11 year old DS, severe separation anxiety and secondary school struggles - suggestions for alternative London schools?

Not going to bother to engage with the desktop psychologists above who can apparently assess my child, and critique our parenting, based on a few internet posts and their own assumptions

Of course you won't.

Your poor child.

To give a further example, DD2 finds large groups overwhelming. In school, she would become almost non-verbal and she couldn't tell teachers she was stuck, or if she did try, she would be so timid about it that they forgot about her, so she would just sit and wait for help that never came. Therapy isn't going to change that sense of being overwhelmed. She has now been placed in a specialist school and has a class of 3 pupils with a tutor who accompanies them to all their lessons. She is growing in confidence and debating in class, telling staff when she's stuck. She's making great progress.

for him medication has helped

I just want to clarify that this is anxiety medication, he benefits from Seratonin. In fact it is life changing for him to handle his anxiety and to function. There is no medication for autism as it isn't an illness.

What Lougle said.

It is complicated but it is very difficult to 'therapy' away an unsuitable environment.

In addition therapies like CBT don't tend to work for ND people, unless adapted.

When my son was removed from the environment after a period of time he was able to address his anxiety, for him medication has helped and has been able to address with some tailored therapy some of the sensory issues that were making the environment an issue. This in the full understanding of his needs.

I think what is striking about the OP is that she is engaging her child in therapy without fully having explored his needs or whether the therapy is appropriate.

@CurrerEllisActon it's very complex but often the difficulties in school will be the result of the environment not meeting the child's needs. No amount of therapy will undo that. Also, for therapy to be effective, a person has to be able to see that things could be different for them. Certainly, in DD2's case, her mindset is 'that's just the way it is' and she can't see that it could be different, despite desperately wanting it to be.

I’ve not read the whole thread so apologies but been looking for advice for an anxious and most likely autistic child who waiting for assessment. Not academically gifted or even working at expected level- this DC is dyslexic and made extremely anxious by almost every aspect of school. The lunches can be ok apparently..
Having acknowledged (likely) autism and anxiety coexisting in a child, are parents on this thread saying that therapy wouldn’t be useful in that scenario?
It feels like in this scenario, not having therapy isn’t working either, so wouldn’t it be worth a try? Sorry if I have misunderstood what posters are saying.

All of this.

Oh and “highly sensitive” is basically (ableist) shorthand for autism with high IQ and no other cognitive impairments or learning disabilities.

“Worried about him being autistic”

Yikes. I guess that’s why you’re paying an expensive psych to tell you what you want to hear, because you really couldn’t cope with your kid being one of us I suppose.

Only of that 'spectrum' is linear. If it is more like the image below, with each individual plotting a dot at some point on each of the sectors, they all have ASD, but the shape of their ASD will look different.

Add in to that the fact that different situations will make each individual plot a different point in each sector, and you've got a huge range.

If DD2 is doing a solitary task with animals, she barely seems autistic at all. Take her to a shopping centre and she sticks out like a sore thumb.

I was repeatedly dismissed and almost scorned for suggesting that DD2 had ASD when she was young. A paediatrician who specialises in ASD said she didn't have traits. She was diagnosed at 11 and is now, at 15, in a specialist school, having completely fallen apart in year 10.

That is not what the autism spectrum is. It's not a continuum from A to Z with A being very autistic and Z being mildly autistic.

I can't add images but have a look at this: ablelight.org/blog/why-the-autism-wheel-is-replacing-the-spectrum/

The way I see a diagnosis is that it is a useful shorthand and way of framing things.

Even if you don't want to pursue an assessment, you could implement some strategies and see if they help. FWIW I think repeated exposure may work for some NT children; for autistic children it just increases the trauma.

What you want to get to is a place where your son is happy and so is able to learn without stress. Year 7 is a walk in the park compared to later years. If he isn't coping now, he won't cope later. This is the wrong school.

right but your child experiences anxiety AND has many many autistic traits.
You could help him by exploring that but instead you are trying to shove him into an unsuitable environment and are not considering the long term damage you are doing to him.

I find that really upsetting.

This thread makes me so sad. My autistic son was just like OPs. I took him out of school and he got fantastic GCSEs, he's now at a selective college doing A Levels on track to a RG university.

OP thinks that autism is a life sentence and is clearly prejudiced.

OP is so far beyond the point of understanding it honestly isn't worth it. I wonder if her DC will be in my caseload in future? I pray not, for his sake.

There is no such thing as mild autism.

I was a bundle of joy to teach. I went to a RG uni.

I'm autistic AF.

In October I warned OP that they were re traumatising their child by persisting.

I feel for the boy at the heart of this story. His obvious needs are being ignored in favour of a gradual exposure approach that will not work with his neurotype.

When he is fully traumatised and in his twenties he will have questions for OP. I hope they have answers. This thread is a dead horse, no point flogging it. What's going on here is something I've seen and dealt with a dozen times. It's autism. It's always autism.

But meh, keep throwing money at the therapist. I'm out.

OP why don't you just accept the school environment is not for your son? There are hundreds of thousands of parents on Not Fine At School fighting the same battle, forcing their kids into school and literally ruining their own MH at the same time by doing so, all in the hope things will improve. For some things may improve, but for the majority it causes way more harm than good.
If you try and grow a plant or tree in the wrong environment it's not going to flourish, doesn't matter how healthy the plant or tree is, if the conditions are wrong it won't grow.
Taking a child out of the school system is not the end of the world, in fact it can open up a whole new one and like me you will look back and wonder why on earth you put your son and your self through it. If you are having to resort to a medical practitioner in order to get your child to school, something is very wrong.
School is not the only way to gain an education, and a limited one at that. Taking a child out of school is not an indicator the child will fail at life.
What it will do is bring the anxiety down so you can reset, take a breather and work out where you go from here. My son was HE at age 13/14 after several years of being in similar situation to your own, we had exhausted all avenues. He has since told me he had a suicide plan in place because of how utterly hopeless the situation was. Fast forward 3 yrs, top grades in all he GCSE's, now studying A levels, working part time and more importantly as he said himself recently, never happier.

Have you considered hypnotherapy? It can work wonderfully to ease panic attacks and grief

Where is the 'like' button?

By all means keep wasting £350 a pop on the expensive therapist but this:

"he is fine with talking to the adults there, just his peers which is hard

he does not want school friends to come for play dates as he sees home as his safe space

He also has social anxiety and struggles with the other kids

He is extremely empathetic though (too much in many ways - he gets upset about other kids getting in trouble etc)

he has all sorts of slightly OCD behaviors (he has to arrange his stuffed animals in bed in a certain order at night, likes all his books lined up straight)

is much happier talking to adults than other kids

likes a routine

has always gotten very obsessively interested in one thing at a time

has things like needing the tags to be removed from his clothes

getting overly bothered by sock seams

no matter what time he goes to bed he always wakes up super early and has done since he was little

we have tried listening to music, but he seems to find it too much when he is on edge

actually doing excellently in class apparently - just the transition"

This is autism. Now and in 5-6 years when he really breaks down and finally gets diagnosed. His life is in your hands but he is going to ask you why.

Well you can lead a horse to water... if the expensive psychologist says he isn't despite displaying several flags then far be it from me, not just an autistic person myself but a professional working within the realm of neurodiverse, to suggest otherwise.