Putting Together The Autism Binder

My seven year old daughter is autistic, and when she was going through the process of being diagnosed, a family member recommended I start putting everything together in a file. The file included her evaluation, anything I was concerned about, her IEP, etc. and that turned into this binder. Each year I add to the binder, and it's time to do that now. I need to add the stuff from this year into the binder and also get a new binder. While I'm reworking the whole thing, I figured I could show you everything that goes into this as well as all of the supplies you need, including the $5 download I created that makes putting it together a breeze.

Putting Together The Autism Binder | Organizing the Sections

I think it's really valuable to have these important papers in an organized place, not just for your records, but for your child in the future. When I first shared this on TikTok, I had so many autistic adults who said they wished their parents had done the same for them instead of throwing things away because they could've carried any accommodations into their adult life.  I want to keep everything organized for my daughter in the future.

There are multiple sections within this binder. In the download, I go over all of the different things you'll want to put in each section in.

There's the "Signs and Symptoms" documentation you want to keep if you're going into an evaluation with your child, or even yourself. I personally found it was super helpful to have a list of all of the signs and symptoms I saw in my daughter on hand during her evaluations. It's a lot harder for doctors to brush things off when they're all written down and sitting in front of you as opposed to the 15 minutes a pediatrician spends with your child. Obviously, a team doing an evaluation for autism is going to spend a lot more time than that with your child, but they still only spend up to three days with them. It's not every single minute like you do.

Next there is an "Evaluation" section where you put all of your child's evaluation documentation. If your child has a medical and/or school evaluation, you put them all in there. There's a "Therapy" section where you can put any information about their therapies. There is also a section in here for "Red Flags" to document anything you are concerned about that come up during therapies or during an evaluation that you would like to address with providers in the future. There is a section for "IEPs, ISPs, and 504 Education Plans"; any plans for accommodations your child will receive while at school. Lastly, there's the "Additional Resources" section, where I have added a bunch of information and resources I have found super useful, but you can also put your own resources in there. This includes anything you get from the providers during the evaluation or from the pediatrician that refers them. If there is anything you might need to put in there, you can put in that section as well.

I have a lot of paperwork that is in the "IEP, ISP 504" section because I've put every single IEP she's ever had along with all of the updates we've ever been given. I think I'm going to take the updates out and just put the IEP from the beginning and end of the school years to save space.

I'm glad I went through this because it has been I haven't done it in a while. It was really good for me to go back through and sort through everything and make sure everything was in the right place.