“We can’t be as alone as we feel. Yes our child is special but he can’t be the only one like this can he?!” This is what my husband and I keep saying to each other as we wonder: Where are the other parents? Why are there no programs for our child? He’s special… but not special enough?
Our ten-year-old son is smart and sensitive. He cares deeply for animals loves little babies and watches out for the underdog in a group setting. He can also be hyper-focused on one activity for a long time and can have extreme difficulty focusing on anything that doesn’t hold his interest. If you met him in the park on a Sunday afternoon you might see him playing a pickup football game with a group of boys and he would probably seem like a neurotypical child (as some might say “normal”) but if you watched him in a classroom alongside his peers you might think he’s chutzpahdig or learning disabled — neither of which he is.
Our son has Asperger’s or high functioning autism or PDD (Pervasive Developmental Disorder) — depending on the yearly mood of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Diagnosed seven years ago at age three he could not make eye contact or play with other children his age for more than a few minutes. Today he is a student in a mainstream classroom he has friends and he’s able to go to a restaurant and politely order himself his cucumber sushi roll and no one would know it took hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of therapy to get him to that place.
The yeshivah he attends has been wonderfully accommodating. They have made allowances for his full-time SEIT (Special Education Itinerant Teacher) support in and out of the classroom tried to fit in his other therapies when possible had their teachers coordinate with his team… all to try to “make it work” in yeshivah. And it kind of is working — no one is asking him to leave.
