guide for kids w/disabilities

[griscoxParticipant]

Is there any guidelines about how to include kids with disabilities in primary and how the primary can adapt to theach some of these special kids?
My son is 4 and has autism, he has a hard time understanding and speaking language. He acts more as he was 2 instead of 4 and I don’t know how the church goes about teaching kids like mine that need special attention.
Any help is appreciated,
Grace

[Jenny SmithParticipant]

There’s an entire section at lds.org on incorporating children with special needs into Primary:

Teaching All Children – lds.org

Many of the suggestions are generalized, as they obviously must be when each child’s needs and personality vary so greatly.

Usually children with special needs are included in Primary classes with children their own physical age whenever possible. In some cases, your leadership may determine that a child needs his or her own class, or a “aide” to provide one on one help during class.

In our unit, we held a meeting with the child’s parents, Primary presidency, RS presidency, Sunday School presidency, and bishopric to determine what was the best way to help that child achieve the highest potential in the Gospel. In this case, the child attends a private class where a short lesson from the Nursery manual is given (the teachers try to lengthen the lesson each week), and goes to Singing Time when emotionally able. The goal is for the child to transition to Primary, but the transition is going at the child’s pace.

You may also consider checking out the resources on my special needs page

Hope this helps!
-j

[Jenny SmithParticipant]

BTW — Carmen B. Pingree has written a number of articles for Church magazines about special needs. Go to http://library.lds.org/ and run a search on her name to find lots of great articles.

[Anonymous UserParticipant]

Thanks for the advice Jenny. I really appreciate it! In our high school we had a DRC (Disability Resource Centre) and here they provided a number of staff to help the less physically able to learn the same things as the rest of the year, but away from the classroom.

[Author]

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