Lina is turning 5 next spring. In the usual course of things, I expect she would be entering kindergarten next fall, while I cry and take pictures and label her school supplies with a Sharpie and brag and worry and remind her to eat her lunch and cry some more. At the moment, however, we’re trying to decide whether or not we should wait another year to start school.
Here’s the dilemma – well, part of it anyway. The Houston public school system has a truly terrible record for special education: arbitrary caps on the number of students it will accommodate; lengthy wait lists for evaluations; frequent refusals to provide students with the supports they need and legally deserve. It’s at the point where the state education agency appointed two conservators to try to improve matters. I’m not convinced it will work.
So, the idea of sending my sweet little girl out into the big scary world of HISD not only makes my stomach hurt, but heck, it makes EVERYTHING hurt, from my little toenail all the way up to the split ends of my hair. Especially since she’s non-speaking and couldn’t let me know if her own stomach/toenails/hair were also hurting.
But there are plenty of private schools in the area, right? Expensive but maybe worth it? Even better (I thought, naively), there are schools specifically aimed at autistic students, as well as students with communication delays, learning differences, neurological differences, and social and emotional challenges. What a welcoming environment, right? How great to live in the 21st Century!
Except this is what I actually saw when I dug further into their websites:
“High-functioning” autism in five-year-olds, you say? High-functioning…five–year–olds?
Okay, I don’t want to be rude to any children out there, but not even neurotypical five-year-olds are high-functioning. You know why?
Because they’re FIVE. YEARS. OLD. I have bottles of cumin older than that.
Let’s take a look at what Web MD has to say about the “high functioning” label:
So first, high-functioning autism is not really a thing. It’s not a medical diagnosis. It’s a subjective term people use in subjective ways—so maybe not the clearest way to describe “admissions criteria.”
Second of all, are there any five-year-olds out there living independently?
No there are not. Or if they are, please alert CPS.
I also guarantee these schools don’t exclude kindergarteners who cannot yet read or write because THAT’S WHAT SCHOOL IS FOR. Nor did they ask me whether Lina can feed herself and/or dress herself.
No, the criteria for high-functioning autism in five-year-olds apparently boils down to one thing: speech. When I spoke with admissions for several schools, they politely informed me that they only accept kids with “functional” or “conversational” spoken language, and so my non-speaking daughter would not be a “good fit” for their school.
“High-functioning” autism, at this age, is code for “talks out loud.” They don’t know a single thing about Lina—her brains, her sociability, her creativity in communication—except that she doesn’t talk, and therefore she’s not allowed to attend schools that specifically tout themselves as autism-friendly. (Note that Lina has been evaluated [and reevaluated] and diagnosed with “mild” autism [both times], which apparently has no relation to her admissibility to these schools.)
So then I got mad. And then I made my first Instagram reel to cheer myself up (with my trusty stock photo collection).
I’m still mad TBH. I don’t know when or where Lina will find the right school environment. I know she deserves a quality education, and she also deserves support. She’s doing amazing with her AAC app. Sure, half the time she plays with the buttons and likes to hear the different words it makes, but when she wants something, she will zoom right over to the correct folders and press the correct buttons and stare you dead in the eyes until you give her the peanut butter or whatever she’s asking for. Limiting her opportunities because her voice comes through an iPad instead of her vocal cords is wrong. And “high-functioning” autism in five-year-olds is nonsensical.
Seriously, Ms. Admissions Director, you watch Lina use her AAC app to ask her little brother for a hug and then you tell me your school is better off without her.
I’ll wait.
P.S. It’s AAC Awareness Month and you can get really good discounts on Proloquo2Go and other AAC technologies from Oct. 5-9, 2021. (Not an ad and I don’t get any incentives for sharing — just want to help other families!)
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