Quirky Kids by Perri Klass

Author:Perri Klass
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: American Academy of Pediatrics
Published: 2021-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Schools for Children With Special Needs

An increasing number of schools—usually private but sometimes publicly funded—are specifically intended for children who are not succeeding in more standard settings. It is definitely worth knowing about these schools and keeping them in mind as possibilities for your child at one point or another.

Our experience suggests that parents often look to a specialized school for the slightly older child, and sometimes these specialized schools can be lifesavers. Sometimes the diagnoses and the learning issues have become clearer as the child grows up, or sometimes the later elementary and middle school years can be terribly hard on quirky children. Most such schools have academic curricula geared toward the learning profiles of quirky kids, with extra therapeutic services such as sensory integration, OT, social skills or pragmatic language therapy, treatment by social workers or other mental health professionals, and, in some cases, behavioral programs geared toward addressing undesirable behaviors (eg, aggression, self-harm such as picking or pulling at one’s hair).

A specialized school should do more than address your child’s immediate learning needs; it should help you tease out important questions about the future and your child’s potential for further education, work, and an independent adulthood. Vocational training and off-site job placements for those who are not college bound are important for older children struggling with special learning problems, social issues, and emotional complexities of the adolescent years from the quirky side of the aisle.

We talked with staff members at a number of such schools, including the admissions director of one school geared toward quirky kids who were not succeeding in their previous school placements and who in some cases had exhausted a number of less-tailored programs.

When a family first contacts us about admission, we do a very detailed review of the child’s educational and developmental history to be sure that our school would be an appropriate place and that they truly cannot find a less restrictive or less expensive alternative. Our goal is to work with a child and his family over a relatively short period of time so that he can return to a more typical educational environment. Most kids who come to us come at the middle school level, and many are able to leave for high school. The ones who do not are the ones who are unlikely to live an independent life, and we work with them to find job placements in the community, teach them daily living skills they will need to live in a group home, and prepare them for young adulthood. The admissions process is not usually a happy one for the families, because they have had to convince their local school department that it cannot meet the needs of their child. The cost here is so expensive that few school departments will easily accept that assessment without a fight. Families use mediators, advocates, lawyers to help them, and it can leave a lot of bad feelings all around.

Some specialized schools offer boarding as an option at the middle or high school level.

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