advice needed please, TIA x

[devientenigma]

If these are the areas to work on over the next year for DS age 11 out of school, how and who can support/implement??

Become more socially accepting.

DS to recognise his anxieties/needs and to work out suitable strategies to overcome these.

Positive strategies needed to overcome his defense and avoidance mechanisms.

Learning about emotions, recognising them in others as well as being able to articulate his feelings and needs.

Personal hygiene issues.

With the emotions, can you have a 'rule' that after every meal he places his face/toy/sticker on a scale from red to green.

Do that for a week without comment. If he gets it, great. If not, you'll have to move the object to red when you see he is cross/upset and you move it to green when he is obviously happy, until he is able to take over.

Just recognising positive and negative feelings in himself is so important and can't be rushed.

Learning about emotions, recognising them in others as well as being able to articulate his feelings and needs.

We spend all our time labelling emotions for ds, both our own and his. So eg if he gets annoyed about something dd does I say "yes that is really annoying isn't it. I bet you feel really cross don't you". Do the same for physical sensations/pain too. Just do it over and over again, with every scenario you can think of. Also put in specific incidents which he might remember so can apply to himself - eg if he breaks something and gets cross, say "I dropped my xx yesterday do you remember? I was so cross" .

Agree with Star, it's a long-term goal. But we are doing this with our behavioural therapy, and this is the first step: just labelling every emotion experienced and trying to give a concrete example is the first thing.

Think the green/red face is a great idea!

DS to recognise his anxieties/needs and to work out suitable strategies to overcome these.

We had a list on display for ds specifically about how to respond to dd (who is 3yo and very annoying ) - walk away; ask her to move; call me for help etc etc. Would something like this work - an easy-to-read/remember sort of visual reminder? But again you'd have to break down each of the situations that he finds anxious, as that is one very overarching goal!

Personal hygiene - if it's a question of remembering, a step-by-step guide in the bathroom? (We used one for ds when toilet-training: visual aid of lifting seat, flushing, wash hands etc.)

Sorry if these are way off the mark - my ds is much younger than yours and iirc doesn't have as complex a dx.

Btw who has set these goals, and are you getting any support from anyone with this??

Devient, I will be blunt. Nobody's going to make massive changes while he is out of school. All of those changes, and the change needed for all the members if your family, could best be worked for with a 24 hour curriculum in a specialist resi placement. You get fobbed off again and again at the moment, no decent respite and too little changes for ds. In a few years, education will have less responsibility for him and any chance to make big changes will be lost. If you have a big review coming up, please consider residential. Many people on here have and it's made a big difference to their child's life, and theirs. He could even board weekly. I see you trying for changes but you're already doing everything you can and nobody offers anything that helpful to you in your LA.

And this is why I don't usually respond!

my gut feeling re:the anxieties is he would need some form of specialist psych support - someone experienced both with LDs, anxiety and challenging behaviour. So I can see why sickof is talking about a specialist placement. I know you have concerns about resi, but would weekly resi be all that different from respite?

Hi Devient - you already know so much more than I do on this, but I just wanted to wish you luck and tell you that you are doing an amazing job!

In terms of practical support - DD currently has 'understanding emotions' as one of her IEPs and is getting fairly intensive support from her SENCO and weekly sessions with a SALT.

This is probably too basic for your DS, but what they're trying with her is using photos of people she knows showing different emotions, then signing the emotion & role playing with a doll as to how to respond e.g. show a picture of a sad friend, sign sad & then either pat the doll or give it a hug (depending on who is in the picture & how close she is to them)

For becoming more accepting and beginning to understand emotions we are using Comic strip conversations, we have only just started so I dont know how it will go but so far Dd3 has engaged so I am quite hopeful.

We have taken a step forward with personal hygiene in the last 2 weeks Dd3 is agreeing to go in the shower twice a week to wash her hair. Up until 2 weeks ago it was taking me up to half an hour to get her in the shower.

I dont really know what has changed other than that she had her hair cut so it is not so hard to wash.

TBH, most of the other stuff is tackled at school, she is in social skills groups and has 3 key adults she can go to, they also have a safe haven which she uses most lunchtimes, she rarely goes in the main playground so she avoids the social/confrontational stuff.

She is the only one at home Monday to Friday now so I think that has made a difference although the adjustments at the weekends when Dd2 comes home are a bit yak.

Am honking for you

Any of these ideas any use?

I suspect you are going to have to break those overall goals down a bit.

"Become more socially accepting."

That is huge. So, given his level of LD, what would be a more realistic short term goal? A year is quite short term if we're talking about Severe Learning Disability.

So, your goal might be 'to accept x, y, z social interactions.'

As you'd expect, I agree with Sickof regarding Resi placement.

I think health wise it is difficult for resi isnt it deviant? as medical provision would also need to be in place. Plus DS cannot cope in respite very well either so I can understand your concerns about resi placements. x

The coloured stickers are a great idea. Also another one is a red, amber, green card. We all had one each in our pockets and used them infront of DS if we were laughing we would wave the green card with the smiley face on it and if we say stubbed our toe we would wave the red angry card and make facial expressions and saying I feel really angry now.

The amber card we drew a face with just two dots for eyes and a straight line for a mouth. We used this as our confused card iyswim.

If we didnt hear someone right, or understand or didnt know what to do we used it and looked confused and said I dont know what to do, or I need help etc.

Eventually DS joined in and it helped him slowly work out his and our emotions and expressions, plus when he was confused he used to wave his amber card like mad

thanks for the ideas. Yes looking at it I realise it is asking a bit much of DS. I hear the points RE resi.

Just trying to prepare for ed rev tomorrow

sorry, didn't mean that weekly resi would be same as respite, was thinking more maybe one or two overnights a week. coff, I was envisageing that it would be a v specialist indie resie, where it would be an individual curriculum for dev's child, so more specialised than his current respite iyswim.

devientenigma, I think you're fantastic. Do you realise how lucky your DS is to have you? 3 years out of school and you're still fighting for him to get what he needs.

Location isn't ideal for you but this place is (I think) perfect in every other way. They're good at convincing tribunals too, I hear.

Worth investigating and considering even if it only ended up as a blueprint / bargaining chip for nearer or less intensive alternatives.

Hope review goes well and that someone has something to offer you.