Sarahrose- My son Paul is 7 he did the early intervention and a homebased program called building blocks ages 1-3 then he went to our local grammer school and was in a speech & lang. delay classroom for ages 3-6. When he turned 6 we looked around and found a school called the May center with a ABA focus. The school has been around 50 years and At Little Paul's particuler location all 50 children at the school have Autism as a primary diagnoses. officially he is listed as a first grader but like your son has very few communication skills and is still working on Potty training. What we love about the school is the ABA , the one on one instruction ( his classroom has 4 students and 6 teachers) And the fact they get Autism We were afraid in the usual school special needs classrooms he would drift down further and further into lower functioning classrooms as the reg. schools would focus on what he couldn't do like use the potty by himself. It was a struggle to get our local school system to pay for his placement but he can attend this school till he's 14 and then can move within the May program to the next level ages 14-21 which does offer as an optional residential program and then into their assisted living program. I really don't see my son ever being in a reg. classroom. But that's OK he is safe, and respected in his school, he doesn't get teased. He is happy! The odd part is because in general Paul has little behavior problems,few eating or sleeping issues he is considered high functioning go figure! I not sure what the criteria is for high or low functioning.

Sammy is in a ABA therapy based school as well, but they only take kids up to about age 10. I just hope that if he does end up going to a public school system that they can help him. This is a long way off , but I still worry about it often. I only have one child, and cannot have any more, so you can see where I might worry more than most, :)

I think we worry less but tend to do more planning as we are older parents. Little Paul is our caboose, My older children are 27 and 25.