If your child is even moderately delayed I feel the best type of classroom for a Fragile X child is a typical classroom with accomadations and adaptations for his special needs. My son has been in a inclusion classroom throughout preschool. Half kids with IEPs and half kids typical. The IEP were not necesarilly severely affected kids and some only had speech issues. Avery was by far the most affected child. He is nonverbal plus has OI so he has mobility issues but from my reading I found that a lot of learning in fragile x isby osmosis. Mainly that they pick a lot up when they appear not to even be paying attention. I wanted the socialization and learning of normal behaviors as opposed to the learning of bad behaviors or inappropriate stimmimg from other kids.
Starting kindergarten the school wanted to start him in a contained classroom which I was against. 7 nonverbal kids with like 5 teachers and a smallish room. I knew this was not best for my child. I went along with it but kept on the school to push for inclusion. we started July and he was about 50% contained and 50% typical. about weeks into it (with a terrible aide even) He was doing so well the typical K teacher was ready to advance him to more like 70/30 but the EC teacher was giving a hard time about letting him out of her class. his behavior was better with typical peers and he was picking up things academically in that classroom that would not even have been tried in EC(contained) classroom.
In September we got a new (wonderful) 1:1 for Avery and in mid October I called a 3rd IEP meeting. Went in with Inclusion guidlines for the state of NC and after 2 hours we had him in typical classroom 6 hours with 1 hour pull out to work directly with EC teacher or therapist. Fast forward 3 months and the school cannot believe how fast he is meeting his goals and the academic progress he has made. he knows his alphabet, numbers to 20 , colors , shapes and is reading at least 100 site words. he is now more advanced in some areas than some typcial peers. Still nonverbal but they now do not want him pulled out at all but will have the EC teacher come to his classroom to help accomodations and adaptations to his curriculum. he gets speech 2 times per week, OT 1 time per week and PT once a week (but we have no therapist so hasn’t been getting that). We have a new IEP coming and I plan on asking for 3 speech per week and 2-3 OT per week. His main weakness is fine motor right now.
Avery had major anxiety issues before he was diagnosed and with the diagnoses we decided to treat him. He is on Prozac and without it he would be a shell of the child he is now. He is able to learn, toilet, play socailly with his peers and he loves school. I would ask for something to treat your childs anxiety which is a very common symptom of full mutation boys. How would you like to live in constant anxiety. He also quit biting his hands and flapping with prozac.
Mary
