly we have a possible situation developing. At best, Nick will be a bit put off by that teacher. At worst, he’ll see school as another place he feels uncomfortable.

Why did this happen? Not because there is anything wrong with the teacher and not even because John is such a fantastically obnoxious teenager (who just to agitate us will probably grow up be really successful, elected to office, and wage illegal wars across many nations). It happened because Nicholas couldn’t borrow the perspective of the teacher. It isn’t because he couldn’t read emotions. He read the emotion all right. But he didn’t get the big picture of how emotions work, of why the teacher might be feeling like she is. That’s the kind of thing we work on with Nicholas. It is very hard to set up scenarios in which we can practice. It is even harder to get him to work with us.

You might be wondering exactly how we get a 10 year old with many interests (none of them people-oriented) to participate willingly in his therapy. That’s simple. We just pay him. It is not exactly how it is meant to be done, but I’m living at the edge over here. Today he bought a Dr. Who magazine and a tiny remote control car with money he earned by doing therapy. I just wish someone would pay me.