'Sanctions' for child with Asperger's

[benito]

DS (8 with Asperger's) is generally wonderfully well behaved unless he is very stressed and unsupported.

School don't use their red card system for him at my request because he is very badly affected by it. The things he does wrong are usually because he hasn't understood the social rules e.g. taking the football in the middle of a game because he thought people would find it funny. Consequently, he finds it very stressful to be reprimanded as he blames himself for not getting things right and is very hard on himself. This can lead to him hitting himself or refusing school.

At present, he has just had a statement issued but has not yet had the support he's entitled to under it (I've made a formal complaint) and is only just returning to school full-time after three months of part-time schooling.

Last week, there were two separate incidents in the playground clearly the result of him getting stressed.

School's first concern? What sanctions can we use if we can't give him a red card.

I have told them they need to sort out the support etc so this doesn't happen (this is was the main reason I started flexi-schooling) other wise they're setting him up to fail and be punished.

They completely lack understanding of the way to approach this although they are trying but I don't agree, at present, that any sanctions are appropriate. They are not likely to achieve the goal they're intended to and shouldn't be imposed just in case the other children complain it's not fair he doesn't get a red card.

What do you think?

My DD1's diagnosis report specifically states that punishment based behaviour management is not successful for children with AS and should not be used.

TBH I don't think it works well for any child really and I'd prefer them to be using reward based methods if it were my child.

I think I'd say to them that they should continue to use reward based behaviour management with your son along with explanations and social stories. If they have to deal with repeated bad behaviour that he clearly understands they should contact you and you can work together to find a solution to that particular situation.

That's odd, because ds1 has ASD and punishment based sanctions, if logically applied, are very very effective with him.

For example, if he sneaks downstairs in the middle of the night, and plays on the computer, he loses his computer time the next day. He understands that this is the sanction for the behavior he displayed.

Thanks. I think it probably depends on the child Colditz. DS can be very hard to engage and keep involved and included so I think punishment based sanctions exclude and make him lose confidence.

I can see, for some children, they might make things clearer but DS is helped by specific strategies and verbalising everything - and having someone around he trusts to run to!

I understand. school made ds1(7) lose minues last term and now he has been labelled as the naughty boy. They just don't get it. They refuse to negotiate on anything.

hmmm he's nearly eight.

And the thought of losing somthing he wants to do is very very motivating for him.

I agree that it depends on the child, it certainly didn't motivate me as a child.

Punishment based sanctions do work for my DS (age 11) but they had to be immediate until recently. The same with rewards. He was never interested with saving up points to get extra golden time on a Friday. I think that he is finally understanding them now. But the reward has to be appealing. He hates golden time, too unstructured for him.

i used a reward system for my son i laminated a few pictures of what he was working towards and made sure he had them in trouser pockets and coat pocket. we explained this to the teacher and all we said was look in your pocket so he could see the reward he was working towards, this stopped some of the behaviour.

They should get advice from the ASD team.

My DS can't stand 'consequences' at all. The ASD team just told school to keep emphasising that 'these are the rules, and everyone has to obey them' but not to mention consequences.

School aren't happy to not have any consequences - but they now only use them on the rare occasions when he's physically hurt someone.

School have learnt that if they keep him in a break time or make him lose 1 min golden time, he won't be in class for the next 2 days..... ( Roaming the corriddors / playground. Running away from them... )

I think you need to ask them to identify what they need a sanction for. A sanction is about modifying a child's behaviour and in order to work it has to give the child an incentive to change.

They need to think about your son, why he is likely to show unwanted behaviour, how they would expect him to respond to a sanction and what other strategies could be more effective. If the child just need to understand in order to change a sanction could make him feel less inclined to cooperate and change.

Perhaps if you write that down as a list of questions for them to answer at their leisure. They may think it through and realise why you are asking them not to use them.

It may also be worth having a look around the NAS website as they often have good advice on things like this.

I always found it heartbreaking to give my Aspie daughter punishments; inevitably, her abhorrent behaviour had been provoked by something she deemed (either real or imaginary) unfair. So, looking at it from her point of view, she was merely reacting to an outrage and, in her mind, her behaviour was justified. Life was (and still is!) hard for her; taking away something she enjoyed as a punishment (and something that we, in turn, got enjoyment from seeing her enjoy) seemed merely to compound the unhappiness for us all.

What we had to teach her was - not punishment - but consequence. In the same way that someone being horrible to her would have a consequence (ie her going bonkers), her bonkers-ness would, in its turn, have its own consequences.

The best of these consequences were "natural" consequences: if she broke something that was hers, it didn't get replaced (she quickly learnt to throw and break things she didn't care about!). If she broke something that wasn't hers, she would have to pay something towards it from her own money. If she was rude to me, she got ignored for a set amount of time (kitchen timer on loud to signify the end of the ignoring period). And so on.

At one point (in a calm moment) we sat down together and wrote a list of all the dreadful behaviour (swearing/being physically violent/destroying things) and then agreed on a consequence for that behaviour. At the same time we spoke about good stuff (doing something kind or helpful/being calm about something happening that was unexpected, etc) and then agreed on rewards for that, too.

Ask your school to be creative with their rewards and consequences; "punishment" should be in neither the vocabulary nor tool kit of anyone dealing with Aspies.

they dont understand have not enough training and lets be honest a lot of schools treat our dcs like there a pain and too much like hard work wether you can punish surely depends 1, on the individual as its a soectrum so there all a bit different same as NT dcs and 2, where they are on the spectrum my DS is Moderate ASD and no ammount of punishment is really and truly understood hes at SS they way they handle him is having a knock on effect at home hes actually wanting (some days not all) to go to school , he seems happier and brighter , more loving than usual, less challenging in everything and actually came out of school hes 10.9 on friday saying he has a friend at last YAY i was so overjoyed. we have to try and do things the same for continuity as school so they handle this by using calming technics ,ignoring certain behavious, giving them their time out therefore self disaplining as hes in control of how long he stays in the time out room come back when your calm again my DS can take a certain ammount of punishment ie if hes done something deemed naughty on computer thats taken away for a hour but if hes been good all day we do something positive and nice at the end of they day they do a psitive chart ticks next to the times he usually struggles then when gets back from say PE he himslf can tick the wall next to his name the punishment has to be same day a lot of as/asd dcs cant handle tomorrow , kater , next week ect its like setting them up for failure he never got his goldent time in MS he couldnt not have something or other happen in a week but at SS its done by the day and he gets quite a few more good days than bad and therefore gets his golden 20 mins at the end of the school day everyday he can aim that far ahead iyswim

so sorry i have to find my reading specs i keep losing them

Thanks guys, some great ideas here!