Does anyone have experience of a bright child being disruptive due to being bored?

[Aloha]

My ds has Aspergers and we are having a nightmare with his school - feel very let down. He is only five & in reception, but arrived at school able to read fluently (started to read at three), add, subtract blah blah. We think he is very bright. For the last year in Reception he's been doing Jolly phonics etc and basically working about two years behind his ability IMO. We are constantly told that his behaviour is deteriorating (long story) but I am convinced that part of this is due to his being bored witless. He is now spending more and more time out of the classroom and not learning anything at all
Has anyone experience of a bored child acting up and what did you do to solve the problem and did it work? Please help! Have meeting on Friday and want to bring ideas to the table.

I think he's exhausted too - all the upset is wearing him out. We are all shattered!
I am in shock, really. I had no idea things were this bad as I hadn't been told. And when I went to pick ds up he was smiling.
He has made some friends at school and that's wonderful, and it's why I don't want to pull him out of schooling. He needs friends. But it isn't enough.

do the school have any other special needs children? do they have a bad track record in this area?

He has a new teacher (stand in for previous one on maternity leave) and, crucially IMO, a new head - one who seems very keen on exclusions, esp for SN kids. I have a really bad feeling about her.

There is a child in dd's class who was bright & disruptive.

For the first week dd would come home & tell us that R was at the headmaster again & that the teacher said she would have to have a word with his mummy.

Then he started stealing things from peoples bags & making noise etc... it got to the stage that I was a bit annoyed that dd kept coming home with pencils broken & her hair pulled out by R.

After a few months we were talking about reading books & dd was saying who was on what book... at our school p1 & p2 are in together.. turns out that R has been doing year 2 work & getting it all right & as it is slightly harder, he hasn't time to be disruptive.

He should be beginning year 2 in Sept but he is skipping right on to year 3!

I don't think he has aspergers but I do know he was being assessed a while back for something not sure what though.

I think it was a simple case of him being bored.

oh no aloha.

It is very hard when the head is not supportive.

I don't think she can exclude him just like that - especially without you being informed of any previous incidents.

But I wonder, if she is going to prove to be unsupportive and unhelpful, whether it is worth continuing with them. If it's going to be such a fight just to get him to have lunch let alone help in the classroom.

I wouldn't want to give up but it seems to be (understandably so) destroying you and I wonder whether it is worth looking at other options, even if you just keep them in your back pocket so to speak. It might, at least, make you feel like you have some options.

That doesn't sound right Aloha. They haven't statemented him - or offered him any support - but they want him to go home at lunchtimes because they can't cope? That really doesn't sound right.
Have you posted this on SN so that other people with AS kids can advise?

Hi there, DS in year 1 has just been assessed and a preliminary view was apergers. He is on the gifted and talented register at school.

THB I felt a bit like you re the work last year - he was not learning that much in some subjects- with him it is mathematics and science that really interest him - especially how things work.

His reading is now phenominal - I din't teach him before school. His teacher really encourages him as much as possible, - but because he finds writing very difficult he produces little in the way of written work and can be difficult to assess how he is doing.

I think that there is also an element of being bored too, if it is not a topic that interests him and so he can tune out and act up.

In reception they seemed to do little to stretch him acedemically but this year is so much better. I think the curriculum changes so the teachers feel they have more scope.

Does he also show disruptive behaviour if upset about something like noise or other problem?

DS gets terribly frustrated at the slightest noise around him if he had to concentrate on something he is not interested in. Can they provide practical help with things like this.

DS also mad about computers. The teacher uses a tally - gives him 10 mins at the start of the day marked on the corner of the board and adds a minuite for particularly good behavious and removes it if he is naughty. It is working very well so far as she only has to threaten to take a minute away and he usualy begins to settle down again. Would something like this wiork with your DS? He gets the minutes at the end of the school day

(My ds has a running tally management system quite like Alison's ds - only my ds's is large laminated 10p coin tokens - starts with 80p and then tokens get taken away/added to on a continuing basis throughout the day, so that he has a steady monitoring system to rely on (steadiness absolutely crucial) ... and then I produce at the weekend whatever he's "earned". This is because ds's big current motivation is Money (said in a special awed voice).)

I meant to ask a fundamental question, aloha, and if school hasn't told you the answer it should be qu.1 on Friday: when given work, does your ds (a) steam through it, so that the disruptiveness happens after he's finished? Or (b) does the disruptiveness start earlier? - so does he not finish his work? Importance of this is that children in the (a) category absolutely need extension; children in the (b) category (which is my ds) - there's something else going on.

Do you think there's always something else going on if a bright child doesn't complete easy work, Bink? Sorry for slight hijack, but DS2, who I really don't think of as having 'issues' (unlike DS1), often doesn't finish very easy work. He is not actually particularly disruptive - he just daydreams. If it's too easy, he often just doesn't see the point. We have the same at his swimming lessons - messes about every week, then he's put in the big pool and amazes his teacher with what he can do.

yes me
I was v disruptive as I got things quickly then got bored waiting for everyone else

I have no idea what to do about it, in the early 70s they just bollocked you and gave you snidey reports saying "CD is clearly a genius but is so disruptive that she will never achieve anyting" pah!

singersgirl - I think the difference may be in the degree of (or quality of) disruptiveness. (I guess personality plays a part too - so a very physically active child would express plain boredom by jumping around; but I'm guessing that aloha's ds is not generally a physical acter-out, so his (physical) disruptiveness could be indicating something more than just non-engagement.)

I've got to this view very gradually, through trying out the anti-boredom strategies with ds and finding that they didn't quite work. Instead, I think with ds the core problem - which creates anxiety, which is then the cause of the physical acting-out - is his very very very weak planning skills. The effect of seriously weak planning skills is that any task you are given (however easy), if you can't orientate yourself/work out where to start/visualise yourself getting to the end of, is like being faced with the Augean stables.

So with ds we've addressed his disruptiveness through addressing his planning skills (what they call "executive function") - and that has worked much better.

Singersgirl my ds is the same - if its too easy he sometimes can't be bothered.

Aloha I wonder if the school really have a handle on your son's academic abilities? Especially if he is being disruptive and spending lots of time outside the classroom. Have you spoken to the school about the sort of work he is capable of at home? Can you take in examples? This has worked with schools IME.

Have you had the Senco involved? What did they put in palce for your son?

Oh, and just to give a simple illustration of how ds works - he has never been disruptive, and shows his work best at, when it's work where you leap to the answer & need no planning to get there - ie basically maths.

It also means, weirdly enough, that on standardised tests - IQ tests, SATs, etc. - he scores very high indeed - because it's all "get the answer instantly" stuff, not "work out how to process through" stuff.

My DS is 8 and has AS. We have a lot of the same problems as you, Aloha, and others have mentioned on the thread. He is particularly good at Maths and was finding the work too easy-he refuses to do work if it is too easy and then becomes disruptive. His teacher has given him year 4 work to do (he is in year 3) but he does not actually physically go to the other class as he would find that hard to cope with. This seems to be working for maths at the moment.
He was also refusing to do other work if it did not interest or stretch him. He now works on a project of his choice which brings in various aspects of the curriculum.
The teacher is very experienced and very good (in contrast to his year 1 and 2 teachers, but thats another story!) She has a reward system as some others have described, where DS earns a sticker for each period in which he is good, then trades them for a reward when he has earned 5 stickers. AS children do respond very well to reward systems as a rule.
I hope things improve for you and your DS soon-I know how absolutely draining it can be when things are not going well.

I also don't agree with Alison re: the year 1 curriculum. I think year 1 can be a coasting year for a lot of the brighter children unless the school is very hot on extension work.

hi Aloha, you may remember that my ds has dyspraxia, attention difficulties etc etc. He sounds like your ds, although he wasn't as advanced at 5. even now, in year 3, we have gone through a very difficult stage with him at school where he has been really disruptive. I think this was because he wasn't at all interested in the work. Now he is doing ww2 he is obsessed with this and can't get enough of his school work. he also finishes his maths first and then messes around.

like your ds his handwriting is appalling, and it hurts him to write, so he very rarely finishes this first, but is likely to be naughty when he gets frustrated/tired.

He was only on School action plus too and got no extra help, and in fact the school started ignoring him. We ended up moving him to an independent school (grandparents paying!) and he has flourished in the smaller classes, however we still have the issues with boredom and as gess says a complete failure to understand that he has to be quiet and stop talking in the classroom.

Sorry this isn't any help really. I hope that your meeting with the school goes ok - we were completely frustrated with any attempt to sort out problems at ds's first school, but now we have a fantastic, understanding teacher who adores ds and it makes all the difference!

tiggiwinkle, my ds sounds very like yours. He also excels at maths, and also has a sticker/reward scheme at school. (he also has to have his at playtimes too as his social skills are somewhat um lacking iyswim)

This is so interesting.

Particularly that the "something else going on" of my theory isn't always the same "something else". So for my ds, it's the planning skills problem that's at the root; but for others, it looks as if it's more to do with the very specific scope of their interests.

Pollyanna-yes, they do sound very similar! My DSs stickers also cover breaktimes as his social skills are not great either!
My DS has appalling handwriting too and does find it very tiring to write. He is able to do any lengthly pieces of work on the computer, otherwise things tend to just not get finished.

Bink, I'm not at all sure what he is given to do in the classroom! Actually, I have no idea. I know he is expected to sit on the carpet while they do endless Jolly phonics which must be torture for him.
Last night in bed I was playing a game with his to check his reading - I said, 'here, I'll write one hard word, one easy word and one medium word to make a silly sentence' and he was reading stuff like 'Ancient pig underwear' and 'Exceptionally pink horses' and 'absolutely green bottoms' and laughing his head off. Totally engaged.
This morning he was asking me over breakfast about exactly how messages get from your nerves to the right part of your brain, so I found a kids' website and we found out about neurons and pathways and the brain stem, and what neurons look like under the microscope.
I am seriously thinking - with dh- about home educating him for a year. both of us would have to cut back on work. But we want him to have social interaction too. He has been quite successful at that lately and has made a best friend at school, and it will be very hard to keep that up without school. Has anyone ever known someone go to school part time?

There was a child in DSs year in year 1 who was picked up each lunchtime by her parents-I suspect because the school could not cope with her for the whole day rather than for the benefit of the child. I dont what the official position on this is though.

I think I amy have asked you this before Aloha, but is there no chance of movong him to a school with a more positive attitude? It really does make all the difference if they understand and make the effort to help-although I admit it is largely down to the individual teacher, as we have had very good-and very bad -experiences in the same school simply because of the different teachers.

Aloha, so sorry you are going through this I have no great words of advice on the boredom bit as DD (dyspraxia) is so busy struggling to get everything down on paper that seems to be a full time job. But Dustystar has a DS who ran into difficulties with a head keen on exclusion in reception year and had a nightmare. As a result he got a statement & they did end up moving him to another school where things have been so much better for him.

DD is about to change school just before the end of term as we are moving out of the area. The head there was a bit of a revelation to me. I mentioned that it's her writing that's causing the problems and there had been some talk of an IT assessment for when she gets to Middle school, to which she replied "does she need one, we have one for her if she does". And just generally, nothing seems to a problem as she has a solution for it, and their SENCO is full time rather than the current two days a week one DD has now. I feel full of hope that I hope isn't misplaced that DD is going to have a much happier Year 4 than I think she would have in her current school and think the move will be a blessing in disguise as I had been increasingly having my doubts about her current school since the arrival of the current head two years ago.

Obviously it is a big decision changing schools and I know exactly where you are about having now got friends. I just wanted to say that if you do go down the looking for somewhere else route you may well find somewhere who are much more geared up to help your DS and importantly are happy to do so.

The current school is right next to our house and used to have a good rep for special needs. I don't think nearby schools have a good rep for special needs at all - there is one I could drive to which might be OK. I ought to go and look at it really. I have applied for a statement though - would moving schools put a spanner in that, do you know?

Aloha, part time sounds ideal, with home educating. It sounds like you are almost there with that decision anyway. The descriptions of you and him learning together... [tearful emoticon]

A friend of mine pulled her son, who has Aspergers, from secondary school after 3 weeks and entered him at the local Steiner school, where he has been ecstatically happy (though he spends some time trying to explain to the teachers why he feels computers are not evil.) But apparently he wasn't too bad at primary school, although his Dad was a teacher there so that helped.

My dh was bored and disruptive at state primary in the early 70s. Was pulled at 7 and sent to boarding school, which was fine academically but I think wrong decision for him emotionally .