Autistic burnout - if your child has recovered, how did you support their recovery?

[FromTheFirstOldFashionedWeWereCursed]

10yo DS (young for Year 6) is having a really tough time. Diagnosed at 5 and flourished in Years 1-4 but the breakdown that lots of children have in Year 7 has come early to him. The LA's educational psychologist thinks that he is in autistic burnout now.

He's such a rigid thinker and so naturally a compliant rule-follower, that it hasn't occurred to him to school refuse but he can't really do anything when he gets there so is spending a lot of time reading quietly instead of doing maths/science/RE in timetabled lessons.

We are talking to various secondary schools and have an EHCP agreement for funding for a specialist placement but even the specialist placements are going to be hard to come by if he is still totally distant.

He is the joy of my heart and my DH and I are desperate to help him - he's such a bright boy and loves to learn, but something has unravelled that we can't seem to fix.

I'm so sorry to hear this. Dd got autistic burnout in year 7, after a busy year 6 (school play, residential and then move to busy, crowded and loud secondary). It was really scary. She is gifted and has always been a star pupil, win every prize and scholarship going type of student. We had to take her out of school, she needed to spend many months in a dark room in absolute quiet (eg. we couldn't brush our teeth in the bathroom next to her room without a meltdown, or the sound of birds outside in the garden caused meltdowns). She put routines in place to calm herself, like walking up and down the corridor for 2 hours/day, folding a blanket for hours and preparing her food (cutting each piece into a particular shape, weighing each piece of cucumber/tomatoes etc to check it's the exact weight as the others ... extreme rituals that mean preparing her daily salad bowel takes 3 hours, but it helped her to recover). She is learning from home now with help of some online lessons, GCSE revision guides and YouTube. She is back to her self and enjoys life again and does well academically (2 years ago she just wanted to die and tried to starve herself to death) but is very much aware of her autistic needs and keeps to a mostly home based, rigidly structured daily routine. She spends time on things she enjoys, which are music, maths, Netflix and eating chocolate. But we no longer do anything as a family, no family meals, no days out, no holidays, no shopping trips, no friends or family visiting, constantly being very calm and quiet at home - as any of this she still can't cope with after 2 years.

What does DS enjoy doing or what did he used to enjoy? That is often a way in.

What therapeutic provision is in the EHCP? Getting the right provision in the EHCP will help.

If school is inappropriate, have you considered EOTAS/EOTIS?

Has the LA finalised the phase transfer EHCP yet?