Do you remember the mirror in the first Harry Potter book, the Mirror of Erised? The mirror showed Harry what he wanted to see. It was an enchanted mirror that showed the person looking at it what that person most desired (erised is desire spelled backward).

I feel like we have a similar situation with LuLu every time she’s evaluated. She is like this mirror that psychologists and therapists peer into and see whatever they want to see as her diagnosis and problems. And because these folks are human, and have expertise in certain areas and not others, they see what they know the most about. The ones who know about autism see her as autistic. The ones who do not or choose not to define her obvious “differences” as being on spectrum can explain them away with a number of other disorders – OCD, Tourettes, ADHD, behavior disorders, sensory disorder. But it all adds up to the same bag of complex neurological dysfunction.

Yet another school psychologist evaluated LuLu recently. She was referred by the IEP team with the intent purpose of testing for autism eligibility. She ran a battery of tests that all show that LuLu falls into the autistic spectrum range. Some pull up short of autism, but fall into autistic spectrum. Some show it’s very likely she has Aspergers. In the area of sensory processing she was found to have a definite difference in her ability to function in nearly every area.

But this evaluator pulled up short of recommending that she be made eligible for an autism classification. Why? Because of the significant trauma of her early childhood and the fact that she’s post-institutionalized. Hmm…interesting thought process. Do I agree that trauma has a huge role in LuLu’s neurological impairments? Yes I do. Does this make her not autistic? Not necessarily.

When I was searching for the name of Harry Potter’s mirror, I ran across this article. It makes an interesting comment about mirrors…that they tell you the truth. (Any woman trying on bathing suits in the department store knows that mirrors don’t lie!) So, you can gaze into the mirror and see an accurate reflection of what is there. In LuLu’s case we see a bundle of complexity. I also liked that this article went on to say that gazing into the truth (a mirror) requires that you act upon what you see...not just observe...

Does it matter what label LuLu has? Yes it does in terms of what services she’s eligible for and what interventions are considered. It appears more clearly to me now that I gaze into the mirror that at least in our state and our school district that as long as she holds an emotional/behavior disorder label alone, her “treatment” will be predicated on her being a child whose behaviors are “bad” and that she will be consequenced into changing them. (Oh were it that easy!). But the truth is that she’s neurologically impaired and unable to change many of behaviors that impede her learning, socialization and language. The only eligibility category that appears to address this type of global impairment under IDEA is autism. For my combo platter kid to learn, she must have her global impairments addressed.

Does it matter what label LuLu has? Not beyond recognizing what she needs to enable her to learn; to lessen what's in her complex bucket of neurological impairments. The school psychologist did nail one thing “she’s a very complex young lady.” So simple interventions just aren’t going to work. And confusing eduspeak and indecisiveness needs to stop...it's time to act.

The school psychologist pointed me to Ron Federici’s work and his diagnosis of institutional autism in order to learn more. Guess I need to pull that one off the shelf and blow of the dust and comment…