ASD genetic link/ bad parenting

[Scapegoatffs]

Has anyone come up against this kind of issue and if so what did you do? If you haven’t but have any advice please help !

I have more than one dc with ASD . I’m on the spectrum myself (but haven’t disclosed this to any professionals as don’t want to). We have been getting called in for multiple meetings at school and have been offered ‘early help’ which we declined as don’t feel it is needed plus we don’t need any more appts / dc and me don’t do well with people coming round etc basically it’ll cause more stress and won’t help that much.

I did a Subject access request as we’ve had so many meetings and contact. In some notes I read that my parenting is in question , it’s basically been put forward that do my dc actually have ASD (and one also has adhd) or is it in fact my parenting and / or learned behaviour.
Clearly there’s a genetic link - I’m actually angry that it’s being insinuated that my parenting is causing the dc to just appear to have ASD when actually they have been diagnosed and it’s obviously genetic but I feel as if I’m going to be blamed. It’s also not been taken well that we declined this ‘early help’. We have everything in place that needs to be so it seems pointless.

Im very annoyed that this has been put forward about me as there’s nothing wrong with my parenting but I’m not sure how to raise this now I’ve read it and how to address it b cause I want to set the record straight

I think it’s perfectly reasonable. The teacher just has stuff ready for the late starters.

Woukdnt have bothered me as a teacher of 25 years. There are ways to minimise disruption for a late entry, especially a planned one. Even more especially if the dc has support in class.

Honestly, you'd think some schools were oblivious to their legal responsibilities, including to promote equality and eliminate discrimination and to make anticipatory reasonable adjustments.

You’ve been offered help and declined it! You won’t accept any suggestions to get your child to school on time either, because there are loads of reasons why they won’t work….you just want school to adjust your dc’s start time. If they did, do you think you might still be 30 minutes late for that?

If I were you I’d be trying everything I could and accepting any help I could get to try and get dc to school on time for their own benefit in the first instance. Work with the people who are trying to help you?

With respect, you cannot possibly say what would be reasonable or unfavorable - this depends entirely on the individual circumstances and would ultimately only be determined by a tribunal.

I do think some posters are very naive about autism and even SEN generally.

Some of the following can apply to NT children too, but try for a minute to imagine a bad night for you both up and down multiple times, fall into a deep sleep 3am and wake at 6, children finally asleep, you wake them and they are in foul moods, partly tired, partly not wanting to go to school anyway, and there is screaming and crying and they don’t want to get dressed and they fight you metaphorically and literally because the school uniform is uncomfortable and one is a flight risk and by the time you’re out of the door one is trying to take off and you eventually get to school stressed and upset and worried and frazzled and someone says you’re a bad parent, get up half an hour earlier.

So untrue.

I don’t know if much of that applies to the OP and her children. I have a (as far as I know) NT 2 yo who is not even especially difficult but it’s so so hard getting him if he refuses and I think dealing with that on a physically bigger scale and double it, that’s parenting that deserves a medal.

Please don’t keep forcing your child into school when they are clearly so distressed by it, you will be causing long-term damage to their mental health. Do they have an EHCP? If so call an emergency review, get someone from your local SENDIASS to attend and get a plan in place to work out what is causing them so much anxiety. This problem can’t be fixed with waking up early/alarms etc. You have to get to the underlying cause of the behaviour. The school will likely need to put in place a lot more support or adjustments, or he needs specialist provision. Request an Ed Psyc assessment as well, and see if there are any play therapists locally. So many schools pull the ‘bad parenting’ card as it means they aren’t responsible for making/paying for referrals, 1:1 support etc, or they just want the child out of the school. If you Home Ed you won’t get any funding for therapy, OT, tuition etc and they will miss out on a lot of experiences and social interaction which in the right setting would be hugely beneficial to them. Focus on getting as much external expert professional advice and support as possible to build your case as to what needs to change to allow your child to feel happy, safe, settled and ready to learn.

I'm on the fence with this. My DSD has issues and it appears that some of it is learned behaviour.

I also want to say why don't you just do things their way to say how it pans out? It would take away the wind out their sails.

I think you should (a) put in a formal request for a "reasonable adjustment" under the equalities act for your DC to have a later start time than standard because the additional challenges faced within the family due to your and your children's disabilities make the standard start time too challenging and coming in a little later once the hustle and bustle of the morning playground has died down will make for a calmer and more learning-positive start to the day, and (b) create a paper-trail of evidence that you have been seeking any kind of learning opportunities that are specifically for autistic parents of autistic children (these are rare as gold dust but genuinely useful if you can find them.) you are quite right that any kind of parenting course that is more neurotypically-oriented will be useless.

I would not expect either of these to actually come to anything. however, what it does is creates evidence that you are activity engaging with the issues that are ringing alarm bells - so that if they do start talking to social services more seriously if they get more worried, there will be clear evidence that you know that there are challenges and you are actively seeking solutions that work for your family and have valid reasons for knowing why the obvious default techniques won't work for you.

My DSD has issues and it appears that some of it is learned behaviour

The Ed pysch at my DD’s assessment made it clear that it is nothing to do with upbringing or learned behaviour. The brain is wired differently in ND.

You sound like a really good parent Scapegoatffs and you are dealing with a lot at the moment. It sounds like your challenges are not due to parenting, or laziness. You are dealing with a lot, every day. And you're doing the best you can.

In answer to your initial comment, during the 1930s, a child Psychologist called Leo Kanner muted the idea that the a cause of autism could be down to parenting. However, this theory was squashed in the 1980s by Lorna Wing (founder of the National Autistic Society) and an American Psychologist whose name I have forgotten! They both had autistic children themselves. The idea of parenting causing autism is a very outdated and extremely uneducated view. It's quite offensive in my opinion.

Lots of autistic people struggle with executive function, which is the steps one needs to take in order to complete a task. It's not laziness, it is an information processing difference. And, as a parent of 2 autistic children myself, I know how unpredictable mornings can be. We were often late for primary school due to sensory overloads on the way to school resulting in shut downs. It was very challenging.

Has the school applied for an EHCNA for your children? It does sound like you need support and an EHCNA is worth considering. School has a duty to use their 'best endeavours' to support your children. And it is their statutory duty to consider making reasonable adjustments (such as a soft starts time) to ensure your children are not at a substantial disadvantage when at school.

I hope you get the support that you need.

If I've read this right, none of the professional involved with your children know that you're neurodivergent?

If that they case they they are assuming you're neurotypical and things like always being late are taken as a sign of bad parenting.

I understand why you don't want to share you're own diagnosis, but do you think it might help? If they know then likely you can have more constructive discussions about things like attendance.

I’d say that you really, really must get your kids into school on time or early.

It makes it really hard for them to adjust at school especially if they are autistic.
A staggered entry is not going to work as it’s the trouble with time keeping, so this will not solve it. Also putting an autistic child into lessons when everyone else has had time to put away their coats and ‘ease in’ isn’t fair on them.

If they are having meltdowns that is your end of the responsibility, I have to do a very particular morning routine for my autistic DS and never deviate from this, we also have to get up way earlier than most as it takes him twice as long.

I doubt it will help @Twizbe . If the school don’t accept the diagnosis of the children, they won’t accept it for the adult either.

This!

I see your point but I just wonder if OP is withholding a huge chunk of the puzzle for them. That and her refusal to take the help offered.

If it's known that mum also has a diagnosis it could be like a massive light bulb for them.

It might mean suggestions of support can be reframed and refocused to be useful.

You would hope it would work like that but there is some depressing evidence that ND parents, and also single parents, attract more parent blaming attitudes from professionals (who should know better) than other parents. Makes it more of a dilemma whether to disclose.

As a parent of a child with neurodiversity (diagnosed ASD, GAD, SPD and suspectic ADHD) plus some undiagnosed but suspectic neuro diversity in both myself and partner, I would just say, don't be scared to accept early help.

We had about 3 sessions of a lady coming to our house and her conclusion was, you are doing everything right as parents and now we need the school and professionals to step up.

It really helped moving forward, they could see we were consistent, that we tried suggested strategies long enough to know whether they would work or not and that we weren't lazy.

It put the onus back on the school to accommodate his needs and back on the professionals to work with us as parents until ds would able to engage with them.

Have experience of autism. DS goes to an autism school. All the kids get there on time. It’s not easy, I’ll give you that! Getting my DS to school I’d say is a lot more difficult than getting another child to school. So take all the help you can get, but most autistic kids need routine and if there are morning meltdowns, the only person able to change that is OP, not the school.

Yes you are right it's that simple. Well done for solving the issue of lateness/school refusal for families of neurodivergent children.

My autistic child only stopped having meltdowns in the morning when school made reasonable adjustments that made him feel safe at school. Before they took these steps he had off the scale anxiety about going.

Wow this has really shocked me. Kids old school (shit shit shit) gave me the forms for early help saying it might help with my son's "behavioural issues". I had a bad feeling about them so didn't fill them in. I'd put in a complaint 6 weeks prior about the school and a teacher in particular who was bullying my child (and others)

Now making me think they were trying to palm me off to social services and make it all my fault so to speak.

I pulled him out of that awful school and he now has full support at an amazing school and has been diagnosed as autistic.

None of my children were ever late, ever badly dressed or not fed etc.

This has really shook me up tbh. I was told that early help was simply a way of getting support to help with my anxious child...

Social services also run children's disability teams so early help can also be a possible way into support from those teams as well.

Not all social services work is about neglect and abuse although decades of cuts mean more it is than should be.

OP I'm sure you are a great parent doing the best job you can. I work in social care. I would say that it is reasonably normal for professionals to be encouraged to think about other possibilities, query if there could be more than one answer, question the first answer etc. It's quite possible to have a person with autism who also has other things going on. I work with adults and see really complex situations relating to their disability but also their family situation, expectations of parents etc. I don't know what they've written obviously. If it is just queries, "could explore this", "have we considered x" then I'd try and not take it too much to heart. In your family everything may just come down to an asd diagnosis but in the next it might not. If you feel they've actually made a decision or picked a course of action based purely on something you think is incorrect, I hope you can challenge it.

My DSD has issues and it appears that some of it is learned behaviour

The Ed pysch at my DD’s assessment made it clear that it is nothing to do with upbringing or learned behaviour. The brain is wired differently in ND.

^
Yes the brain might function differently but it's completely incorrect to say that parenting/ interventions and other environmental factors can't have a positive or negative impact. Some behaviours are learnt in both NT and non NT populations. What

Reading this has made me quite sad for my autistic dds. I really thought there was a better understanding of things now.

Missing half an hour of the start of a morning, if that helps OP get her children to school in a calmer way/mood is absolutely reasonable. In no way is it unfair on the other children. I have worked in schools and mostly the guest 30 mins are settling down and other mundane things which involve a lot of waiting about. Nothing important will be missed. And maybe the child will be in a better frame of mind/healthier head space to benefit from being in school then.

Also, just because some may have asd children than follow a timetable to get ready in the morning and on time does not mean that all asd kids would react in that way to a timetable. One of mine would love it. The other would absolutely be stressed out even more by the demands of it.

And yes, getting your child to school when it's a school set up for asd children is probably nothing like getting your asd child to school on time when it is not a school set up for asd children. And In fact may be a place of anxiety and sensory overload.