WWYD re students and relationships outsid of school?

[Youarentkiddingme]

So, yiur role is pastoral care based, heavily involved in SEN and also provide the emotional literacy (ELSA).

A year 7 boy with HFA tells you about his 'girlfriend' who is another year 7 and you've seen them talking together occasionally outside of class.

Do you.....

A) monitor situation and try and engage what the relationship actually is.

B) talk to parents about it because due to ASD the students understanding of social and emotional relationships is delayed and your role is to support them to develop peer relationships within school

Or

C) suggest to the boy that he texts the girl and invites her round to his and cooks for her. Then tell parent when you've seen them that this is what you've suggested?

[hedgehogsdontbite]

Or

D) keep out of it unless there is an obvious problem.

I'd go with D.

[noblegiraffe]

Inviting a girl round and cooking for her is way too intense for a Y7 relationship. Talking outside of lessons usually covers it.

If you have regular contact with the parents then maybe mention it, in a positive way, but I don't think you need to do anything unless you thought it was completely inappropriate, like his girlfriend is actually bullying him.

[Youarentkiddingme]

I'm this lads parent.

I was too when she said it to comment but afterwards thought she'd stepped right into my role as parent and completely overstepped the mark.

I now have a DS with ASD who takes everything literally very confused because I'm telling him he's not doing something another adult suggested he did and having to have discussions re relationships when he doesn't yet even understand friendship at an age appropriate level.

[JellyTotCat]

Assuming they suggested C, then yes i think it's a bit of an odd suggestion.

[TooMuchOfEverything]

C) is bizarre! Are you certain they weren't trying to suggest 'this is the sort of thing girl and boy friends do' but without switching on their brain to consider this is a Y7 student, assuming they deal with all ages in the school, and might have forgotten how young this is?

[TooMuchOfEverything]

... And that they were trying to give example of an 'acceptable activity' in a safe supervised place rather than going off down the park unsupervised sort of thing?

[Youarentkiddingme]

Ive no idea what she was trying to achieve.

She just said DS was talking about his GF and she suggested this.

She is his 1:1 provider of emotional literacy. She's meant to be working on managing his feelings and strategies to stop him having meltdowns - eg communication. Some of the work will involve discussing appropriate ways to be friends. But friends - eg outside of just happening to be in same place.

I didn't think her remit was to be discussing any type of friendship outside school or actually giving any specific advice on how to treat a GF or arrange a 'date' as such.

That's way too intense for any 11yo let alone one who can't even have a successful conversation about day to day stuff yet.

[Shannaratiger]

We have a similar situation I.e.year 7 DD with ASD and her BBF who's a boy in her class. We all just refer to him as her best, best friend. We've been to their house a couple of times, our DS yr4 gets on really well with his twin brother so they all have a great, completely over excited time. It's really the first good friend that they've both had. DD is slightly struggling with the increased emotional feelings but we have lots of talking about emotions etc. and do not make reference to adult concepts of relationship as they are no way emotionally ready.
Sorry this waffled abit, dyspraxia trait of not being concise! :)

[Youarentkiddingme]

shanna your post made perfect sense to me. Great too because it helped me make a decision.

I have always talked to DS about texting friends, how to approach meeting up out of school etc. He kept motioning this meal etc.
So I explained what 11yo did when they met up and talked about what him and neighbour boy do - play Xbox etc.

With my support he text the girl and asked if she wanted to come round next week on X afternoon. I've also asked if I can speak to her mum first.

I've always believed DS would follow and persue friendships beyond school when he felt confident and ready - it'll be interesting to se how this pans out!

[Shannaratiger]

Sounds great, hope you all have a nice time. Maybe message the school about how you would like their friendship discussed.