Other school parents actively avoiding my ND child

[Heartshapediamond]

My 6 year old son has recently been diagnosed with ASD.
I haven’t actively told the other parents at school but they have had clearly been able to tell he’s ‘different’ for a while now.
He used to always get invited to parties and now he’s being totally excluded.
Not only that, but even when I see the other parents on the playground they will literally turn away. If they see my child talking to theirs they almost run over to them to break up the conversation.

I’m so sad for my son. He’s not violent or particularly aggressive, but he does have a tendency to have meltdowns and get visibly agitated about things. He’s prone to screaming and hitting me (he doesn’t hit other children).

It’s even harder as he doesn’t have any siblings and we live in an area where there aren’t many kids his age, and the ones that are don’t really play out much.

We have a couple of friends outside of school. But even that’s getting harder to organise anything. School holidays are very lonely for him.

I asked one of the mums of a boy he talks about at school whether said boy would like to come for a play date at our house. She said she’d let me know. Radio silence ever since and she now actively avoids me, unless she can’t then it’s just a very swift hi.

What the hell do I do? This is compounded my the fact I’m also waiting for a diagnosis of ADHD for myself. So my rejection sensitivity (RSD) is on high alert.

I’m talking more about the parents. How they react. Not the 6yr old kids.

I'm rather unhappy about that deletion, because I have serious concerns over how incel forums draw in young vulnerable men, who are struggling with romantic relationships due to unsupported social communication disorders, e.g. autism spectrum conditions.

I used to think that early diagnosis of autism spectrum conditions could only be helpful, but over just the course of my lifetime, I have seen a change in the behaviour of young adults. I was diagnosed in late teens, and at the time, I never met a teenager with Asperger's (which was the label then) with similar interests that I didn't get on with. Diagnosis was at that time typically late, meaning that by the time it happened, teens were plagued with self-doubt, low confidence and depression. I could go on, but autistic burnout from years of striving to meet unattainable targets covers it. People who've been diagnosed late are eloquent on how meaningful it is to know that there is a reason why they struggle with certain things, and it's not that they're stupid or lazy.

However, I've now had a chance to see how some educational settings and how some parents respond to early diagnoses. I anticipated that universally, people would aim to give children with ASD the extra support they needed to attain the skills that come more naturally to children without. A simple example is straight-forwardly giving children who struggle with catching a ball extra opportunities to train their hand-eye coordination, instead of writing them off as incapable and stupid. Turns out I was naive.

Instead, they are getting written off as incapable before they've tried, because they have ASD in their records.

One time, my undiagnosed child had a school argument with an officially diagnosed best friend, because they were amazingly similar children with a stubborn streak a mile wide. That was why they were friends- it's rather standard for autistic children with similar personalities to be drawn to each other.

Not an issue, except the teacher told me all about how she'd told my kid how he could have handled the argument better, and to be more understanding of his friend because of his friend's special issues, and made it clear she hadn't given this talk to the friend. So my child got the social skills development, and the other child didn't. Good for my child. Not for his best friend.

I see this in other contexts too. I have a physical hobby that I am pretty decent at, because I started it before I knew what was causing my coordination issues, and so didn't believe they were insurmountable. It was really important to teenage me to be able to achieve particular skills, so I put in the hours of extra work to get past them. Since then, I've encountered children and teenagers in the same hobby whose early diagnosis has led them to believe that extra hours of practice will do nothing!

I am very good at supporting people in this hobby, and identifying who has potential. None of these kids have worse issues than I did at the same age, and many of them are naturally better. It would be absolutely fair enough for any of them to decide that improving their skills isn't worth the extra hours of practice, but they simply take it for granted that disability means they are incapable of improvement.

I think that's awful.

And I'm seeing that attitude play out in social development. This is the first crop of young adults with early diagnosed ASD who have been told their whole lives that it's other children's jobs to accommodate their "big emotions". They are unpleasant, because they have been taught to be. It goes beyond clueless social mistakes. They think everyone should act as their unpaid support worker, because no-one ever told them differently.

These children who have been brought up like that are naturally extending that approach to romantic relationships, and then they are finding that their peers don't want a romantic relationship like that. After a couple of years of frustration, the boys are easy pickings for the supposed guidance offered by incel forums and the manosphere, which exacerbates the social difficulties they already had.

I expect this will be reported too, because heaven forbid we discuss this.

Sorry I will also say he is what I guess people used to call Aspergers, but isn’t a term used anymore.
He’s very aware of friendships and wants to be included. As I said in an earlier post he loves to mess around and be silly with the other boys in his class.

I have to agree with @RedToothBrush and some of @NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision post

I OBJECT to the idea that its also about ND v NT kids too. Firstly NT kids still count and still have their own issues. And second the idea that all the other kids are NT and not ND is bloody ridicilous.

My DD who is NT was very empathetic and kind to a boy in her class that had mild autism. Sadly over time he Became obsessed with her - this played out as pulling her hair, staring at her, taking off her jumper during playtime. I realised the severity of it when I attended sports day and he wouldn’t keep his distance or hands off my DD - her friends had to kindly pull him away several times in the space on an hour - he was constantly trying to kiss her. They were 9 at the time.

I had escalated this to the teachers who took minor measurements such as making sure she sat in front of him so she wasn’t distressed by him staring at her. They promised he had a teacher during playtime to ensure his interactions with her were friendly. I noticed that none of this was helping and my DD began hating school. She would cry after school. So I asked them to put them in different classes.

They didn’t. I asked them to move her then if it would be too disruptive for him. They didn’t.

When I questioned why there wasn’t more being done the answer from the teacher was “she is coping with it so well” and “she is so good with him that we don’t want to separate them”. When I spoke to his mum about it all so that we can create an action plan his mum said “he is obsessed with your DD, he loves her” and “I think this is his first crush”.

Sorry, unacceptable answers. No child should feel this. I worried that they were enabling this behaviour which might look “cute” at 9 but imagine this at 15! He was not the only ND child in the school, and I raised this with the head and had to bring in external advice from charities that deal with this and the school realised that they had a big job to do in ensuring that harassment like behaviour was not tolerated no matter your ability.

I don’t believe this is anything like your son OP, but to echo that just because a child is NT it doesn’t mean they can take on the world. My NT child had selective mutism for the first 3 years of primary school - I couldn’t leave her at social functions etc, she struggled to make friends. As her mum I had to advocate for her and worked with the teachers first and interacted with the mums of the children that she was friends with only. It’s like when parents expect older siblings (who are children themselves) to take on the role of a parent before the child is emotionally secure - we can’t expect children to take on everything. Especially not at 5.

It really isn’t all negative - at the moment my DD is learning an instrument with a boy who is ND and I know his mum very well - he had many melt downs in class when they were in primary school and was diagnosed with ADHD. The mum went through all sorts of lengths to get the support her son needed. She spoke to the teachers, for external charities involved and she mentioned that she had to change her own behaviour because she thought that his acting out was a culture thing and that he would snap out of it. Eventually his melt downs calmed down once the school actually provided support (the biggest issue is both the emotional and pastoral support that schools need to invest in that is lagging at the moment). The boy had always had a group of friends before his diagnosis and still has a group of close friends going into secondary school.

Every kid is different. But regardless of them being NT or ND they rely on us as parents to really advocate for them.

Emotional abuse, controlling behaviour and sexual harassment are all safeguarding issues and should be treated accordingly every bit as much as violent conduct in the classroom.

I know that it's not uncommon for teachers to say things like "but they get on so well" or "but he/she is the only one who can manage x". This isn't ok. It's not for other children to take on the needs of another child. That's the responsibility of staff.

If it's happening (and yes it does, I've been there) raise merry hell on those grounds. It's never ok if your own child is coming home every day in tears because of another child regardless of whether they are neurodiverse or not.

Unacceptable behaviour remains unacceptable behaviour which impacts on others regardless.

Going down the safeguarding route, means you have a formal structure to work though and the school has to address.

Ultimately it's in the best interests of a neurodiverse child because if they are behaving like this, their needs aren't being met and that needs to be changed. It means the school can't just try and brush it under the carpet and ignore the issue.