Help please

[Worriedmum124]

My son has autism and PDA when overwhelmed and over simulated at school he can get him self into trouble because he becomes violent we are working on this to help him find other strategies. but when he’s told off by teachers this is where my worry comes he tells them his dad hits him with a slipper and hits him a lot and he’s scared of his dad which is not true it’s apart of his PDA and lying to get out of a situation. We have worked out he’s not scared of his dad he’s getting his emotions mixed up when he says he’s scared of his dad he means worried meaning he doesn’t like his dad getting upset because it makes him
upset which is what he’s meaning we have explained this but have now been referred to social services and have been placed on an child in need plan they’re saying my son has been emotionally neglected he hasn’t, hes had all the love and support we could ever give him! Me and my partner would never dream of hurting him. They’ve scored us a 4 on the safety plan and I don’t know how to make this better.
I’m terrified im going to lose my children. I know its not his fault but they won’t listen to me regarding his PDA my other children have told them they’re not being hurt and social worker even said they seem happy and safe but because my son lies about abuse so often they won’t take it as he’s got a condition and lies to get out of trouble what can I do to get them to listen to me
Thank you

It might be worth you speaking to the PDA society and Cerebra. The latter has done a lot of work on parental blame.

Why does DH get upset? How does he show this? Not attaching blame, rather trying to understand the situation.

What support is DS receiving? Has he got an EHCP?

Do you know what steps children’s services want to see to improve your score? You should do, so ask if you aren’t. Again, I am not attaching blame so please don’t think I am.

I am so sorry for your situation. I too have a 4 year old diagnosed autism with a pda profile and the lies to gain control are at times really bad, she does it at school aswell about staff, pupils and also family members but they have noticed it to be a light brush touch or the person isn’t even near her when she’s passing the blame and having a absolute meltdown about it. Have the school noticed any behaviour like this? It’s so hard because there isn’t many people that understand the pda profile so we often are repeating the same thing and they still don’t get it. Definitely contact pda society they are great.

@StrivingForSleep what he means by seeing dad upset is he doesn’t like to disappoint him, so if my son comes home from schooo after an incident like lashing out when feeling overwhelmed my partner will say oh that’s not ok and explain why violence isn’t the answer and my son sees that as oh no dad is upset with me and gets upset about it, if that makes sense?

yes son has an ehcp which does stat that he has PDA traits.

no all they have said so far is that due to the amount of times son has lied they see it as a pattern

@Cinnamoncupcake thank you I’ll contact them. No school hasn’t noticed, problem is he seems to only blame partner we think it may be because he’s the one who deals with him more when in trouble so may be that’s why. Son has lied about other family members hitting him but that’s very rare

Children’s Services should be providing more information so speak to them again.

Sounds like you need an early review of the EHCP. DS needs more support.

As difficult as it is, can DH act more neutrally? DH’s disappointment is another demand. DS knows violence isn’t the answer. That doesn’t help in the moment. DS needs the therapeutic intervention and support at school to prevent situations escalating to that point in the first place.

@StrivingForSleep thank you I’ll speak with him and ask him to change his approach to son and hopefully it will help. As for school they don’t seem to recognise sons triggers he tends to lash out at the same group of boys because they constantly wind him up and tend to blame son for getting angry instead of trying to calm the situation

Speak to the headteacher about the boys provoking DS. If it persists and school fails to act, complain.

When was the last time DS had EP and OT input? Both of those will help the school understand triggers, how to prevent escalation, how to deescalate and how to help DS with emotional regulation.

If you still have a specialist teaching service in your area, has the school asked the, for advice?

communication with the school isn’t very good they are saying we are neglecting him, and won’t talk to us about our son at all. We had a email from the Senco within the last week, and it says his ehcp was reviewed and updated then we wasn’t told this was happening and wasn’t involved in the update. Unfortunately it’s a whole new set of teachers the head teacher, deputy head and Senco and the lead safeguarding teachers who knew son very well all left at the same time due to personal reasons and the teacher who son felt closest too left too, the new teachers don’t understand us as a family have never spoke to us as parents to understand our son and definitely don’t understand our child and his struggles. They are not addressing his emotional regulations and put to much demand on him. He has a reduced learning time because he felt work was to overwhelming so he did his work in small doses here and there to help him his new teacher has told him no more play just work which he’s finding extremely difficult this is when the lies and self harming at school really came into play and got extremely worse. They’re blaming us for his self harming, and saying we must be hurting him for him to react this way. They don’t listen to our concerns. We are so worried and just want to help him. The pda trait is new information to us we have only been told very recently after speaking to the autism association about it that they told us he has the profile and a autism specialist came into the school recently confirming the pda. So we’re still learning about it ourselves we’ have made huge changes since finding out to support him.

The EHCP can’t be updated without you knowing. Email the LA. You must be invited to the AR. You must be sent the advice and information at least 2 weeks before the AR meeting. You must be sent the report following it within 2 weeks of the AR meeting. The LA must inform you if they are going to amend or not within 4 weeks of the AR meeting. And if they are going to amend, they must send the proposed amendments at the same time. You then get to make representations and state your preferred school. Then the LA must send you the finalised version within another 8 weeks. If this hasn’t happened, you need to contact the LA.

The provision DS needs should be in the EHCP. If the EHCP is written correctly, the teacher can’t just say DS doesn’t need the support he was receiving. The EHCP can be enforced. If the support DS needs isn’t stated in the EHCP or is too woolly, it needs improving.

Okay thank you. I have messaged case worker and told her the situation waiting a response.

we wasn’t even informed autism specialist was coming into review son either
should we complain?

Your consent should have been sought for the autism specialist.