Wednesday, August 10, 2011

I recently did a workshop about special education issues. I got to talk about my daughter with Aspergers. At different points in a variety of my workshops I talk about several of my children.

Some how at one point during the workshop we started talking about how hard it is to get a child with Aspergers to be organized. My child in particular did not like people touching her stuff. She still does not.

We were talking about the fact we know homework gets done. We supervise it being done. We know it gets into the booksack and our child still gets a zero. I shared one of my strategies.

Since my daughter did not like anyone touching her stuff, including the booksack. I worked with the school system to put a goal on her IEP about organizational skills. Once a week a teacher would sit with her to go through the booksack.

In elementary school the daughter with Aspergers would sit on the floor by the teacher's desk and go through it. That gave my daughter the opportunity to talk about what each paper was. My daughter loves to talk. Does your child with Aspergers love to talk?

Anyway, when they came across homework or an assignment that had been completed, the teacher helped my daughter make sure it got to the right teacher. If the homework or assignment was not completed the teacher 'saved' the paper.

The saved papers were given to my daughter one by one over the next week to finish. They also had a trash can right there to get rid of the papers they decided were trash. What was left went back into the booksack.

Wonderful strategy for us. It was an organizational skill on the IEP so no one was upset. I did not have to argue with teachers about the fact that she should learn to turn in her papers. Completed work got where it was supposed to go.

More importantly no one upset my daughter by touching her stuff. I do not know if she learned to organize this way because of the practice. Maybe with the Aspergers she was going to learn to organize on her own. But she is really good at it now.

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