Cheerleaders use FaceBook

Communicating with people who have ASD's can be difficult. Our social norms dictate that we have to learn to write letters - by hand and on paper. For most of us, these days, hand-written letters only arrive on Birthdays and at Christmas in the form of cards. Even these are sometimes pre-printed with a holiday message, maybe a family picture will be included and the addresses are a mail-merge gift from the God of cyber functions. Homework is all available online in eFolios but we insist that it be completed in pencil and on paper, kept track of and returned. We use Sony Readers, iPads and Kindle devices to read for pleasure to such an extent that the publishing industry is crumbling under the weight of flat screens. However, schools must use textbooks - with pages. There's probably an irrevocable contract to purchase them keeping some publisher barely in the black. Despite that eBooks, are easier to update, less costly to distribute and don't get lost or eaten by dogs, we insist on conventional printed and bound books for all students.

So why are we as an educating society so hell-bent on insisting that people who really don't like and are not comfortable with using paper, pencil, ink and White-Out (let's face it - we need it) use those same methods to communicate that even the adults who supervise and teach them don't like much? Especially when we know what the problems is? Is it really those with the disabilities who cannot learn here?

My son communicates better electronically. I've known this about him for 10 years now. At the age of seven, and despite the fact that almost everyone told me not to - they were afraid for his cyber-identity-safety - I established for him and email account, an IM identity and a FaceBook page. Almost as immediately as they were available, he began using the IM tool at home to ask very simple questions and initiate basic communication with me that had up until then been non-existent. Can you imagine how thrilled I was that my son was asking normal questions like, "What's for dinner?" instead of coming into the kitchen and plunging his hands into what I was making so he could feel it and know if he was going to like it or not?
I gotta tell ya - I didn't give rats that he was technically too young to have a Messenger account of his own - or be on the internet unsupervised. He was communicating - and appropriately. He was asking a question one time only and retaining the answer instead of becoming hopelessly distracted by the unspoken communication my face was providing.

Jackson is now 15 years old. FaceBook has made talking with peers go from indescribably uncomfortable to completely normal. For the first time in his entire academic history, he is asking to be removed from resource classes and be placed in general education curriculum classes because " . . . none of my friends are in special ed."
Hallelujah!!
You just can't ask for anything better than that!
And the icing on the cake is that after explaining why he is in resource classes instead of general education classes and what he needs to do to get out of those classes - he's motivated. He's talking to his teachers (using email) and really trying to find ways to make progress and where his education is concerned.

I have always known that Jackson will live his life according to his own agenda and priority. He will live with his choices and make very few apologies for them along the way. He will find ways to communicate that work for him as well as for the general public. He will do this because he is Autistic - because duplicity makes no sense to him - because the world doesn't offer him the same courtesy so why should he? - and because cheer leaders are on FaceBook and he's 15.

You just can't ask for your son to behave in a way any more 'normal' than that.