Raising Expectations?
Monty, aged 14 with ASD, has finished his year-end assessments in his first year at high school. Monty has classic autism, which we can also call a type of Strictly Defined Autism (SDA), or what autism used to be under DSM3, before the diagnosis was extended in 1994 to include Asperger’s at the clever end and PDD-NOS in the middle. From that point onwards, autism means entirely different things to different people. For the last 6 years Monty has moved up each year with his neurotypical peers, who are two years his junior. During those years I used to go to the parent teacher meetings at school and explain that if Monty could not keep up, it would be just fine to hold him back another year, for example if he came at the bottom of the class in most subjects. We held him back two academic years, 6 years ago, in the “big reset” and I assumed this would likely need to be repeated, since people with SDA cannot acquire skills as fast as typical people. This blog is really ...