Asperger's/School behavioural scheme

[OptimisticPessimist]

Sorry, this is really long, but I didn't want to leave anything out. I'm hoping to get a bit of advice here please.

DS1 is 8.5 and was diagnosed with Asperger's over the summer. He's been under assessment since he started nursery, so the diagnosis wasn't really a surprise, and I've mostly been pretty happy with the support he's received while we were awaiting diagnosis. Since he started school he's had SALT and OT within school (now discharged from both), had ongoing input from Autism Outreach and he's had an IEP in place since he started school, with 5 meetings over the school year. The school has worked very hard to identify problem areas and work out strategies with input from the Support for Learning teacher, the woman from Autism Outreach and myself.

One area that seems to cause continuing problems is the school's behavioural policy. It's the basic "Good to be Green" scheme that seems to be used in the majority of primary schools - the kids start the day on green and transition through a verbal warning, yellow card and red card for misbehaviour. Once they get to red if misbehaviour continues they get time removed from Golden Time on a Friday. They get given a break time detention the following day for being on red. The school also puts on 4 "Good to be Green" days at the end of the October, December, Spring and Summer terms, which is basically lots of fun activities and the children get a set period of time to go and do the activities based on how many full weeks on green they've had in that term.

I don't find these schemes really to be particularly well designed to be honest, but when it was implemented (when DS1 was in P2) I accepted that that was their policy and I do accept (and insist!) that DS1 should face consequences for misbehaviour. In P2 he mostly got on ok with it, apart from the odd day here and there. In P3 things went massively downhill - it was a difficult year for him at home (difficult relationship breakdown) and P3 seemed to be a massive jump in expectation from the school. He was on yellow or red most days and developed a huge anxiety issue about his homework book that contained the information about his behaviour that day. There were all sorts of issues with him hiding it from both me and his teacher, cutting pages out of it etc. This was the only time that I have been really unhappy with the school's response to an issue I raised - they didn't really help at all.

Last year (P4) things were massively improved; he was managing mostly greens/verbal warnings with a yellow maybe once or twice a fortnight. The problem was that one yellow means that week is "lost" as far as the end of term fun day is concerned - and two yellows over separate weeks mean two weeks are lost. I felt that the improvement he had made was a massive achievement for him and that it was not being recognised properly within the parameters of the scheme - the SfL teacher agreed but said there was little she could do.

We are now 6 days into P5. He has had one yellow and two reds. He is distraught. He had an absolutely raging tantrum last night because of it. His new teacher doesn't give detentions for a red card but instead deducts TEN minutes from golden time, so he's already lost 20 minutes this week.

I have a couple of issues tbh:
The behaviour in both this year and last year is not, as far as I can see, massive one offs or something really naughty, more two or three small incidents over a day of things like a scuffle in the line, shouting out in class, being disruptive/chatty, not sitting down/settling etc. There are also issues with other kids deliberately winding him up. Some of these I think are actually not misbehaviour but clear parts of his disability - for example he shouted out during a spelling test to ask which "version" of a word the teacher was asking them to spell (this is his account, and though he does have a tendency to bend the truth I do believe he was truthful on this occasion). DS1 learned to read by sight and has never "got" phonics, so I think this was actually a genuine question from him rather than him being naughty.

He still has huge anxiety issues round the scheme. He is desperate to stay on green, and once he starts to spiral off it I think he panics and it actually makes his behaviour worse, if that makes sense. Once he has one yellow/red for the week as far as he is concerned the week is "ruined" and this also contributes to his anxiety. As far as he is concerned now his whole week, term and year is "ruined" because of the red cards he's had. This anxiety is then brought home and taken out on me the detentions are counter productive too - he has far too much energy and actually needs break time to run it off, plus he is having a lot of support work at break time.

He has his initial IEP meeting in a fortnight, and now he has a diagnosis I would like to raise the issue more stridently, but I don't know really what I should be asking the school to do instead I appreciate he must be very difficult for his class teacher to deal with, he's very high energy, never stops talking, never stops moving, has very little impulse control so shouts out and talks over people, and I appreciate that the teacher needs an effective way of both dealing with it and teaching him that this isn't acceptable, but I really don't think this behaviour scheme is the answer. The problem is, I don't know what is.

Any help/advice/opinions would be most welcome, thanks

What about him having a personal chart with 'sections' of yellow and red cards on Velcro, with the full card only brought out if he gets all 4 sections. so he in effect gets 4 chances for each level of sanction.

Rules are rules if hes capable of obeying them. But if he isn't able to do that all day every day like the other dc, there are other methods. I think you need to be stropy if they're punishing a disability or skill lack instead of adapting or teaching ways to overcome it. We no longer beat children fir writing with their left hand. If a child who uses a wheelchair was slow to get down stairs, you wouldn't expect them to be yellow carded for dawdling, nor a hearing impaired child to be punished for missing a teacher's comment.

Sounds very much like every child has to fit the scheme rather than the scheme catering to their needs. Yes, there can be a standard set of rules for everyone about the important things such as no bullying and lesser rules like no calling out in class but I would expect the lesser rules to be administered with more flexibility and regard for individual needs. His impulsive behaviour will be difficult for class teacher to handle but if ds had the support of a TA to work alongside him to give discrete reminders where necessary and possibly some social skills work around listening and turn-taking that might help to ward off some of the red card situations. However, a system like the one described where there is no motivation to improve or reform once you've reached a certain number of red cards sounds basically flawed to me. As there seems to be a clear link between ds escalating anxiety and this scheme, it is failing him.

there are some links on this page to information about the implications of the disability discrimination act for school which might be worth reading up on before your meeting. The key phrase is "must make reasonable adjustments"

www.medway.gov.uk/educationandlearning/informationforschools/learningandteaching/additionaleducationalneeds/disabilitydiscriminationact.aspx

Dd3's old school had a complicated rules structure and she spent so much time worrying about breaking rules or somebody else breaking them that she was permenantly in a highly anxious state.

The anxiety your Ds is suffering is only going to make his behaviour worse, I think you need to be having strong words sooner than two weeks time.

To punish him for asking which version of a word he is supposed to spell is bonkers and unnecessary. People with AS are well known for their pedantics. Would he be rewarded for using the correct version of the word in his writing I wonder.

I agree that he is being discriminated against and hope you can talk some sense into them

Good luck

Thanks for replies - it feels better just to know I am not overreacting or being precious iyswim. Thank you for the link/information about DDA and discrimination, I am definitely going to use this argument WRT responding to behaviour which is linked to his disability (probably most of it tbh, but it seems so hard to get this through to them).

"Sounds very much like every child has to fit the scheme rather than the scheme catering to their needs." - this is exactly it. I am not really a fan of these schemes tbh because I don't think they're helpful for any of the kids - DS2 finds compliance easy, so his (so far) constant greens are not evidence of good effort or hard work, just that his personality-type is valued whereas DS1's is not. DS1 can make any amount of effort, but if the resulting behaviour is not deemed good enough then he is not rewarded for it. I also agree that it seems mad that there is no motivation for improvement once a certain level of sanction has been reached.

In the past the school has tried various extra schemes for DS1 - stickers for good break time behaviour, stickers for good behaviour during segments of the day, a "jigsaw" which is linked to a reward of computer time, but none of this seems to avoid the usage of the main scheme which is the thing causing him the issues. I like your idea mariam about a very clear, but staggered move to each sanction.

Ineeda, your DD3's experience sounds very similar to DS1, sorry that she was also affected by it.

Thanks again for the help, I am going to start making notes based on the notes in the diary each day and DS1's reports on what's happened - I think most of these sanctions are avoidable through the teacher being aware of the impact of DS1's disability and being more proactive and also a more staggered approach.