HFA & behavior at school advice needed

Good Morning All;

I'm in a bit of a battle with my son's school right now and firstly I would appreciate prayer for this whole situation...secondly I need some advice...

The school has been having some problems with James' behavior lately (progressively getting worse since Sept) so I had our Behavior Therapist meet us at the school last Monday, and we observed his class from a two mirror. I was horrified! My little 4 year old has them all cowerding...he throws a full meltdown then as soon as he gets his way he flashes as big grin and runs off happy as can be. So he is getting away with EVERYTHING!

Anyways...after watching that scene, the BT told me to go home and calm down and she would talk to the teachers and find out what is happening and set up a time to put a plan together with all of us together. Well...what happened next still has my head spinning...the Speech Language Path(SLP) told her that she didn't need to bother because the school wouldn't be doing anything she said because they didn't hire her, then she went on to say that I needed to accept the fact that my son has autism and the sooner I realize that 'this is just the way he is' then we'll be way better off.

Now, I know he has HFA but I also know when the 4 year old is coming out and he's just beinging a little boy that needs to be reined in. I had a meeting with the principle and with his teacher and they apologized for Monday and are 'willing' (within reason) to work with us.

So...has anyone gone through this with their school? How do you handle a SLP (or other) that doesn't believe your child has any potencial? How should we handle this meeting to set up a behavior modification plan?

I totally believe in my son and our Behavior Therapist pointed out to me that she was seeing a 4 year old acting like a little monkey....not a child with HFA...then she pointed out that the diagnoses was actually giving this SLP a box to stick James in...here's your Autism Box, Jump in...so I hope none of you have gone through this but I have a feeling that I'm not the only one.

Well...this is where we are now:

I had my meetings and have since met again with the teacher WITHOUT the SLP present and we are working on the Time-outs...she was so afraid that it wasn't going to work...well here we are two weeks later and he's down to at the most one a day. She told me yesterday that she is in shock that it worked so well!!!

Now he's started something new though...I have to always be a couple of steps ahead of him...now if he doesn't want to do something, he puts himself on a time out ...I told her to take back the control, start the 4 minute timer and make him stay there. So she did that and he was so mad at her for making him stay there for the WHOLE four minutes that he cleaned up right away.

I think my little man is opening their minds up to a whole new world...one that doesn't fit into a box ...I'm sure this isn't my last battle but its sure encouraging when they start listening...even if its only for a few minutes.