| Christie Berry

Qualitative Research

Case Study D

Parent info:
Mother: Age 31 Education: Some College

Father: Age35 Education: Masters Employed

Parent’s educational structure is haphazardly organized and sometimes chaotic due to the number of young children in the household and the behavior outbursts by the oldest child with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Mother used unit studies and individual texts from Saxon and Rod and Staff. A dyslexia program was used for A. for reading.

Annual Family Income: 60,000

Family Setting:
7 children:
2 with diagnosed disabilities when enrolled in our school
Daughter, C. – High Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder
Son, A. – Dyslexia and Pervasive Developmental Disorder

Home educating all children since birth

 They came into the Program in fall of 2003. They withdrew and moved to another state in spring of 2005

During the 2 years I followed this family, I observed several structural issues. First, the mother was organized but had no control over the children. Her attempts at organizing the day and managing the small group were thwarted regularly by the children.

I worked with the mother on Sensory integration and self-regulation, child behavior and small group management for the older children and helped her with managing the younger, more dependent infants and providing structure for the family as a whole. Although, this helped in the short term, the strategies were not implemented consistently and the children were quickly out of control again. Despite my efforts to help, some educational ground may not have been achieved due to the lack of structure in the environment.

With this observation in mind, the results of a mastery learning, individualized or small group instructional method  implemented by the parents are as follows with the two individual students with disabilities.

C:

C. is the oldest in birth order in the family. She came into our school at age 12 with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder and had been intermittently home educated by the parent. The child was very bright and manipulative. Parents put her into public school off and on for ‘respite’ and to provide educational structure to the younger siblings.

C.’s educational level was above grade level in all areas, however, her maturity level and behavior was functional at about an eight year old level. She had daily outbursts of anger (parents called them ‘meltdowns’) and had been aggressive toward siblings on a daily basis. She had physical outbursts of kicking, hitting, throwing items, screaming, biting herself and others, and breaking things. Her ‘meltdowns’ also included self-stemulating activities that included flapping her hands and arms, banging her head on the wall or floor or hitting herself on the head with her hand or other object, screeching sounds, and high pitched giggling.

C. moved into our home for 2 months of ‘respite’ for mother and training for her and parents in sensory integration therapy and self-regulation. At that time we worked with the parents to implement the sensory integration techniques at home when C. returned, and with C. a controlled consistent environment to help her learn the techniques to control her behavior.

The Sensory Integration Techniques taught to both C. and parents were taken from the 'Alert Program' by Williams & Shellenberger (1996). The program was implemented in a consistent environment at our school and C.’s behavior improved almost to a normal level. Her medications were reduced fifty percent and behavior outbursts decreased to one outburst per week for the last 4 weeks she stayed in the consistent home/school environment.

After the 2 months of training C. returned home and began the Sensory techniques learned in the home environment. The parents were not consistent with the verbal cues, identifying and reminding C. about her trigger behaviors. After approximately 4 weeks, without consistent supports at home, C.’s ‘meltdowns’ began to increase and her medication was increased to the levels they were at prior to the intervention and self-regulation training. C.’s ‘meltdowns’ increased to a level of 4-5 outbursts per week compared to the daily outbursts identified when she first came to our school.

This past year I interviewed Mother again having not worked with the family for the past year to ask about progress. Mother said that C. is having 2-3 outbursts per week and a much decreased level and she is seeing improvement. However, she reports that she is not as consistent with supporting C. as she probably needs to be for her to progress any faster at self-regulation.

A:

A., age 7, came into the school at the same time the rest of the family joined. A.’s diagnosis was Pervasive Developmental Disorder he was later diagnosed with Dyslexia through the Scottish Rite Dyslexia Program.

Parents implemented the same mastery learning, unit studies and later included the Scottish Rite Dyslexia program for reading.

A.’s behaviors were fairly well controlled and only minimal outburst behaviors were reported by the parents. When A. first enrolled with us his outbursts were usually seen as temper tantrums by the parents and happened an average of 3-4 times a month.

 A. progressed soundly in all academic areas and was working 1-2 levels above his grade level in all areas except reading. His reading level was at beginning 1st grade level. After an informal evaluation, I suggested having him tested for dyslexia. It took 9 months to get a slot for the evaluation through the Scottish Rite Dyslexia program. He was diagnosed with a moderate case of Dyslexia at age 8 and was put on the dyslexia program for reading. Even with the inconsistency of the parents, A. excelled in the program and moved quickly to through 2 grade levels of reading in one school year.

An interview with mom this past December confirmed that he has now reached his age equivalent reading level. He does not enjoy reading, but “it is no longer a major struggle” according to Mother. His outbursts are about the same but they are trying to teach him the Sensory Integration techniques for self-regulation and Mother feels that they are helping.