If you're a teacher, why might you do this? ASD related

[Iwastheweirdkid]

Apologies as it's related to things years ago and times are different. I'm thinking about it as going through diagnostic procedures for ASD now as an adult.

I remember being so happy in my first two years of school with lots of friends in my class, we all sat at a big table as you do as small kids. Invited to lots of parties and playdates with others. Then when we moved to next level, all friends were kept together and I was put in other class with none of my friends. The friendships all fizzled out.

What I'm wondering is if parents thought I was weird and didn't want their kids to be friends with me? So asked school to do this?

Or maybe if I do have ASD (don't know for sure yet) maybe those kids were maturing far faster than me and so didn't like me anymore and complained to parents about me?

My old reports say I wasn't good at mixing with others. Primary school was never the same for me after that, I never made nice solid friendships in school after (although had on-off friendships, ended up the butt of the joke a lot) and was on my own a lot. Painful process of learning to mask and try hard to be normal, so was better at high school. Have good friends from high school still today.

If a child was acting odd, would that be a reason to move them from a group of normal friends, as a teacher? Like I say though, those kids might well have started to dislike me anyway.

I can only speak from limited experience at my school (as in the one I attended; I am not a teacher) but the only reason pupils were separated like that when there were no issues such as bullying was down to ability. Were you performing at a very different level to the others in your class?

Would it be helpful for you to think that people might have disliked you many years ago? I can see why you are thinking about it, but I wonder whether it might be kinder to yourself not to?

equally likely it was about birthdays, or random.

I was excellent academically, and the classes weren't streamed by academic ability anyway, so it wouldn't have been that.

Ah no I just mean kids outgrow each other and friendships change a lot at that age - when I wonder if they disliked me it's more me thinking if I started to not fit in because I obviously had something neurodiverse going on. Even if it wasn't picked up because well it was a long time ago and girls often just weren't.

Or if I just lost a load of confidence suddenly going from being in a happy little group, to suddenly being on my own in a new class.

Not alphabetical or by bithdates, no.

Possibly random. Just one of those things maybe.

Hi I was the weird kid,

Funnily enough this happened to our dd entering year 2, like you she was bright but sensitive and not yet diagnosed

Her friends were stripped away and she was in a class with lots of pushy girls which kicked off horrific bullying culminating in talk of suicide at just 7

When I asked the teacher who arranged the classes why it happened it was nothing that dd did

If anything it was her compliant nature and quietness that didn’t help.

The classes were restructured to deal with big personalities all in one class, quiet dd was just collateral damage

10 years on I can honestly say that decision had a hugely detrimental effect on her life

it’s not just the big personalities that need thinking about but the quiet vulnerable ones who are often more deeply affected

I can only speak for the teachers I know, but I don't think there's so much planing in it. I think about who I wouldn't want together, ie who bounces off each other yo cause trouble, and try to get a range of abilities in each class. I also maybe think about strengths and weaknesses, ie I don't want all the kids who struggle to tie their shoe laces in one class. It's not scientific.

In my junior school they moved a few kids every year to another class. It was based on abilities.

In my infant school kids where moved based on birth date and "perceived" difficulties. I say perceived because of an issue with my head mistress.

I think many people have an innate dislike of introverts and odd ones out. They’ll consciously or unconsciously demonstrate their prejudices by putting the weird kid into situations they can’t cope with.

Ds2 has aspergers and he has had two teachers who did this to him and the second one was particularly nasty. He was very well behaved, but quiet and lacking in confidence. She really got off on being horrible to him. She readily admitted that he was frightened of her we ended up by moving him.

He was always stuck on the table with children who were disruptive and he couldn’t get his work done or make friends with them.

We resort children based on : academic ability, so there's a mixed ability in each class, not a strong and weak class. We also look at everyone having at least one friend, while trying to avoid encouraging one-sided friendships or friendships that are not a good match for whatever reason. We also consider personalities/special needs/extremely weak children so if there's a child who has quite extreme special needs (and would take up a lot of the teacher's time) then the two or three very very weak students would be together in the other class.
It would be very rare that a child would be left with no friends at all unless they were perhaps part of a group that was actually not good for them .

This process takes hours and hours and hours and major consultation among teachers who know the children.

If a parent/group of parents had asked for one person to be separated from their child it would only be done if the teachers felt this was appropriate, it wouldn't just happen

I'm sorry you had that experience

Could it have been something very, very simple like they had to allocate some other child to the other class for reasons which you never knew so this was the slot left over?

My dc were also separated from friends at various points, and their infants school; it was never personal as far as I know, just the outcome of 60 separate decisions that had to be made involving any number of possible constellations.

Of course one would have hoped that the needs of a child with ASD would have been prioritised, but that may have been the ignorance of the time.

“What I'm wondering is if parents thought I was weird and didn't want their kids to be friends with me? So asked school to do this?”

Not a hope in hell that a school arranged classes because of that.

They have their own priorities for classes and most likely it was just bad luck that you were the one in a different class from your friends, they do try to keep friendship groups together, but, it’s not always possible.

If you were super bright, you may have been moved to another class in order to be around another bright child, so that you could stimulate each other?

I think this used to be done - with little regard for the fact that children don't always choose their friends based on their intelligence, and that socialisation is as important as academic achievement.

I wouldn't assume that you were moved because you were 'weird'.

Could you have been separated because you were very academically able? In our local school they separate like this but it is not official, but you can see when they split classes they do on ability.

My daughter was separated from her friendship group as they thought she'd be a good influence on another group. It really upset her and she missed her friends.