Hi
i am a mother of a 3 year old boy with autism. today we had his care plan meeting. all a bit overwelming.
There is so many questions I need to find out but for now i ill ask this one!

Could any one tells me there views on children going to mainstream nursery or specialist nursery.

specialists sat on the fence when i asked.

Please help us!

thank you:):)

When our son got his diagnosis at 29 months they told me that he qualified for a special nursery. It was free and you could put your child in 40 hours a week Monday through Friday.

I went to look at the school. There were about 5 children there. They could not walk or talk and one was strapped to oxygen. I said to my husband, "Our son may be in bad shape, but he is not like those children". The social worker we had said she would not reccomend the school because my child needed to be around typical children.

Does a mainstream nursery put your child with typical children and give him help? If so, that may be a good decision.

I decided to take my child to speech therapy 3 times a week, have an ABA therapy program out of my home and send him to a regular preschool.

My child will be going into second grade after summer. He is a straight A student, lots of friends, his baseball team won the championships, his swim team was undefeated and he plays on a soccer and basketball team. Did I ever imagine my child could come so far?

Early intervention is the key. My child was diagnosed with mild autism. He now is indistinguishable from his peers. I think you should read the book. "Let me Hear Your Voice" by Catherine Maurice. It gave me the direction I needed to help my son.

Thanks for the reply

our son has mild autism to. The only thing at the moment is he has not got much speach yet.
yes they are going to to stament him. our key worker said hopefully get full time help or at least 25 hours a week.
the thing i tend to worry about more is my son has terrible outbursts and im worried about how a mainstream nursey will deal with him. i dont want him to be in trouble all the time . and sometime i dont even think my son understands why he is so upset.
you hear so many people say about Schools and nurserys not understanding autism ect.
guess i will take your advice and go and see the nursery and see for my self!

many thanks

one thing i forgot to ask.
Is there any benifits for one or the other????

thanks

I understand your decision not to put him in with physically handicapped kids... An autistic youngster needs children who are willing to, and able to, interact with him. If you want a special-ed environment, you may consider a place that handles kids with Down's and other mostly mental things--kids who will probably approach and try to make friends.

But I think he ought to be mainstreamed, if you can find a teacher who has some training with autism (important!! otherwise s/he may see "meltdown=temper tantrum" and not be able to handle them properly, etc.).

During nursery, mainstreaming a child is not near as much of a problem as during grade school. The rules are more flexible; the classes are smaller; less is expected of the child. Also, other children are more accepting and less prejudiced against the "strange" autistic child. He may not learn intricate social skills at this point, but learning to coexist peacefully with others is quite possible: He can learn the rules that delineate proper behavior: "Don't pull hair, don't take toys from others"... etc.

Benefits for special ed:
--Specialized resources
--Teachers probably better trained
--Smaller classes

Benefits for mainstream:
--Exposure to typical kids
--Typical kids learn to accept autistic kids
--More challenging than special ed (autism + normal-high IQ needs challenges!)
--Less expensive
--Less stigmatizing (for the parents--the child probably won't know he's different at this point)

hi you sound like i did a year ago.i was worried about how my son would get on in mainstream nursery. wat i did was we was really open with his mainstream nursery told them wat types of behaviour to expect and ask them to tell me every day how he got on. i was real worried how the other childeren and parents would be with vinny i didnt want him to be known as the (naughty child).a year later vinny has friends at nursery havnt really had any problems that way. whitch i was really suprised because wen vinnys at home he's quite violent. but doesnt seam that bad at nursery. he also went to an autistic nursery with speach therapist in the class 2 mornings a wk and mainstream 3 afternoons. wat i think is autistic kids behave differant in differant situations and we've just got to have faith hope this is of some help

many thanks to all of u. some gr8 advice thx!