Re: Peer -reviewed research on the efficacy of TEACCH

[Anonymous]

#5217

As mentioned TEACCH is a framework in which teaching operates. It still requires skilled, intuitive teachers as does mainstream teaching, to bring children forward. There will be teachers more able to do this than others, again, as in mainstream, and certain children will ‘gell’ with certain teachers and approaches. What I like about TEACCH is how well it complements and fits in with other approaches and enhances them. It doesn’t offer a cure. I don’t expect one, and that is in no way being negative. It is impossible to tell how our children will ‘turn out’ and whether using one approach or another would have changed that outcome. I can only assess both my autistic boys on whether they are progressing and, more importantly, whether they are happy. Thankfully, they are both.
With regard to the ‘fitting in’ aspect I’ve had similar discussions with regard to education for deaf children (I’m the only hearing member of my family) Whether we like it or not, or it fits our politically correct outlook, the deaf community is a seperate entity. My brothers, one is an accountant, the other a teacher of the deaf, both have social lives almost exclusively within the deaf community. This doesn’t mean that they are in any way socially inadequate, it is their preference. I know of families with deaf children who have sent their children to schools which actively discourage signing, their argument being that they have to live in the ‘real world’ where the majority of people don’t sign. As a result the children leave school unable to actively participate in the mainstream community and unable to communicate wth the deaf community.
Perhaps with an almost exclusively special needs family/upbringing my aspirations for my own children differ from parents who are desperate for their children to be ‘normal’ but I certainly do not feel that I am in anyway ‘shortchanging’ my children or that I have chosen the ‘cheap’ option. The TEACCH structure is offering my children the change to participate in the ‘real world’ to the best of their ability and wishes and has drastically reduced the frustration, tantrums,confusion and upsets they endured prior. Dave.