To pull DS from his school

[FoxyDash]

I have boy girl twins aged 14.

DS has no diagnosis but he is really struggling behaviour wise at school.

He is in trouble pretty much every day and has had multiple isolations this term.

It feels like everything is punishment and nothing is support.

DD does not have any lessons with him but she constantly hears people telling her that her brother [name redacted] has done this or that.

She comes home upset and embarrassed even though she has done nothing wrong.

I am starting to worry it is affecting her education and confidence.

School just say they are following policy and his behaviour is unacceptable.

There seems to be no plan beyond sanctions and phone calls home.

I feel completely stuck and let down by them.

Would it be advisable to move him to another school or could that make things worse.

OP, do you and/or his sister do anything with him that he enjoys? Trips out somewhere? Movie night? Game night? Building lego? Anything?

I would stop worrying about his education for a while and start just trying to connect. Find stuff to do with him that he enjoys and make him feel like he's loved at home. Stop punishing him for what he does at school. Let them deal with that. Give him as little negative attention as you can without letting him ruin your and DD's home life, and give him plenty of positive attention. It will be a really poor use of your time to try and get DS to do assessments and counseling if he's not interested or engaging at all.

If you can't find a way to connect, find a trusted adult who can. Sounds like his dad is a bit narrow minded/self-centered/etc. to meet his DS's needs, do you know anyone else, a man probably a better bet than a woman.

It does sound - as you said - that he's got a reputation at the school. That might not just be the staff (possibly not the staff at all, but unlikely in my experience). Other kids and, probably your DS himself will associate the school and him in negative ways and it can be hard to break that. Especially when it's constant and reinforced even at home. And a school that's so compliance focused they require sick kids to change into PE gear and sit on the sidelines is likely to be a poor fit for a lot of kids, tbh.

It can be difficult to balance the demands of a child with problems with your other kid's needs. And girls often suffer because people stop paying attention to them in order to pay attention to poor male behaviour. So be careful about that. Give DD attention too. If it will work try to do things as a family. Though I know with twins you often do need to do things separately as they spend so much time in close proximity and comparisons are inevitable, which leads to difficulty in becoming their own people, can make it hard to have unique relationships with them and can hurt their self esteem.

Oh @FoxyDash I am sorry for your situation (and that of your DC). Some of your comments are hard to read (the one about private assessment being a way of paying for a diagnosis!) but I am thinking possibly you have limited experience. Maybe don’t say that kind of thing to others tho.

Also you are certainly minimising his behaviour. As others have said, walking out of lessons and refusing to do as asked is not low-level disruption, it is pretty major. Wrt the PE situation – have you had a correspondence with the school about his injury and the fact that he cannot do PE? Surely they would be happy to put some role in place for him so he can at least have some PE input – keeping score, referee, some kind of assessment work? What does he tend to do in PE lessons?

It could be that your DS is ND and has been masking or coping this far, but now it has become an issue for him. You say he is not ND but really – how do you know? Unless you are an HCP you are only guessing. I would at least start the assessment process by taking him to the GP and explaining. Get your DS to talk about how he feels and why he acts up, if he can.

And re the injury – what has he actually done? your last post says "something to do with ligaments" – so what? Has he torn his ACL? my DS did that and it was incredibly painful. Are you sure there is no issue resulting from that? If he has previously been active then it is very demoralising not to be able to be. Maybe talk to him about that. When is he set for the surgery? Can you push for it to be sooner, citing his MH which seems to me to possibly be low?

When he's home he spends most of his time in his room, when myself and DD are having a movie night we ask if he wants to join and he says no as he doesn't like the film (half the time we haven't yet chosen one), he does go out with friends though not often. I did take them to Alton towers in October and he complained the whole time that he was bored. We went out the Sunday before they went back to school after Christmas and it was similar.

He started off by asking DD to tie his laces (he can do it himself!) after she pointed out he was going to trip, when she said no quite rightly, he then started on her and was in a mood the whole time, at one point he sort of pushed her to the side so we cut the trip short and he blamed her for ruining it. They aren't close at all.

In PE, he was supposed to be doing some kind of helping but he only did during sports day, every lesson he just sits on a bench to the side or on the grass if they're outside which he had been doing apart from the other day.

Yes, he's torn his ACL but he's not been complaining about any pain, at first he was annoyed because he didn't want to play rugby in the first place and he did seem anxious about needing surgery as he's never had surgery or being under anaesthetic before etc but we reassured him, I don't know if that has affected his behaviour. We haven't yet got a date for the surgery, hopefully we will get one soon

I'm sorry, I obviously communicated that badly, OP. It wasn't supposed to be a list of things you should do with him. The question is - what does he like?

I get that he's become really negative at home and that's probably become a habit, but do you ever see a glimmer of enjoyment in anything? With you or with anyone else? Does he ask for anything? What does he do with his time when he can do what he wants (what is he doing in his room)?

He wanted a specific type of trainer - do you know why? Does he have other things he's particular about? Is there anything positive there? Does he admire anyone? Or like some subject/fandom/etc.?

If you really can't think of anything of late, when was the last time you did something with him that he actually enjoyed, and what was it? And what doesn't he moan about now? What does he do without kicking up a fuss, even if he has a long face and sullen attitude when he does it?

Come back to this thread to see updates.

He sounds so unhappy and despondent. Is he depressed?

I think what needs to stop-

naps after school. His sleep sounds all
over the place.

try not to resort to punitive punishments.

Can he get involved in cooking family meals? Something positive.

Book an appointment with his head of year and tutor and go from there.

would he do the d of e?

It Doesn’t matter how many times you keep saying it but you ARE minimising. Those behaviours are not in any context ‘low level’. Calling them such is the absolute definition of minimising. Your attitude towards his behaviour is clearly a large part of the problem here, minimising and viewing the school as the problem.

Maybe RTFT, we moved past that ages ago. As I said the school said some of the behaviour is low level.

This is not going to end well.

The child needs to be put on a waiting list for an assessment as a priority.

He sounds incredibly unhappy, as does everyone involved

I’m not a fan of all “behaviour is communication”, sometimes poor behaviour can just be testing boundaries, boredom or mischief - same as toddlers really!

But persistent poor behaviour does need looking at.

Since May: he has a significant injury - there may be worry/ anxiety about the surgery
his dad has essentially ditched him - this is very poor (but not something the OP can easily solve). And likely to be at the root of a lot of the issues, he didn’t bond with his dad when younger as wasn’t into football and now he can’t play rugby he isn’t worthy of being seen at all.
school aren’t helping with the PE issue - making him get changed and watch is really rubbing salt into the wound of an active kid that can’t join in.

OP - somethings you can work on, given this has been going on since May and will continue (12 months I think it the magic number!) I think it meets the requirements to be counted as a disability and the school should make reasonable adjustments. Make a meeting with the head of year to discuss this.

What exercise can he do? Can he go swimming or sign up for a gym and do weights? Getting his dad to take him might help with that as well. Exercise will help regulate his mood and his self esteem might have taken a knock following the injury.

CAMHS don't just consider autism and ADHD. There are lots of other possibilities e.g. anxiety, FASD, processing disorders etc.

Normally I’m one for punishments/consequences and hard line parenting tbh, but I can see he’s just going to dig his heels in and get more and more entrenched in being “the bad one”. So perhaps a different approach is needed.

Maybe try finding tiny moments of praise / connection. Nothing with questions yet; he’s too on the defensive. But maybe just a passing “proud of you” (even if you’re not!) or “your hair looks good today” type stuff.

Don’t expect a full conversation; just praise him briefly for something in passing. See if you can do that once a day this week and maybe it will form a tiny connection point you can build on?

There are loads of red flags for ADHD in your posts. The difficulties with normal sleep pattern and difficulty waking up - you could ask for a sleep study first, the constant disruptive behaviour that no behaviour management makes a difference to, the "he doesn't care" when you try to talk about it, the way he escalates over being asked to do minor things by teachers or when you try to have a discussion.

I would imagine he is fairly bright academically and can compensate. Schools never seem to suspect ADHD unless the child is struggling academically (and not because they are clever but "too lazy" to work, this profile is usually put down to "he's a teenager").

Parents generally don't suspect ADHD if they don't know what it looks like - those documentaries back in the 00s did a number on everyone with the complete devil children bouncing off the walls manic. That's a very extreme example of maybe 1% of children with ADHD. (Actually the same child was in multiple documentaries and went on to have a pretty terrible adulthood - he probably has more going on than just ADHD). Or we all get confused by the name (TBF me too) and assume it means you can't pay attention to anything, whereas in reality most people with ADHD will struggle to pay attention to things they aren't interested in but be able to focus magically for hours when they encounter something they enjoy. I know this combined with the fact it looks like a "handy excuse for bad behaviour" makes people think it's made up, but there is quite a lot of research behind all the headlines and social media stuff, the name is much older than the current research (which suggests it's not really attention that is the root cause at all) and there are some quite serious links between ADHD in childhood and some troubling adult statistics, so it makes sense to look into it if it is suggested. Many on MN have children with ADHD themselves and recognise it from this angle.

Nobody can tell you through MN if your child has ADHD or not but it is a common thing (about 5% so 1 in 20), and it would link all these unrelated things.

IME naughty behaviour is something children do because it gets them something they want, it's not just completely random. Yes to the odd moment of boundary testing, cheekiness or boredom, of course. But a persistent pattern when it's not gaining him anything seems unlikely to just be naughty for the sake of it. It's more likely to be a sign something is going on like a lack of impulse control/not thinking about the consequences before acting on a whim, or the overreactions are pretty typical of dysregulation (which could be caused by any number of things).

Yeah, just not the behaviours that you quoted though eh? They were examples of serious disobedience that was only ever going to result in trouble.

I haven't read all but from reading about your son (I am not a professional or qualified to diagnose) he really does sound neurodiverse. There is a book called how to not murder your ADHD kid, instead be their personal life coach..... give it a go, its really easy to follow and the suggestions for things to combat the not caring about consequences attitude is really helpful for every child not just neurodiverse children.
You are correct that nhs waiting lists for assessments are extremely long (years), however there is the right to choose option. The nhs pay a right to choose provider to do the assessment and the wait for this service is generally much shorter
You may well be right and he may not have ASD or ADHD, but what have you got to lose for getting him referred and assessed? If diagnosed aswell it doesn't give an excuse for the behaviour, however it gives you an answer and things/ strategies you can research on how to combat the struggles that come with a neurodiverse person.
I wish you all the luck as parenting is hard at the best of times, I am also a solo parent. But research knowledge is power, and like I said strategies used for neurodiverse children could be helpful, whether your son is or isn't.