Without Compare

Allan's family came by yesterday. We took them out to Wakefield, and the berry farm, and had a lovely afternoon of it. Best of all, there were no other little kids around to compare Joey to. This means that everybody just saw a happy, loving, sweet little guy, rather than the focus being on Joey's weaknesses. He was charming, cute, and adorable, as was his brother, and fun was had by all.

They seemed pretty shocked when they asked about school, and discovered he would be in a self-contained classroom. Most folks are shocked to learn this, but it seemed especially odd to them, seeing how delightful life can be with my guys. Joey was having a "good" day on top of it, so we didn't have a lot of tracking or screaming or anything that would showcase Joey's problems. Why put a happy, darling little sweetheart in a self-contained classroom?

Remember, these people are not special ed folks. They have the same ignorance of special ed, how it works, and what it is about as most people seem to have. To them, a self-contained classroom is a place where kids who are very severely disabled go. Joey is not "very severely disabled." And yes, if he had an aide, he's probably be OK in a regular classroom- but our school would rather be sued than hire a 1:1 aide. The teacher is good. So there you go.

WE went with the teacher angle. Its the easiest to explain to folks who have no clue. People tend to understand "low student" teacher ratio with excellent teacher."