Communcations experts - please advise.

[keepyourmouthshutox]

Ds's teacher is now doubling as his communcations teacher. At his IEP meeting, we were told that he is asked how he is feeling every day and he always pick happy from the bank of cards. She seems to think that is all right and that she is doing her job. I noticed this when we do emotions at home and sometimes try to suggest other things eg. we are going xxx today, how are you feeling? Ds might then pick excited.

Can anyone suggest any way I can help him pick something besides happy?

Btw, this is the same school that sometimes removed sad and ill from his choices last year when he was having a really bad time - lots of time out, exclusions, etc -because he kept choosing them. And they wonder why I keep insisting on a proper communications teaching ds i.e. not someone who has gone on a one day course.

Why would he get time out for choosing sad and ill when asked how he felt?? That is just the strangest thing I've ever heard. It's like they are sending him the message that he is only ever allowed to say he is happy, which is nonsense. How does that teach him how to communicate his feelings??

Do you have these cards at home as well? Can you deliberately use them at time when he is obviously NOT happy (ill, tired, sad, etc) to give him the full range of options? That way he understands that it is OKAY to communicate that he feels more then just happy.

If they only ever encourage him to choose "happy" how is he going to learn to differentiate between the different feelings??

Sorry Triggles for not making myself clear. He was getting a lot of time out during that period because his behaviour, which we have now found out is caused a lot by sensory overload However, when he when he was asked how he felt every morning, during his communication sessions, I was told he always chose ill or sad, so TA took those out so he was forced to choose something else.

Yes, I do have the cards at home and that is a very good suggestion about asking him when he is obviously feeling something else. Thanks.

That is barbaric. Bordering on child abuse. It's also discrimination.

You can't and wouldn't take away a verbal child's words 'sad' or 'ill' and if you banned them from saying it there would be serious questions asked.

FFS. I would certainly complain. Good good, I really didn't realise how lucky I was with ds' school...........

Might be a daft question, but are you/they sure he relates the feeling to the word? I did something similar with a keyboy once, and I knew he was ready to move on when he started looking up feelings words in the dictionary trying to find one I didn't know!!

Also, how many options is he given? Many of the people with SN I have worked with struggle with more than 3 or 4 at a time - argh! and choosing sweets

at choosing sweets, oops!

I don't know how many options he is given. Will find out. Understand what you mean about relating feeling to the word so now I am trying to tie it in with outside experiences - eg. we are going swimming - are you happy? or xxx is crying because she is sad/hurt etc.

I think probably when faced with making a choice, like a lot of ASD children, he panics and picks the first one.

But yes, don't understand why they took away sad/ill when he WAS sad - used to cry before going to school, said he didn't want to etc.

IME, these things need to start small and understanding checked often, which I expect you've done at home.

I used a similar thing with a 14 y/o keyboy, and started with 5 options - Happy, Sad, Angry, Anxious/Worried, Other. Bear in mind, this was with an EXTREMEMLY intelligent lad with a dx of HFA. He started off choosing the basics and we worked on understanding the physical sensations. By three months, he was looking up words in the dictionary that summed things up and trying to find ones I didn't know! [FWIW, it also took his aggressive outbursts from one or two a week to one or two every few months in the 2 years I knew him]

purplepidjin thanks for your suggestions. May I ask how you work on the physical sensations? Need all help I can get.

At the time I had access to a CAT kit, but I'll see if I can remember a few things from it...

The main one is to get a big piece of paper with the outline of a body on. Then, you talk about a time when he felt happy - maybe he got a star at school, or when he is read a story at night? Encourage him to suggest some too. You then use different felt tips/crayons to colour in the different parts of the body that feel different ways. Everybody is different with this, so if he says his feet feel hot when he's happy, that's cool! Then think about other times, like anxious - first day at school, or visiting a friend for the first time - and do a new "body"

You could pull exaggerated faces for him and get him to guess the emotion, and he can do it for you to guess.

Making peg dolls would be a fun activity, and you could have all kinds of emotions. If it helped him, he could use the dolls to depersonalise his feelings. So, if he was feeling sad, he could get the sad doll to talk to you and tell you what was wrong. In a silly voice or accent.

Let me know if you want me to think of any more