Bullying - DS in reception been hit frequently by a SN child

[Eve]

Can anyone give me advice as to what to do and how to talk to DS about this.

He comes home frequently talking about how another cild has been hitting & hurting him. This other boy has SN - not sure what, and is considerably bigger and heavier than my DS. Not sure how well he can be reasoned with.

I have talked to the head and teacher about it, and they are observing the situation and talking to DS about it, but he doesn't like his teacher knowing...don't know if he is embarassed by it.

I can't tell DS to ignore it or hit back...what can I do as I find it very distressing that he should encounter this so frequently, especially in his 1st term at school. I want him to settle and enjoy it and not be put of by the experience.

Nick Hornby (or maybe his wife) was involved in setting up Treehouse

It's great as it uses ABA- a very effective teaching technique for autistic children- and the children are taught one to one (ABA is one to one).

This favourite nick hornby article mentions that the LEA are always trying to shut it down.

A similar school has been set up in Surrey (rainbow school or something).

Dinosaur- he's not HF - he's similar to my son- probably moderately autistic. I think that school did better with HFA.

HMB- more teachers like you please! It is so lovely to see a teacher really understand the problems.

BTW mhb- the reason that school is working for my son is because the school has been given the support you outline as necessary. The autism outreach team came in, took over and set up an entirely individual programme for him. Until they arrived the school were panicking about how they were going to get him to sit still for the literacy hour (their interpretaton of him needing access to the whole, curriculum being that he needed to be present for everything). The outreach team came in, added some reality and he now sits in for as long as he is able (even if that is 2 mins) and then he goes off and does something more useful with his LSA such as PECS, or licking jam off a plate.

The school, have done their bit by listening to the experts and really seeing them as a plus (in fact the SENCO fought to get them in in the first place). The team also provide proper support ie 3 times a week (out of the 4 mornings he attends) not a visit once every 6 months.

I still think it is important to seperate out developmental SN (such as autism, learning difficulties, DS etc) from those caused by poverty. Socio-economic SN requires a far greater reaching input (sure lets make school a safe place but something needs to be going on in the communities).

Yeah sorry dinosaur- it gets confusing Often HFA are the ones to suffer most in mainstream as they don;t get the support they need (then everyone gets surprised when they get so stressed they hit out- wow couldn't see that one coming). Then they get labelled as agrressive when in fact if someone just stopped the other kids teasing them/turned the fan off/ changed the fluorescent lighting/remembered to tell them if something has to be changed last minute etc etc then they woudln't explode.

Makes me quite cross as well.

We have quite afew HFAs in the manistream school where I teach (sorry to but in on this thread) and some staff don't quite 'get' how important the issues which Jimjams mentioned in her last post are. I have a lot of contact with a boy with Aspergers (teach him for 11 out of 25 lessons in the week) and he is doing really well. Doesn't get any support in my lessons now - they have rearranged it so he can have the help where he most needs it....although English was once one of his most stressful lessons.

Dear JimJams is really interesting how you are able to diagnose something as a behavioural problem after reading just one paragraph. One of the children that threw bricks and was very violent, was at that school because he had an unbelievable high IQ level yet he had terrible communication problems and used to get frustrated very easily, when he was frustrated he could bang his head against a wall until bleeding before somebody could stop him. Is that only a behavioural problem? because if it is I'm sure his mother would have loved to have a long conversation with you

Yes, Children didn't need to look at him before geting stoned, however, if you tried to make friends with him (as it was actively encouraged at the school) he would stone you anyway...

No chandra- that child sounds autistic- or at least heading towards the specturm. In whoch case the reasons for his frustration and why he is banging his head against the wall need to be looked at. Why is he hitting the other chikdren? Is it because he is threatened if someone appraoches him? In which case his social interactions need to be supervised. Why is he banging his head against the wall- my son will freak if he drops something and there isn't anyone to say "pick it up". Believe me children banging their heads against the wall until they bleed is something I have had to deal with. The problemn doesn't begin to go away until the problems underlining it are addressed.

I assumed from your post that the child was just hitting people becuase that was the way he is. If he has communication problems he almost certianly has sensry issues as well. Address those, make the environement more friendly for him and you may find he stops beting the shit out of other people.

To be honest if massive communication problems are at the bottom of agressive behaviour it is faril easy for the school to accomodate the child. Visual timetables work wonders- as I said before ensure they understand if chages are to occur, respect their sensory problems. This isn't what I would call lashing out without provocation though. There will alsways be provocation even if it isn't obvious to the average NT.

Because you said no provocation I assumed you meant behavioural problems. Its much harder to teach a child not to be violent if they are witnessing violence at home for example, and here the effort needs to be more than just within school- a community approach is needed.

A child with communcatiion problems has developmental SN and with the right support should be able to be integrated into mainstream fairly successfully- unless they have major sensory problems and really cannot tolerate a room of 30 children, in which case they will need the small classrooms found in special schools (but lets make sure that if they go to special school they can still emerge with enough GCSE's to carry on into higher ed if they so choose.

Hi again.

Dinosaur, he was in one of the few schools who could provide personalised attention (for example, if he was very good at something like maths he did not need to wait for the rest of the children to move forward to the next level, at the same time he was receiving special attention for development of communication.

JimJams, he was not autistic, he should be around thirty-three now and the last I heard of him was that he was attending university.

still sounds HFA to me..... it wouldn't have been dxed then anyway. (being autistic doesn't rule out university).

The situation then was very different from now. There was no inclusion policy then for starters. Sensory problems would not have been recognised let alone addressed.

The article mentioned by hmb was interesting. I seem to remember Dame Warnock said they had done well with dyslexia but for other special needs inclusion was a mess.

I tired to find the article via the web, it was publised in the Times Ed, but it wasn't on the on line version.

By and large dyslexia is better delt with. But loads of kids still fall through the cracks, especialy if the family isn't supportive, /doesn't understand themselves/ had other social problems.

You end up seeing so many kids with major behavioural problems that stem out of their frustration (talking in 2ary school here). The kids spend year 'failing' in school and in the end they decide not to bother and to get 'cred' by becoming a hard case. It makes you want to weep.

And lots of teachers don't have the training to handle these kids and get the best out of the. And I'd count myself in with that. Personaly I find the EBD children hardest to fathom, and I don't feel that I cope well with them. In many cases the social issues that lie behind the problems are so far 'out there' that you wonder what you can do for the kids. And at the same time you are desparate to control them so that everyone in the class gets a chance at an education. Often children in 'bottom sets' (how I hate the word) have severe problems thesmeslves, ASD, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and these are the kids who have to cope with the hard line kids who are misbehaving because they hate the world they live in. So the lest able to cope get to cop the lot. We need specialist units attached to each school!

True hmb.

My frend's dd has recently gained a place at special school (MLD). My friend has been amazed how many children there have EBD. I think EBD kids are probably the hardest to place- and here schools really need hands on support from specialists.

I don't think that Joe public (or lots of schools for that metter) understand the difference between a child who is violent becuase of a horrendous home life- and because they hate the world, and a child who becomes violent because they have a communication disorder and sensory problems. Very different approaches are needed.

A lot of special schools now are full of EBD kids- as there is no other place for them. One reaosn I don't particularly want ds1 there- I want him to have "normal" role models.

Secondary school keeos me awake at night! I think its highly likely we will be home edding. Couldn't see ds1 surviving more than 2 seconds in the local comprehensive.

emotional and behavioural difficulties......

JimJams... When I said going to the university I wanted to stress the point that he was having the life of an average university student, doing what he wanted and living independently. He was definitively not autistic, his parents visited specialists through all the width of the US and never got that diagnosis.

I doubt they would have 20 yeas ago chandra. At the time HFA/AS would not have been recognised- autism meant kanners autism.

It doesn't really matter whether he was or wasn't. He had communication problems- which presumably is what caused his meltdowns. I suspect (hope) he would be treated very differently in school today and hopefully recognition of his communication difficulties, together with the provision of alternative methods of communication, visual timetables, invewstigation of any sensory difficulties would have meant he wasn't chicking bricks. Plenty of HFA kids do go onto university though (academia is full of AS).

I must admit, I too thought the behaviours Chandra were consistent with autism. (BTW, dh has AS and still managed fine at university). When you have sensory problems, someone approaching you can be hell. Imagine being in a room with extremely bright lights which buzz loudly. 25 people in that same room are shouting at the tops of their voices. Someone stamps loudly over to you. They are so close you can hardly breathe. They smell strongly of soap, sweat, and have unpleasant breath. Then they start to shout to your face. This is what a classroom can seem like to a person with sensory problems. What an NT person sees as 'being friendly' can feel like an assault when you are autistic.

I met huge numbers of people with AS in university! One is now the father of boys with a dx of asd. His mother had taken him to the GP and told the doc that he had problems and was told to take him home and be more afectionate with him Scientific research is quite a magnet for AS/high functioning autistics. The dotty professor may he a dreadful old cliche, but there is some truth in it.

And remember that as an adult we all have a lot more means of 'escaping' situations that we can't control. ASD adults can chose not to go into the student union bar, school kids often can't avoid the playground or the dining room.