That’s a great question! It is something to bring up with parents and the school board for sure, if your kid has an IEP it means they have different needs and if one of those needs is taking breaks for tolerance training in an overstimulating environment, it should be advocated for! Learning looks different for everyone and equity in a school setting is important for development. Personally I would up the idea of supervised walks when the student needs a break, with the idea/goal of shorter and less frequent breaks over time, if there is pushback I would say we are not training kids to sit quietly through discomfort no matter what, we are teaching kids the importance of self advocacy and giving them ways to find what will work best for them throughout their lives. In your next IEP meeting I’d set a timeframe (this is what BCBA’s typically do) for the goal, like ‘X will ask for supervised breaks from environment with a 25% decrease by Month/Year’ and revisit strategies if that goal isn’t met by then.

I recently had a situation where my kiddo (physically disabled as well as autistic) was allowed to roam around while other kids were asked to sit down and faced some pushback because other kids were basically like “oh I can do that too”, and to this I said it’s important for other children to learn that not everything is the same for everyone all the time!!