Autism News Comments 2006-09-29
I was a reject more most of my pre-high school childhood also. This school is worse than Minisink, but better than Safford.
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Definitly an aspie with a stable family, but a somewhat negligent upbringing and ended up having the News, R-Movies, and violent video games being the dominant moral influence. I think Autis and Aspies have a much higher degree of influence from TV, movies, and music than normal people.
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Me and Chris Bennet were so bad that our special ed teacher, Mrs Rampe quit. We were the worst complete jerkoffs imaginable. Chris Bennett got sent to BOCES to separate us. It was him rather than me that got shipped out probably because my grades and standardized test scores were higher than his. Had a 3-4 month sub, which I turned into half-ass work shoveller and spoiled-brat whiney video game addict (I become addicted even to educational games on the apple — mostly ones that sim stuff or have a RPG-like feel), then the disciplinarian Mr. Thorely came in. I was his biggest challenge. I got mainstreamed more (math and art/music/gym all year, but social studies, science, and technology was added while Thorely was in charge), custom tailored to my interests, and then he used it for leverage on discipline like making me sit in the hallway instead of going out to math or science (nearly all day one day) when I was bad. He leveraged the commodore 64 for positive reinforcement, the only non-gifted classroom to have a computer in it full-time (this is 1987), and the only classroom total of which kids had full-day access. I was actually becoming ‘good enough’ to get a lot of time on the computer, and I had enough time to learn how to pirate disks and two of the kid’s positive reinforcement was compromised because they had C64s at home and I taught them how to copy disks he he… Oh yeah Another kid, a girl named Sabrina, got shipped off to BOCES between the time Mrs Rampe left and Mr. Thorely came in, when Mrs Shoemaker was long-term subbing. The difference between me and Chris Bennett vs. Sabrina and that we were mostly verbal and non-threatening but majorly insultful and disrespectful and behaving disruptivly (nobody can make better fart noises than Chris Bennett). Sabrina was constantly aggressively talking back and threatenly arguing at the teacher.
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“The child’s home district pays tuition of $50,000 to $80,000 a year for these programs — plus busing” That’s too much. Costs need to be kept under 50,000-60,000. Early intervention does work well though. My early intervention was at age 3-4 plus BOCES (not autism dedicated – class had cerebral palsy, blind, deaf added up to 1/3, retarded added up to 1/2, and autistic the rest probably) at Minisink at age 6-7 1/2 (following year was had less cappy-ness – LD mostly).
