To challenge autistic DD’s detention?

[ThisFairShark]

Dd (14) is autistic, diagnosed at age 8. She has trouble reading social cues and knowing what is/isn’t appropriate to say, she’s always very honest at all times! and has a support plan at school and is under the SEND team.

In school, she wasn’t paying attention in her science lesson and a teacher apparently said “(DD’s name) am I boring you?” to which DD replied “yes a little”. The whole class started laughing and DD got given a lunchtime detention to be served next week.

I know for all intents and purposes this is rude behaviour but I’ve spoken to DD and she genuinely didn’t realise that this was something she wasn’t supposed to say, the teacher asked a question and she gave an honest answer…

now I’ve spoken to her about how the teacher actually just wanted her to pay attention and this was their way of asking her to do so, but I don’t really think she should have to do the detention as she wasn’t aware that she was being rude nor did she intend to be rude, she just doesn’t have the social awareness to understand that the teacher actually just wanted to pay attention and wasn’t genuinely asking if she found the lesson boring.

WIBU to talk to the school, CC’ing in the SENCO and ask that she be excused from the detention, and that in future, if teachers could be clearer (for example, “pay attention please, DD’s name”)?

It doesn’t take knowledge of every child’s ND to realise that a sarcastic rhetorical question is not the best way to refocus a child, regardless whether the are ND or not, and is likely to be directly unhelpful to a child with ADHD or ASD (which are likely to be present in every classroom).

I think people aren't realising that op's daughter won't be able to learn from this and apply it to all sarcastic rhetorical questions forevermore. The disability involves an inability to detect sarcasm and other language/non verbal cues when others are expressing themselves. So op's daughter will remember the experience and the specific phrase the teacher used as sarcastic but that's about as much as she can learn from it. Not the ability to always tell when her teachers are being sarcastic.

This is why I would have to explain the daughter's experience to the school in a non confrontational way, to aid all of her teachers understanding her better at school. It's not the parents place to refuse the detention but it is to advocate for a disabled child..

And any workplace environment is required to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate disabilities. A reasonable adjustment for an autistic person is to give them a bit of grace if they genuinely don't understand something and didn't mean to cause offence.

This in spades. She was asked and she answered. Double empathy problem needs a lot more attention paid to it. Autistic adults without an intellectual disability are 9 times more likely to die by suicide. Why don’t the NT majority do some of the work to become more empathic. I’d definitely address this as it’s an opportunity to learn for the teacher as well as the child and punishment isn’t needed.

That's not quite what happened though

OPs daughter was asked a question, which she answered honestly.
A teacher asking "Am I boring you?" is not the same as a child saying "This lesson is boring".
It certainly can be interpreted as a rude answer to a question, but we spend a lot of time telling children not to tell lies, and then expect them to tell lies which are socially acceptable.

OPs daughter will need to find a way to negotiate the difference. This could be a useful teachable moment for both the child and the teacher.

Some detentions are unfair. That’s life. And it will be further education life, uni life, working life.

Both our teens have had unfair detentions - they got told to suck it up that I wasn’t going to context the school that’s just life

They make the case themselves nowadays if things happen at school (bar very exceptional occasions).

I would suggest your daughter goes to this teacher herself and apologises just say “sorry sir I didn’t intend on being rude I just wasn’t engaged in that class”

This would hold more weight and help build her life skills than mummy emailing.

It might not change the detention this time, and you might want to explain that, but saying sorry for something, even if it was done with no malice intent, but had a negative perception, is something everyone needs to learn to get on in life.

YABU. Look at it from the teacher's point of view. She HAS to give a detention for this kind of thing, otherwise she loses control of the class. Just tell DD to do the detention.

I’ve shared this video with other teachers at my school. In this instance, quite clearly the child did not mean to be rude. Often children are labelled “rude” unfairly. Yes some children are rude but on other occasions there is something totally different going on.

Or saying “am I boring you” is a verbal nudge to pay attention

You could say the teacher could easily have just gone to “detention Susan for not paying attention” rather than pointing out to her and the whole class that not engaging is not an option,

This is a class of 13/14/15 year olds - they are not the easiest bunch to keep listening - as the laughter reaction shows.

The teacher is a trained professional they know what they are doing, imagine being emailed all the time by a family member of another employee who wasn’t in the building about every little thing you do at work? No wonder recruitment and retention is difficult in the teaching profession.

Given the large number of SEND children being included in mainstream schools, I presume there is training on dealing with children with various conditions.
Presumably this is included in disciplinary approaches and appropriate levels off punishment. These are trained professionals in a professional and regulated organisation.

Some detentions are unfair and its not a big deal. Suck it up and resist moaning to the school.

The teacher is a trained professional they know what they are doing

If the teacher knew what they were doing, why would they use sarcasm to make a point to a student who literally doesn’t understand sarcasm because of a social communication disability?
And then punish the student for not understanding that sarcasm?

Seems very unprofessional to me. In the moment they probably didn’t think of the child’s diagnosis, or perhaps they don’t understand much about autism, but that’s their mistake and they shouldn’t dole out detentions because they handled something badly.

It actually really varies and people have off days!

So i work in a school which has a unit for autistic children who can access the mainstream curriculum. The staff at that school are very well trained. We do whole staff communication training regularly.

But they do outreach to other local schools who really arent quite there yet with understanding and training and have a lot to learn.

One of the biggest complaints about teacher training is they dont feel they get enough time on send and feel unprepared for the classroom.

There is very little training around autism for mainstream teachers (unless, as above, they have an autism unit in the school). Much of the training is optional, at least where I am (Ireland). The training is available, but it’s often up to the teachers themselves to access it.

Or dd caused it by not paying attention in class in the first place. Mountain and molehill.

Are you for real? Your child was rude. Autism is not a excuse for everything.

No wonder the OP hasnt been back.

At our school parents cant email teachers directly, and the vast majority of moany parent emails are not even passed on to the staff concerned.

They are some extremely bright 'Autistic' children who play up on that sort of thing being 'direct' which in other circumstances is a skill. I wish there were more 'direct' speakers in Politics for instance. However, the fact the child is able to give a quick 'witty' answer, means they are well aware of what they are saying. I am sure she was the Class 'Spokesperson' having been in that situation myself at school. If the child is High Functioning Autistic i.e with intellectual ability above IQ of 75 they likely know what they are doing. My DS year 10 for instance is working recently towards grades 3/4 GCSE, yet he gives back very clever 'ripostes' to teachers worthy of a clever wordsmith! The, teachers are aware of his disabilities, but aware of his strengths, thus his actions with some teachers can lead to a Detention, other teachers try to advance these skills. This is to state Autistic people need to develop strategies and 'awareness' though their own experiences.

The difficulty for Autistic people is that they cannot be taught in a conventional manner but own from learning, through their own experience.

She was “rude” in the same way that a person with a chronic health condition is “lazy” - it’s entirely down to how it’s perceived by others. The intent was clearly not to be rude.

It is really quite a tricky one for a child who is very literal. There are circumstances where it would be perfectly fine to answer the question “am I boring you?” with “yes a little bit” - the social rules about tone, context etc are quite subtle.

There, are some extremely bright Autistic Children who play up.

The intent was clearly not to be rude.

I don't see how any of us, including the op, can possibly know that?

Thankless, underpaid job. Parents thinking their precious offspring can do no wrong

I do think OP will know. She knows her child. She says it was a genuine misunderstanding.

Absolutely, pupils are praised for being ‘honest’ (rude 🤨) to staff by mummy and daddy, but woe betide the staff member who uses an unapproved inflection in their tone!
instant parental horrified email!!!

I’m trusting the OP knows her child in this case.

One of my children (the one with ASD, probably not coincidentally) I would absolutely know I could get an honest account of what happened and his understanding of it.

The other one it would be 50-50 whether he was spinning me an excuse.

Ridiculous the amount of people accusing actually autistic people of not understanding.. literally live it daily and am raising two kids with AuDHD, one of whom is in specialist education and like the OP's daughter would respond that way.. but who we have put a lot of work in to help teach social rules to help him.

Autism IS NOT a get out of jail free card, or carte blanche to ignore social rules once you've been made aware of them.

Yes, of course accommodations need to made, yes its worth explaining to the school/teacher that the OP's DD was being 'honest' and doesn't understand rhetorical questions.. but that doesn't also absolve the OP, as a parent, using it as a teaching moment to help explain to her 14yo about social rules and why the teacher thought was she did was rude, and what the appropriate response would be in that situation should it arise again.

As parents its an absolute failure to teach our kids to let their autism hang out there knowing that the world IS still autism unfriendly, all it's doing is setting them up for failure in the wider world.. and possibly for being disliked/little to no friends.. like i was, because my parents didn't teach me and i had to learn myself to keep my mouth shut in certain circumstances because it got me into trouble.

I would LOVE to unmask, to speak my mind, to say what i think, i do sometimes, it usually gets me deleted for breaking the TG.. and i often have to apologise for upsetting people when it wasn't my fault, and has me largely unliked by most people.

Why the ever loving fuck would i not teach my kids to avoid repeating my mistakes?