Little One :)

My daughter is a high functioning Autistic in Special Ed. Because she's in Special Ed, parent/teacher conferences are done a bit differently. Instead of just showing up with all the other parents and getting 15 minutes with one teacher, her dad and I are invited to an hour-long session with a whole panel of her educational caregivers. 

It actually went better than expected.

Her father doesn't believe in mental illness. He especially doesn't believe that any child of his could be deficient or mentally ill. He's too perfect for that and he fully expects his child to be perfect and academically sound without continued mental health support.

Fortunately, for my daughter, her father and I share joint legal custody and the school only needs one parent to sign off on what types of services she receives. So, last year at this same meeting, I got her set up with an in-school therapist that she meets with every other day.

I think that because of the marked improvement in her grades since starting therapy, he's finally starting to come around. I asked for continued mental health support for her, and much to my surprise, he actually agreed with me.

So, aside from her still being at a very age-inappropriate reading level, she's a rock star and she's excelling at everything else.

Her panel of experts even agreed with me that she's pretty much an emotional mechanics savant, despite her disability. Most autistic children miss social/emotional queues (which she still does), but also, most autistic children are completely baffled by emotions in general. My daughter is the opposite.

The only other problem that was address is how she never reaches out for academic help if she needs it. She insists on self-teaching and then gets frustrated when she doesn't get anywhere. Her fear of failure is pretty huge. 

I know she gets that from how hard her father is on her. How he expects perfection. It's becoming a major issue and it's really crippling her ability to learn. I'm hoping that he finally sees what an asshole he's been and how it's effected her learning for the worst.

Other than that, everyone agreed with me that she seems bright, happy, well adjusted, and shows the appropriate amount of snark for a teenager.

I'm really proud of her.