I'm a special education teacher. I have a big problem when parents hear on TV "autism is now cured" or "autistic child speaks". The students in our school are mostly autistic but very low functioning, non-verbal, not toilet trained, no sense of danger and have major autistic tendencies (tip toe, fixated with fingers, spinnig) these parents come to me and tell me to "fix their child, like Jenny McCarthy". First of all , we are a public school system not a clinical school. Parents get upset that we don't have a speech language pathologist and an Occupational Therapist with their son/daughter 24/7. First of all, the OT and the SLP are there for the teacher NOT the parent. They give us programming recomendations for the curriculum NOT one to one therapy. IT's great to hear the advances with some autistic children but I think it's time to tell the parents that the children that are able to start talking are HIGHER functioning with a higher percentile. Our students are dual diagnosed (i.e., ASD & Developmentally Disabled) and it's hard when parent watch TV and ask us teacher to perform miracles. Our school system is not the greatest I have a class with 8 boys all Autistic and one Educational Assistant with one Special Needs Assistant who is assigned to one student only. So my ration is 3.5:1 all ASD children are different and mine are really LOW functioning. I'am lucky if i have time to spend 30minutes with one child once a week. Parents should begin to understand that school are schools not clinic that provide therapy.
