Taking the Scenic Route

I just got off the phone with mom.  She is following the ambulance carrying my Dad.  They think he had a heart attack.  He was at the church council meeting and two of his friends brought him home (2 miles from the church, the ambulance has to drive 20 miles to get to him, so there was time to get him home first so he could be more comfortable while he waited).  It sounds like the friends, at least one of whom had a heart attack within the last few years, recognized what was going on before my dad did and took action.  The nitro helped relieve some of his symptoms, but I won’t know for a while how he is doing.

cut and paste from:  http://autism.about.com/b/a/257904.htm

Once Again, the World Discovers That People with Autism Are Bright But Different

A new story came out in Science Daily this week. Yet again, it seems, science has discovered that people with autism are actually – gasp – pretty bright after all! Here’s the Science Daily describing the research and its findings:

Led by psychologist Laurent Mottron of the University of Montreal, the team gave both autistic kids and normal kids two of the most popular IQ tests used in schools. The two tests are both highly regarded, but they are very different. The so-called WISC relies heavily on language, which is why the psychologists were suspicious of it. The other, known as the Raven’s Progressive Matrices, is considered the preeminent test of what’s called “fluid intelligence,” that is, the ability to infer rules, to set and manage goals, to do high-level abstractions. Basically the test presents arrays of complicated patterns with one missing, and test takers are required to choose the one that would logically complete the series. The test demands a good memory, focused attention and other “executive skills,” but–unlike the WISC–it doesn’t require much language.

The idea was that the autistic kids’ true intelligence might shine through if they could bypass the language deficit. And that’s exactly what happened.

The difference between their scores on the WISC and the Raven’s test was striking: For example, not a single autistic child scored in the “high intelligence” range of the WISC, yet fully a third did on the Raven’s. Similarly, a third of the autistics had WISC scores in the mentally retarded range, whereas only one in 20 scored that low on the Raven’s test. The normal kids had basically the same results on both tests.

When I read this article, I had a sudden sense of deja vu, and went back to my prior blogs. It turns out that I announced exactly this same information, and a very similar research project, in February of 2006:

In not very surprising news, it turns out that standard IQ tests are lousy tools for measuring the intelligence of autistic individuals. In fact, say researchers presenting at conference sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, standard IQ tests may lower our kids’ scores by 30 IQ points or more.

A Reuters article, entitled Bright Autistic Kids Misunderstood, lays out all the details. Among other points, it states that a particular IQ test, called the Raven Progressive Matrices, is a far better tool than the usual Wechsler or Vineland IQ tests.

Interested in learning more? You can read the actual poster presentation online. It’s called The Nature of Autistic Intelligence, and its well worth a quick read. It may offer parents a very useful tool for improving their children’s educational options.

The same questions were asked and the same research tools were used – more than a year apart – to come to precisely the same findings: that people with autism are just as bright as any other group of people, but that they think differently.

So…what happened in the intervening year? Did the good folks at the University of Montreal simply miss the AAAS research, the Reuters article, and the poster presentation? Since they’re clearly in the same field with the same interests, it seems hard to believe. Yet today’s findings are presented as if they were a brand-new breakthrough in psychology.

More importantly for our children and for adults on the autism spectrum – why is a standardized test like the Raven Matrices, which was not developed for autistic people but for people in general, NOT being used to test our children’s intelligence? Why, instead, are they STILL being subjected to tests which are obviously inappropriate – and then judged, placed, and educated on the basis of the results?

My own son went through the WISC and was found to be signficantly mentally retarded. I asked the psychologist who tested him how it was possible that a then-9-year-old with significant retardation could be reading, writing, doing math, playing piano, and generally showing clear signs of ability. Her response was that, evidently, the test had not been appropriate to the child. I asked about Raven, and was told that the test was not available to her. This psychologist works for a county agency in Pennsylvania – one of the better autism programs in one of the better autism states in the US. How much worse much the situation be in other places in the US and abroad?

Have you or has your child been given the Raven matrices as opposed to WISC or Vineland? Are things in fact any different or better in the UK, Australia, Canada, or elsewhere?

 

OK, this is good news, just stressful for me. 

It looks like Zane might start school with the regular kids.  It isn’t the ideal situation, and the IEP isn’t in place, but the school sounds willing to work with us without the IEP as they work to get it in place, and there is a consensus between people who really know Zane well and the SpEd coordinator that he is probably ready enough to make this leap.  It isn’t ideal, but it sounds like they are going to make the process as smooth as possible even without the IEP.  They have a teacher in mind that should be really good with him and they think he will do better if he starts out with everybody else rather than waiting until October when all the other kids have already set themselves in a routine. 

I am taking deep breaths and trying not to panic.  The main person making these recommendations knows Zane very well, has had him for therapy for about a year now, and saw him in his preschool.  She also really cares about him on a personal level, which means a lot to me.  I am really working to not be too much of a hover mother here.  I will go to the school either tomorrow or the next day to enroll him.  He starts next week.  AAAAAHHHHHHH.

Zach and I know that if it isn’t working, we can always pull him and wait until everything is in writing, but we know that having it in writing doesn’t guarantee everything will work, and good teachers don’t need the paperwork to make it work.  I am working to have faith that she really is a good teacher and it will work. 

Wow, this mom stuff is really hard sometimes.

Well, this should be interesting

It took a little longer than we anticipated.  Zane was getting a tad impatient and bored.

Zora found some entertainment though

Ah, here we go, the fun begins!

He did great!  He was so excited.  He fell once, but got back up and rode for a bit longer before we went inside to clean up his knee and put on a bandaid.

It was Zane’s last day of speech therapy with Carrie, his first speech therapist.  I made a graphic to put on a mug to give to her as a thank-you gift, and Zane picked the candy to fill the mug with (he chose kissables) and the wrapping paper, bow, and a card to give her.   

the mug graphic is a sentence strip with PECs cards on it. I got it through Walgreens photo gifts because of their support of people with Developmental Disabilities.

After he helped her open it, he asked to have some.  lol.

They didn’t have as serious of a therapy session as typical because Zane was a little upset and was refusing to participate for a bit until she got him redirected and settled first on doing a quick project with glue (gluing a face on a paper…eyes, nose, mouth, and then putting a seashell on for the hair.  lol).  Then they played with this farm set and Zane helped tell her if the animal was “sick” or not by whether or not the animal made the right sound.  He got the giggles as he helped her sort out the moo-ing sheep from the clucking pigs.  It was cute.

My folks met us at Heartsprings and took us out to eat at Carrabas to celebrate my Dad’s birthday.  Yesterday was my Mom’s Birthday and Zane wished her “Happy Birthday” on the phone, and then decided to sing the birthday song to Mom.  (the birthday song was unprompted).  He did the same thing for his Grandpa yesterday too.

Zora held the fork in her hand, but usually used her fingers to actually eat.  She would stab at the food with the fork, then lift it up with her other hand, bring it to the fork, then bring it to her mouth.  It was a messy process, but she sure dug in and ate a lot for such a little one.

After supper we went to Toys R Us and Zora got a little umbrella stroller (she loves pushing things around and gets really frustrated with the shopping cart because it is too big and unwieldy for her) and a rag doll.  Zane got a bicycle.  He was actually able to ride it around in the store (with training wheels of course), but he seemed to be able to steer it.  We got one that had small fenders (so it didn’t flip mud onto him as easily) and a hand brake on each handle instead of just one hand, like most of them had.  He is going to have enough problems figuring out how to brake, having it on both hands as well as the foot (backwards pedal stops the back wheel) will help things a bit as he learns.  He was so excited.  He chose a Go Diego Go! helmet and pad set to wear with it.   Unfortunately, when they brought it to the front it was in a relatively small box, so we are going to put it together tonight, right after supper, since it is cool enough in the garage to not pass out like it was in the heat of the day.

One more cute thing that happened earlier in the day, when Zora left with Zach and Zane to the grocery store to get the candy, she turned to me as she was leaving, waved (opens and closes her fist) and said “bye bye Mama”.  As she made her way out the door, she turned back to me and blew a kiss to me.  She hasn’t done either of those things before, so it had me on cloud 9 as I took my shower.