Need some ideas please

[claw2]

At school ds is unable to express when he is feeling sad or upset. If he does express feeling sad or upset, he is obviously asked why, so he 'pretends to be happy' or replies he is 'fine' when teachers ask if he is ok.

This is an ongoing problem and ds internalising his feelings and self harms.

I have been giving the matter some thought and it has occurred to me that there is nothing to motivate ds to express how he is feeling, in fact quite the opposite, he is asked why. IF he does express to an adult he is feeling sad/upset, it doesn't achieve anything, as after expressing he is still feeling sad/upset and gets no relief.

At home for example if ds is feeling sad/upset, he can take himself up to his room and do something which he finds relaxing ie lining things up.

Any ideas on strategies school could use to a) motivate ds to share his feelings and b) make him feel better after he has expressed?

Just one point- as a teacher, I find it incredibly useful to record a child's fluctuations in mood, no matter how they are expressing them, so that I can try to spot patterns and look for possible triggers- particular activities/times/transitions can then be planned for.

This drives my emphasis on sharing feelings where possible, even if they are not discussed.

Zzz maybe where I have read the numerous reports so many times and know them inside out, it is fairly easy for me to put 2 and 2 together and make 4. The problem is most recommendations from these reports do not feature in ds's statement, as most are out of date and due to his level of anxiety, he could not have any up to date assessments.

So now in order to access the provision that ds needs, I need to get school to understand the 'why' if that makes sense.

However we are going in circles and school seem to be missing the bigger picture. Ds is struggling, feeling sad and tearful every day and self harming. I think we have pretty much established that ds finds the school environment stressful and most days ds is feeling sad/upset/stressed in some way and he has difficulty expressing when, why or how he is struggling or feeling this way. However all that is offered is 'keeping an eye' on him or 'I will have a chat with him'.

School have been brilliant with trying to understand and I really cannot fault them there. But the support that ds is receiving is either a) not appropriate or b) no provision to meet this need. Ds is feeling sad/tearful/stressed due to this.

So I have 2 separate issues really

a) trying to get provision written into statement
b) suggesting some strategies for school to use in the meantime

DS has trouble recognising his own emotions and those of others are a mystery that need explaining.

Ds ha to start with understanding his physical symptoms when he he felt happy, sad and upset. (e.g tummy flutters, tears etc) and then having them explained to him that he was feeling the corresponding emotion.

From there we used red, amber, green to help him understand his emotions at school. This was to help him identify for himself what made him anxious (amber) and therefore likely to melt down (red). Obviously the ideal state is green (happy or content) and the aim is to stay in that state. We used strategies at amber to stop him going to red. It was very slow progress, but the long term impact to his quality of life has been fantastic.

Here's the resource we started with www.5papproach.co.uk/

DS's aim is for both himself and those he is interacting with (was his TA mainly at school) to be feeling green most of the time. If it helps you can chart it so the red moments can be seen over time to lessen, DS responds well to that kind of motivator, but other children may become more anxious as a result.

Now we are in an odd middling stage, with the aim of being able to use this resource directly www.amazon.co.uk/The-Incredible-5-point-Scale-Understanding/dp/1931282528 However it was far too advanced to use as a starting point.

This is the area I have to get a professional into help me with, as I'm too close to DS to create the initial traffic light, and I have real trouble being "fluffy" or talking about feelings generally myself (perhaps an ASD trait of my own?). I drove the counsellor nuts when we went for family therapy until we both worked out I can describe feelings in terms of pictures but am utterly useless at Lady Di style speak. DS & I do a LOT of art work based on feelings and always have done together as a form of theraputic release, (I'd NEVER share that with a professional though lol!).

It's irritating but I've worked out that with DSbeing home edded at the mo, I'm gonna have to pay someone to give me a hand in this area as I'm so bad at it.

If he cannot verbalise that he is stressed he can be taught to hold up a yellow card.

If you email me I'll try and pull out a couple of examples of DS's traffic light cards showing how HE decided the strategy to use at amber when upset.

The incredible 5 point scale I don't think DS will be ready for until his teens - it's the long term goal, but it is useful for showing a professional the approach.

Thanks Boc, we have had smiley/sad face, 1-5 scale, traffic light cards, communicate cards etc, etc in the past. They have not been implemented properly by school and ds has a hatred of cards or any scales!

He has been punished in the past for using his cards ie sent to the HT for a telling off for 'lying' when he used his 'overwhelmed' card as school didn't feel he should be feeling overwhelmed, or school gave him a smiley face chart supposedly for him to monitor his mood, where they gave him sad faces for anything he found difficult (previous schools that is, not this one)

No wonder he has difficulty expressing his feelings to school.

Thanks PolterGoose- I'm now an advisory teacher for children in care, and I come across similar responses from schools a lot. Way too often, in fact. The lack of understanding of how to collect and use data effectively in mainstream schools is appalling- looking at the bigger picture, putting in extra time now will save them all sorts of hassle in the long run, but even very experienced teachers often do not understand this.

Since the school seem, with the best of intentions, to be focused on understanding why the OP's DS is unhappy, they are inadvertently exacerbating the situation. This is why I would be trying to get them to focus on helping him to share his feelings (and no more at this stage) and rewarding him for doing so, no matter what that feeling is. They simply do not have the expertise to address the complicated issues arising from these feelings; but they can monitor the impact of school activities on his emotions, and take steps to address this.

It could be that a talking therapy is just not appropriate for the OP's DS, and I wish you all the best in accessing other forms of support (play therapy, art therapy for example) which may help him. Sadly, I know how difficult this can be.

Christ claw, that is the height of arrogance for a teacher to decide what a child is feeling. No wonder he is having such difficulty expressing feelings now- he was told he was wrong!

I think zzzz's idea of a range of activities not explicitly linked to mood is a good one. Again, used correctly, this could be used as a tool to spot a pattern of behaviour/emotions.

He might go for a scale if there was some incentive there Zzzz, previous scales haven't offered any motivation for him, quite the opposite he has been punished.

Even now, in his very good school, there is no motivation for him to tell a teacher he is feeling sad, unless something happens to make him feel better, when he does indicate it.

Although I do suspect he would want to be 'good' and not indicate anything other than happy.

At home for example he is constantly apologising to me for anything he thinks is a inconvenience to me, really little things, like asking for a drink!

He needs to know that it is not 'better' to be happy than sad, and that all feelings are equally valid. The school need to understand this, and reward him for the act of expressing a feeling, not for what the feeling is.

Bless we focussed mostly on what made green at first, then on what made he did that made his TA feel green. Only after we' clearly identified and got him to understand that did we touch on amber and red.

DS was totally encouraged to take ownership of his feelings, otherwise the whole thing is a bust. sadly school implementation only lasted a year, but that was enough to get started.

This comes down to the prevalent attitude in some areas that HF ASDkids can be bullied into being NT. I'm so sorry they fooked up big time for you, but not suprised given what DS went through.

Thanks everyone I am busy scribbling all this down to put into an email for school.

Oh bums I totally forgot that I rewrote ds's IEP in November and this should be one of his targets. (this 1-5 trigger scale was the one school used during circle time, successful, he was able to indicate a 4 and wrote school)

Staff to make ds familiar with anxiety scale. Staff to check with ds how he is feeling on his scale especially after transitions periods or activities he finds difficult or if showing signs of distress ie crying etc

If rated at 4 or above on 1-5 trigger scale (as previously used by school) ds be encouraged to use coping strategies.

Ds be given strategies to help release tension if at 4 ie 5 minutes down time or being allowed 5 minutes away from the activity, use of something to fiddle with elastic band or blu tak for example (just some examples)

(Working towards ds being able to communicate his worries without prompting or crying. Eventually ds will be able to monitor his own mood and use the strategies taught to him independently?)

His CT told me they would be using my IEP. So why is his TA emailing me 'he will keep an eye' or 'have a chat'? and 'ds did struggle during x,y,z today'

I have emailed him asking him if ds is using his anxiety scale. It doesn't look like its being used.