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"Yesterday was David&amp;#039;s annual IEP meeting. For those of you unfamiliar with special education, that&amp;#039;s his Individual Education Plan for the year, which details measurable goals set for him by his teacher and therapists, along with a detail of the accomodations and support services he&amp;#039;ll be getting to help him meet those goals. It&amp;#039;s a long session, going through all the paperwork, and it always ends up being even longer because everyone wants to talk about David.  He&amp;#039;s made an enormous amount of progress since last year, coming up two grade levels in reading and continuing to hold his own in math, as well (even though it&amp;#039;s his most hated subject). His socialization skills have expanded dramatically and he&amp;#039;s now engaging his peers on a regular basis and even plays team sports, which for a child with autism is big. Really, really big. His reading specialist was telling us about an exercise they do with him to increase his reading comprehension and creative writing skills. They give him a scenario, something like: &amp;quot;You fell down and cut your knee,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Your friend is sad and crying,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;You lost something important and you&amp;#039;ll be late if you stop to find it.&amp;quot; Then they ask him to expand on what he&amp;#039;d do. This is also an exercise in empathy and critical thinking, areas that he sometimes struggles with. His teacher said that David had good answers for everything, showing definite empathy for the friend that was crying, figuring out he should tell his teacher he&amp;#039;d like to look for his lost item after he gets to class so he won&amp;#039;t be late, etc., but he also included in every scenario some variation of &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll get my Mom&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s go tell my Mom,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;ll be okay, my Mom will help me.&amp;quot; We all had a chuckle over it, and then David&amp;#039;s teacher said, &amp;quot;I guess it shouldn&amp;#039;t surprise us that he thinks Mom can handle anything.&amp;quot; It made me feel great, and I looked over at Peter sitting next to me and I thought to myself: &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s right. And I can handle you and I can handle this and for David - and Anna - I can and will handle anything.&amp;quot; Once again, my son teaches me. And his faith in me is humbling and empowering beyond belief. Has a teacher ever shared something that made you feel like supermom? [Follow Ellie on Twitter and Facebook] "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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