This is very long -sorry!
Ds is fairly high functioning asd, academically very weak, but is going to be starting mainstream secondary school with a lot of support in September.
He is the usual story of well behaved at school and tantrumming wig-outs/obsessive controlling behaviour at home.
I think he's been sensory seeking focussed for a few months now-lots of stealing food, but also eating non food stuff like cat food/leaves/dishwasher tablets/medicine. It's secretive so not attention seeking and seems compulsive-though also boredom based as he has very little that interests him.
It has come to our attention (
) that he has been eating his own poo for 3 days-he often gets in a mess toileting(only goes at home) so I hadn't quite clicked what was happening and then today he admitted it.
I had a calm chat about germs/sickness/social unacceptability and so on, but I have no idea if it'll have any effect because he is so compulsive at home.
My immediate fear is he's off on a school residential on Monday(he's been on them before)-his ta is fine with assisting with toileting, but what if he does this? He generally keeps this sort of thing for home, but he's away for 4 nights.
Long term-can I really send a child off to mainstream secondary if he does this? They've already said he needs 1:1 supervision at breaktimes because his flapping/beating his cheat and most particularly beating his crotch will make him vulnerable. Am I being hysterical? Will this be a short lived phase? He's an adorable friendly boy, but if his mouth stinks of poo it's not going to help him socialize is it?
He's always been an odd mix of socially adept and severely unacceptable behaviours. Eg he is quite capable of going off to the local shops on his own and buying things, can cross the road, walks to school on his own-yet does stuff like this or licking random stuff.
So any advice/support/ideas/experience of this would be most most welcome.