Atreyu wrote:OP, your point is quite correct.
The problem is that modern science doesn't know psychology, hence the terms they invent within this discipline are bound to be arbitrary and centered around getting paid for their "services"....
SimplyHuman wrote:
My personal philosophy is no matter what the issue is - be it autism, schizophrenia, faulty wiring, any label that is accurate or just the closest educated guess. You can take advice, hear suggestions, try your own ideas... The only ones who can assist them throughout life and set them up for success in this society, are those who are emotionally invested. Relying on paying someone to "fix" the problem, is not going to get you anywhere. They are people with unique differences and individualized triggers, not machines with manuals
As far as payment for service, the private and public psychologist/psychiatrist not only often have rather different education, but their interest in the client is rather different. All family have a tough road in trying to navigate this complexity, & wish I could offer something helpful. I too would encourage you, SH, to file that complaint, perhaps with the governing board of the school psychologist's licensure. I wish it helps your case, but, in the future, the less informed family may find some relief in a potentially reformed system.
As far as the emotional investment of any form of intervention, this appears rather true - from financial planning, legal advice, personal health, etc. As your scenario is also a heavy political issue, you are fortunate in that you see the more genuine aspect of trying to do what is best for each of your individual children instead of getting too bogged down in an ignorant system.
Speaking of emotional investment & its irony in the spectrum of autism, I am inclined to tell a story of a friend of 58 years old that passed away 5 years ago. (Any of you that have come across my writing can appreciate my level of autism, and hopefully you can get something from my friend's life. I call him a friend but our levels of autism make for more of a repeated acquaintance for which we both hopefully found benefit).
Joe was a greater friend of most everybody else I knew before I ever met him. When I first met him, he was fidgety, unkept, but sharply observant. He had a bag full of recyclables, in a time where recycling seemed to be on less than 1% of the population's radar. He was attentive to everybody's needs in the vicinity, and he was full of jokes, jokes where he could measure your wits, personality and likely a handfull of other things for which I was unaware. Joe was fascinating. I learned he was rather brilliant, but very few knew the extent. Joe would often switch the subject of conversation 6 different times, only to bring clarity to the original topic by means of extraordinary extrapolation of tangents. His third and fourth jokes were often unreachable by most. His seventh or eight, he laughed at, but likely he was just enjoying watching the cogs turn and timing how long an interested party would take to understand his joke, & he observed them, his test subject, to see how they worked. Joe had an uncanny knowledge of intricate electrical circutry, but he rarely spoke of it.
There where times Joe said things that appeared dark and without merit. For instance, Joe had an old friend named Frank. The relationship turned more than a little sour when Joe determined Frank was the killer behind a rather famous unsolved murder in the area. Joe even said Frank would someday kill him and likely bury him in Frank's own backyard. Those bizarre statements were easily dismissed as Joe himself was among the most likeable people within the Tri-city vicinity.
Joe would tag along to many places over the years. He would know when there was trouble long before it started. He knew trouble he could help fix and when it was time to get lost. He knew all the police and got us out of trouble with the law and was even able to make a bitter squad our allies.
A decade after I moved away, a friend told me he saw Joe one blizzard wintery evening come into the local pub to with a couple long rubber bladders he was looking to fill with water. My friend asked Joe what he was doing, and Joe stated something about getting his bed ready. Apparently Joe had become homeless when both parents passed away, living well into their 90's. I was a bit upset when asking my friend, a friend for which I know had lesser appreciation for Joe, if he tried to help him out. He said he offered him a drink and money for which he took neither. Joe never drank and I would not imagine him taking money. Apparently, Joe was living out behind the shopping plaza, under a broken-down semi-truck, & the water bladders allowed for him to sleep through the night without freezing to death. The idea had bothered me for some years.
I was finally able to drive back home and check on Joe myself. Now, I had not seen Joe in 12 years and I had only seen him sporadically the few years prior to my departure ... He immediately recognized me, knew my partner (baring a similar resemblance to my partner he had only seen in passing previously) was not the partner prior. Our conversation picked up right where we left it with him leading the way. We were now standing outside of a co-op market, a place he brokered a deal to work with payment of food and for them to not kick him out of the pallet room he created in the back next to the broken down semi-truck.
During our hour long conversation Joe must have had 5 car loads of people and passers-by call out in his honor. He knew all the names with a simple glance. Joe's demeanor was understandably less jovial than the Joe I knew before. I asked him how he was doing. He said "I am doing well; I have everything I need." He pointed to his make shift home, with emphasis upon the near dozen bikes donated to him. While we spoke, he turned away another free bike offer from a neighbor. I insisted Joe take the roughly $120 I had on hand. He reluctantly took it without looking at it, nor thanking me for something he could clearly see I otherwise felt helpless in a situation that appeared to effect my demeanor more than his. He reminded me, if there is something he needs, he just asks just about anybody, & he gets what he needs. Within minutes, near seeming on queue, another passerby asks if he needed anything. Meanwhile, Joe appeared to be mentoring some people in much worse shape than he, & that too helped to ease my worry. Joe began to open up about his life in a way I had never heard him speak.(Now that the rest of us matured, we had a name to label Joe's condition -Aspergers. Maybe now, the maturity was not in the ability to label, but I was just in a position to listen). Joe told me of his school life, one he said bothered his mother most. He still remembered the school bus incident his mother witnessed and how that led to him no longer attending. The worst part he said was how his siblings used it against him, calling him a favorite and saying he faked for special attention. He led into it being his siblings that made him homeless. A particular sibling had often lost the perpetual contests of smarts, & Joe blamed him most for finally, after many months of Joe keeping warm burning his back stock of science magazines intruding his every hallway and leaving the stove on, kicking him out of the deceased parent's home, now leaving him without his traditional home.
About 4 years after that last time I saw Joe, his body was found buried in Frank's backyard. Joe was indeed murdered as he had detailed roughly 3 decades prior. Nearly 2000 people came to mourn Joe's premature death. Every business including City Hall had some form of RIP message for Joe posted with their labor intensive archaic signs on the main street. His obituary mentioned that Joe, a homeless man, was known for giving all he saved to begin a homeless shelter, about $180.
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