Desperate for advice (AS and behavioural issues)

[SomeBroad]

DS is 7 yrs old and has a diagnosis of AS. He has severe behavioural issues in school - we find the issues stressful but manageable at home. He has a Statement and has been in a specialist unit within a mainstream school since the start of Year 1, after a disasterous reception year at a different mainstream school. He currently sees a SALT once a week for help with social communication, and will be seeing a Clinical Psychologist once a week starting from next week. The Psych will also be advising the school on strategies to support him, at their request.

There have been several staffing changes at school recently, which I think might be contributing to an escalation in DS's behaviour, but the long and short of it is that he is now having major tantrums on an almost daily basis and attacking other children and members of staff (this behaviour was happening before, but not as frequently). He is spending lots of time in 'the quiet room' to calm down, and on occasion is taken out of the provision altogether and sits with the SENCo 'for his own safety and the safety of others'.

I am at my wits end. I just dont know what we are all doing wrong. We have a reasonable relationship with the school and we are all working off the same page, yet my DS seems dreadfully unhappy in school. It seems to bring out the worst in him. He just cannot cope with group dynamics - sharing, turn taking etc - and hates not getting his own way or being totally dominant, and ends up totally losing the plot and attacking others. This makes him sound awful, but he is not . He is a real Jekyll and Hyde character, and when he isn't seeing red and behaving in this extreme, aggressive way he is really the most lovely boy - very bright, sensitive, empathetic and funny.

I have been hoping things would improve as he gets older, but it is just getting worse. i have just had a phone call from school to say that he had a tantrum on a school trip today and punched a teacher. he had to be collected an taken home by a member of staff, as they did not think it was safe to take him back to school on public transport.

I am so worried - about his behaviour, this future and his unhappiness currently at school. He just seems unable to cope.

WWYD in this situation? What other avenues can I go down now? I feel we have exhausted every avenue - he had a year's psychotherapy with CAMHS which wasn't effective at all, he has seen an Ed Psych, an OT, the Lead Community Paed in our area and nobody seems to have any strategies that work. I am starting to feel that it is all our fault and I have no idea where to go from here....

He sounds so very much like my ds, also 7. He's on his second school now as relations severely broke down between us and them. In between times I Home Schooled. I did this initially with a view to doing it permanently but tbh it was very very hard. We are going for a dx of PDA with him which basically means he refuses to do anything even if it's in his best interests and it is, like your ds, Jekyll and Hyde in miniature. So HE didn't work BUT it did mean we had a lovely HE liaison officer who then was able to find us his current school that has a nurture group he attends 4 mornings out of 5 and I pick him up at 12.

Could you try to work on cutting his hours a bit at school to take off some of the pressure on him? Do part-time schooling with homework basically. It's working well for us so far with a view to re-integrating full time at some point in the future.

Or contact your LA and ask to speak to the Home Education Liaison Officer and explain your situation. They may have some good advice.

Someone else I'm sure will be able to give you better advice. This is what we have done, it may not be right for you. If you need any other help you are welcome to pm me.

CONSISTENCY - It's critical and you admit the school has fallen at this, the first hurdle. Until the staffing situation settles down, you are onto a hiding to nothing.

Once you've tackled that - look at staff training. How much do they know REALLY? Do they do a star analysis and/or ABC every time he melts down to identify the triggers? (They often won't be the same at school as they are at home.) Do they then log this to monitor patterns emerging?

What strategies/triggers do you know about for home use? To what extent do they adapt and implement these for use in school? Does he have sensory issues? If so how do they help him with these?

It may be he needs to be somewhere that can guarantee a stable staff set up. Do be aware they may be signs of something deeper gong on within the school. Excellent staff tend to be the first rats to leave a sinking ship, as they have the brains to notice ahead of the crowd that a school is deteriorating and because the are the ones who find it easiest to obtain alternative employment. (This is true of any organisation, not just schools btw).

Thanks for all your insights. I really, really appreciate them all.

The instability with the staffing situation is a problem@bochead. They have lost some great staff (dont think it was 'sinking ship' thing, though - a couple of retirements, a couple of TAs off to do PGCE and someone that left after years there for a massive promotion).

@Lambskin and Lenin - I have thought PDA would be a better diagnosis than AS for some time, and the Clinical Psych and Psychotherapist both hint that they do not think he is autistic. Whatever his diagnosis, the strategies that the school put in place just don't seem to be working. We have shared some of our strategies with the school, but the truth is, DH and I are really the only people who can prevent a tantrum or calm him down quickly out of one (most of the time, anyway).

I am seriously considering Home Ed, although to be honest, at times I find him hard work and wonder if I would cope! He just seems so terribly unhappy at the moment. Yet I am worried about his Statement lapsing if we left the education system - I nearly killed myself getting it! the part-time thing could be an option, but it would be quite disruptive to all of our lives - more so than full-time HE, i think, His school is a 45 min drive away and he currently gets local authority transport. I also work part-time. God, it all seems so unachievable . Apologies...i am in a negative mood today!

He doesn't have a full-time 1-2-1 but he is in a class of 6 with a teacher and 3 TAs, so he has a very high level of support. The problem is, he doesn't want it! He hates being 'helped' or 'watched' and is prone to physically attacking staff if they get in the way of him doing something he wants to do.

I like the 'flexible, adaptable, creative' thing. I will look into strategies for children with PDA, definitely.

@bochead The staff arent wonderfully trained, no. Most of the children there are atistic or have severe SALT. DS is very. very different to the others and I think the school are at a bit of a loss with him. They have asked the most senior (and very well respected) autism specialist teacher to come in and train their staff, though. And yes, DS does have sensory issues. He is extremely sensitive to noise, finds crowds and busy places overwhelming and gets very hyper and has noticeable stims and tics when he is these surroundings. I am trying to get him some more intensive OT.

Run out of typing steam, now, but I'll be back. Again, thanks so much for your responses.

I don't have much of use to offer, except one insight. Ds2 has ASD, mild in that he likes school and tends not to have tantrums there except in the playground (occasionally). But on holiday, and with other children playing a group has been impossible as he gets into screaming rages, says they are being mean to him, refuses to go outside, disrupts group play by overthe top behaviour. He once locked some older children in a shed because he said they were being mean to him, and weren't playing the game he wanted in the way he wanted etc etc. He attacks children younger than him who have in any way insulted or hurt his feelings. So triggers can cause dangerous escalation. And he has obsessions which he hates to have challenged.

However we noticed that when he went on school outward bound course which was residential for five days (Yr 5) he behaved impeccably. He joined in with everything, he got on with everyone, he was brave, enthusiastic, listened to instructions... Same children he had been fighting with in the playground for not being nice to him

I can only conclude that the combination of ONE trusted adult, and "outdoors" - nature, exercise, physical challenges, natural world made him feel good about himself in a way that no amount of pyschotherapy and social skills groups could. I see it when he is on holiday with us - on a trip with trusted adults he is a delight, enjoying and wondering at everything and enjoying change, but when he has to negotiate everything himself in a "hostile" "stressful" environment he is a nightmare. So I don't think it is change per se that set him off on that school trip, all sorts of bad vibes.

I think being outdoors doing something physical, without the stress of other children or perhaps just one child you get on with, or lots of properly explained RULES can make a big difference to a child's behaviour. And nature. It may be that your child finds the whole institutional school environment intolerably hostile.

Also just re-reading your post, the "independence" thing leapt out at me; wanting automomy but being supervised all the time can be a problem with my child; he needs to feel he can manage himself and his own emotions, and get confident in that, but all the time there all these triggers which are setting him off and takign that ability away from him. Of course when he is just running around in a field, and using his physical self he is a lot freer than he is when he is having to assess the situation and respond appropriately etc. I think what we expect them to do, sit down, behave politely, listen, take turns is completely exhausting, in the "wrong way". Also the stimulation is the wrong stimulation. Whereas if you are in a park, countryside setting, doing physical challenges, looking around you, you explore at your own pace, the noises are much subtler, you get the chance to test yourself at your own pace, and you get the exercise and the mental space. You are tired but your are not wound up by it. It is very difficult to get any of this in a school setting on a regular basis. Think I hour a day of being outside in a concrete playground? Two residential trips in 7 years?

Lenin I sympathize. At one point ds2 refused to go outside because he said a dog kept biting his ball and deflating it (a friendly Jack Russell from next door who joins in with the children's sports) Funnily enough once the football side of it was removed from equation he got on quite well with the dog. I wonder could you turn crabs from irritation to a interest? I think you are right it is almost as if they are waiting for things to go wrong to get our attention (a sort of demand-set default) so you have to go to the other extreme to get them obsessed by something in a positive way.

better rush..

Also teaching/learning can happen when you are not expecting. It doesn't happen to be a sit at the table situation.

I couldn't agree with swan more.

Children should get at least 60 moderate exercise a day. For borderline boys o suspect it is much more. If he's spending 1.5 hours a day in a car to and from school, then at a school which is about 'quiet time' and psychotherapy then it will be hard to find the time for vital physical movement.

My own ds is much more 'normal' and biddable when he's spent an hour or two running up the hill and back.

Two books I found helpful are the Out of Sync Child (kranowitz) and 21st century boys (palmer).

X posted Lenin and Swan

My ds2 is fantastic at running. Not a sprinter, but he just enjoys running. Softplay he likes but I've noticed sometimes that the loud noise and bright colours are actually setting him off, whereas clambering around a natural obstacle, rocks, logs, following paths are much more therapeutic form of exercise. He also hated music sessions at school, although he loves drama based music, where you can dance around. But maybe he is just the least musical of my children. I find that loud taped music is one of his obsessional sensory seeking "fixes", and we are trying to wean him off that to some extent.

Anyway I was just trying to say, it is not exercise for its own sake, but being in a natural enviroment which makes a difference to his behaviour, as long as there is a trusted adult there as a bridge.