to take my DS out of school

[onceortwice]

It's not really AIBU at all, but I need advice. I've tried the SN boards, but there just isn't much traffic over there.

DS is 4. He has HFA (High functioning autism... Massive IQ. zero social skills).

He is hating school. Last two days have been a nightmare, with him kicking and screaming. I know in my heart he's not going to 'get' it. He's not going to somehow 'get' the social interactions.

I have agreed to keep him in until half term, but I am the one who drops off a screaming child and picks up a patently unhappy one.

he says the class is too busy and too noisy (which it probably is). There are 30 kids and he won't get his draft statement until mid October.

Advice please? No prep school will touch him, so that's not an option.

(and, can I just thank the lovely, amazing lady who talked to me this morning, actually making an effort to come and talk when I was upset... I hope you know how much that was appreciated and I think you will, over time, become a really good friend)

Hi Onceortwice
Ive got to post and run (as I should be doing other things not MNetting) but do try posting over here in MN home ed where you will find many who know about HE and some who know about HE their ASD kids.

Hope you figure out what best to do for your ds soon.

He doesnt legally have to be at school until the term after his fifth birthday.

Is there any way you could gradually get him used to going to school rather than him going in full time straight away.

Hope you get something sorted.

Did you have a home visit? You do need to talk to the teacher, preferably the Head to see what they are going to do. They must have at least one TA in the class if not more, they need to be supporting him when he comes in.. and whenever he needs it. Also if he gets a statement he will have a one to one TA hopefully so that will make a huge difference.
It can work buti agree with others, the school will need to put things in place to help him feel safe and try to make him feel settled.
Can you call the school now and arrange a meeting ASAP, ie today?

Do you have any strategies at home that you could employ at school too?

I can see exactly where you are coming from here.

Round here you wouldn't have a choice of a non-30 in a class within reasonable driving distance. So just sending him to a smaller school wouldn't be an option.

Taking him out and HE may be a short term gain, not a long term. You want/need him to learn social interactions.
I've lost count of the number of people that have said me/ my dc would be ideal for HE because we're fairly bright and not tremendously social. My response is socially it would be dreadful because it would take away any need to socialise, so even in social situations we wouldn't feel the need to bother with learning it. Academically we might fly ahead. Socially we'd drop badly.

You know him best:
Will he settle in time?
Did he go to preschool? And if so, how did he settle there?
If you took him out until he's 5yo, would the extra time mean he would be more mature and be able to settle quicker?
Would after school play with other children help?
Could he do half days? Would that help?
Can the school provide somewhere he can go when he's getting overloaded with the noise? Say he can sit in the reception area with a TA for 5-10 minutes to calm down?
What about ear defenders?

Suggest you go and talk to the school. They should be able to tell you things he's enjoying, so you can remind him of those. If he's sad all day they should have noticed. It may be that he cheers up for a while, and then gets sad again when he starts thinking about you again. They will have dealt with children that don't want to go before, what do they suggest.

What about flexi schooling? It doesn't have to be half days, can be anything you want. Do need to get school on board though.

Whatever you decide, don't stop pushing on the statement and make sure his needs are very clearly detailed in part 2 and lots of strategies named and quantified in part 3. Then even at home you might be in with a chance of getting support for his issues.

Persevere with the SN board on here as they will be SO helpful for you.

Does the school have a SENCo you can talk to?

My DD3 has SENs, mainly speech and language delay, she has just started reception this week. When she was nursery age her Child Development team insisted she started nursery - to do this I had to put her in a nursery which was different to the place I wanted which was attached to school. I knew it wasn't going to work, but I went along with it and I was proven right.

Your post sounds like how I felt - your gut instinct is telling you this isn't right. Maybe you should trust your instinct and go with it.

How old is your DC? What are the alternatives to his current school?

I think you sound really overwhelmed. It's really, really hard to deal with this but you need to take action.

Phone school today and make an appointment for next week.
Take time over the weekend (can someone look after DS for you?) to think through what you want for him to get out of the next few weeks. Don't look too far ahead (one of the side-effects of statments and IEPs and all that gubbins is that you're planning for years ahead, forget that just now) and think

What do I want OnceJr to achieve in the next four weeks?

If you feel that should involve sending him to school, then think what you want to achieve from that

eg I want him to be able to walk into school by himself without kicking or screaming.

So what do you need to do? Probably set up a new routine for him, eg one where he starts 10 minutes later so he's not in the playground scrum. A quiet place that he can go to if he's overwhelmed. A shorter day - maybe even just target yourself for an hour of school.

Tell school that's what you want, and put that into place for four weeks. Then see where you are and extend the target for the next four weeks etc etc. It's not rocket science. It is feckin exhausting and involves you pushing school hard.

Meanwhile you can read up on HE and see if that's right for you. If there's no legal requirement age 4 then I'd not worry too much about that just at the minute.

And take care of yourself. It will be hard but no-one will do it for you, unfortunately. xxx

I homeschooled my no2 son because I was terrified he would harm himself if he was left in school any longer. We just reached the end of the road, although it was when he went to seniors that the problems got really bad, and I just knew deep down that if I didn't do something, nobody else would, and I was terrified I'd lose him. It was the best thing I ever did and I wouldn't hesitate to do it again. He needed to be out of that place to be able to have the rest of his life to do things with, not be forced to be there while it systematically destroyed him mentally.
There is lots of support out there for homeschooling too, in spite of the Vocal Doubters it CAN be done, and it's not all that difficult to do.

Hi. I have a DS with autism and ADD. When he started school he was also a selective mute which didn't help. He had absolute meltdowns throughout the first year and I would often have to go in to retrieve him from under the desk at the end of the day (his coping strategy). He was in a class of 30, 90 in the year group, so it was a big thing for him to deal with, especially as he has issues with noise. But the key thing was that the school were fantastic and the teachers supported him all the way. His teaching assistant especially was brilliant with him and knew just what to do when he was having one of his meltdowns. He is now in yr 3 and is coping remarkably well considering. If I had taken him out of school to HE I don't think he would ever have learnt the skills he now has. Ok so he still has his issues but they are more manageable. Learning the skills he needed to have in mainstream was made easier by him doing it at infant school, where actually lots of "normal" children may have problems too, and where the children didn't notice too much, or just took him for who he was. I think we would have had more problems if he had been kicking off now at age 7, where kids notice differences more and they can be more unkind. For us the key factor was the school. They deal with quite a lot of ASD children (perhaps a smaller school wouldn't have the same knowledge & experience) and totally understood how to manage and nurture DS. So long as your school can, and are willing, to offer support, he may be better off there in the long run. Good luck.

Hi OP.
We went through similar when dd2 (hfa) started school so know what you are going through, its so hard taking in a screaming upset child .

Firstly (i may be wrong as this may have changed), legally a child does not have to be in full time education until a term after their 5th birthday so you could legally keep him home or in nursery until then.

Secondly, i know its hard but there is a chance he will settle, it will just take him a lot longer than most children.

He's your child and you are the only one that knows what he needs, if i was in your shoes i think i would look for a school with smaller class sizes, meanwhile i would just send him to school part time so he gets in the routine of going, being left and he understands that crying and getting upset does not mean he gets to stay at home.

Both of my dd's often rufuse to go to school and i have to drag them in crying, it breaks my hart and i often come home and cry but often they come home after and their day has been ok (or even fun), we then have to go through it all again the following day.

The fist couple of weeks back at school are always hell (dd1 is now in year 4 and we have the same every year), i have been close to pulling them both out this week and home ed them but i know that i need to give them more time to settle before deciding to do anything drastic.

Go into the school, ask for a meeting with his teacher and the school SENCO, they maybe able to work out a part time time table so he only goes in for 2 hours a couple days a week to begin with and then see how it goes, take each day as it comes.

I have to agree with you there kids DS first school was massive but they were brilliant. School #2 is a small country school and the support is no-where near as good.

Not quite the same but when DS 7 with Downs was at a school for children with "moderate learning difficulties" cringe, he was not accepted by the staff
and made it very unpleasant for him or us. Had meeting with school it was awful they had nothing positive to say about him. I am afraid 1/2 way through the meeting I left with DS, he did not return again. The LEA were supportive and he then went to a SN school 32 miles away.
If the school don't want our children it is their loss

Can you imagine someone dragging you kicking and screaming to a job you hated and traumatised you, and society is telling you all the time 'its for your own good, you have got to learn how to get along with people'. I doubt a grown adult would put up with that.

Socialisation is a RED HERRING. After going right through the school system myself it taught me nothing about how to be with people and to treat them, and I mean ZERO. It taught me to sit down and shut up, and to be ignored emotionally by teachers. It taught me not to hit out at bullies as they have feelings too.

Real confidence comes from knowing you are loved and protected, and this self esteem built from this solid background enables a person to feel confident.

You could defer and hold the place until the term when he's five.

They are also legally obliged to offer him half days until then, if you want to try shorter days.

If its any comfort my son who is now 9 had a terrible time in first year of school and ultimately got a diagnosis of traits of autism. He is still behind socially and academically (esp compared to his IQ) but he is now v happy at school and they are dealing ok with his outbursts. Class of 30.

Please have a read of this site, and join the corresponding yahoo home education groups in your area, where you will probably find other parents in the same situation. www.educationotherwise.net/ I think it's definitely in his best interests to remove him from school if you are financially able to. You are very lucky if you are, my DD would benefit from being home schooled, but it's just not possible for me to do so at the moment.

Take him out. He's 4 and he's miserable and you know he's not going to get it. I would home educate him. I don't have DCs with autism, so I'm no expert, but I've taught kids on the autistic spectrum and despite our best efforts I don't think any of them have really been happy at school. No matter what you do as a teacher you can't control all the conditions that stress some children. 30 kids is a nightmare. Noise, social situations they don't understand, in jokes, other kids winding them up in subtle ways. Good luck.

I know two asd children at ds's school (where the classes are 30 children from reception) who had awful experiences and couldn't cope. Both had regular meltdowns which must have been agony for them. The school (outstanding according to OFSTED) coped very badly imo. Both have now left and are far happier in their new schools.
I would think about home ed until a more suitable setting for your ds can be found.

You need to speak to the council's SEN department and push, push push them. Tell them that he is unhappy and that he's not coping with the larger classes. There are plenty of different units around that your DS can go to.

My DS also has severe language disorder, and we're convinced he has Asperger's though he hasn't been diagnosed yet (still waiting, a year on...). We're lucky in that we have a statement and we're just waiting for a placement for him, which will be in mainstream. Any trouble and I'm taking him out and will be fighting for somewhere else.

My BIL has Asperger's and his primary school could not cope with him at all. It was a regular occurrence for my MIL to have to go and pick him up as the school didn't know what to do with him. Once he got into a specialist school, he started enjoying himself and ended up taking his GCSEs a year early.

I can still remember his unhappy face when me and DP went to pick him up after another phone call when MIL was at work.

You need to do all you can for your DS, and if you don't think it's right, then listen to your gut.

Hello

I know how you feel- my 4 year old, suspected HFA, started school this week and has been exactly the same, so .

What twisty sadly isn't quite right- whether there are specialist schools that your ds can attend with a high IQ depends on entirely where you live; I have 2 children attending such schools, a friend in a rural area has absolutely none at all.

I will start by telling you what I did with my older boys, both AS / HFA (one of each). With ds1 I went for full immersion: now for him that was a very staggered start anyway, alternating weeks of morning / afternoon over 6 weeks or so, but that was school norm. It rapidly started to go awry- to the extent parents raised a petition against him. We moved areas by chance and he acquired a statement soon after, with a TA he coped OK in mainstream and went into a Base (ASD specialist unit running alongside a mainstream comp that only takes children with AS or HFA) at 11.

With ds3 we were far more delicate- is more severely affected BUT equally withdraws into himself so doesn't stick out in terms of being the sort of nuisance that gets some teachers moving. he was communicating via PECs at the time. He did the nursery year with school PT, but then I HEd until Christmas, went PT until Easter, then MS FT. After another year we moved him to a generic Base but he wasn't at all traumatised or damaged by any of his early schooling and we feel we gave him a shot at it which mattered to us.

DS4 started Monday and his anxiety levels have been building, he is on the waiting list for psych input as they are so high anyway. We took him home for lunch on day one against school advice but from there have gone with the rest of the class BUT we know the statement is all applied for. His class has 4 TAs for some unknown reason, one of whom is a friend, and I feel confident he is OK. If he is not, I would absolutely consider HEing.

I think I got it right for each child, from which you can deduce only it's a case by case basis!

Absolutely consider HEing but also think about PT schooling then building up, took a while to persuade our school but eventually they got on board.

Most of all though- speak to the NAS or a local ASD group to find out what is in your area (LEAs are known to lie about provision, sad but true). I found I learned more about what was on offer by attending a disability sports group and chatting to parents than anything else; I am doing an MA in ASD now and only got to hear of the wonderful place ds1 attends because of that! Go with your instincts but with reality; for example if your child does not get DLA at MR or HR (and you therefore Carer's) and you claim tax credits or similar, you could struggle as under universal credit your choice would be to attend workfare or lose the income- HEing will count for zilch. Sad but true. If HEing is for you (probably not me right at this moment, I use the day to sleep as often as not and DH works from home) then go for it, it's a wonderful thing and there are some huge success storied out there.

no advice

but shit loads of sympathy

good luck OP, someone clever and more knowledgeable will advise

I am sorry, and I really hope you can make it work

xxxx

Good for you and DS zzzz...many successful people were taught at home.