Mainstream

My six-year-old is officially being Mainstreamed. We had a meeting this morning at the school to discuss it.

I should explain: since entering public school, my son has been in smaller special education classes, part of a program designed for children with Autism. As this year has progressed, bit by bit, he's been doing more work with a larger (mainstream) 1st Grade class. He's spent the past few weeks with that class for the entire school day ― a change that, quite honestly, seems to have crept up on us, somehow. (It isn't that we weren't consulted, or that we weren't aware, but it all seemed to happen rather unexpectedly.)

He'll continue with that larger class through the end of the year (shadowed by a Teaching Assistant, to provide guidance where necessary), and when he begins 2nd Grade in late August or early September ― I forget which ― it will be with a larger class, from the beginning.

This is good news for so many reasons, news we've been anxious to hear. For a start, this means he'll share the same academic environment as his peers. He's very capable and bright (in some ways, even more so than others his age), but he needs to be engaged and challenged as much as encouraged ― and I think it's important that this happen now, while he's still young. That, and I believe he'll be in a much better position to address the issues that remain ― navigating social interactions with others, for example ― while surrounded by typical kids.

There are times I think I'm the only parent I know with an Autistic child that isn't engaged in an adversarial relationship with their respective school district. Moving to a mainstream class has always been the goal, but I've never — well, almost never ― felt all that impatient about it. I've been confident in the care and attention my son has received, and I've never had any doubts, though part of that, I'm sure, is because he is comparatively mildly affected. (He'll be only the third child to graduate from this program over the course of three or four years.)