Son sent home for cub camp for hurting others

[manyhands]

At my wits end, seem to have tried everything to help ds who has an educational pschologist's dx for being on the autistic spectrum but he still has fortnightly meltdown's and on this occasion hurt other children. How do you cope? Drained and very emotional.

Hi Many sorry you are having such a hard time. Is he getting the right support at Cubs? Something must have triggered the meltdown. Do the leaders know about his issues? [well they do now] And did you have some kind of meeting before he went to camp?

I spoke to the person in charge of children with SN's and medical issues when Dd3 went away with the cubs, she doesnt generally have meltdowns for other poeple but she does struggle with anxiety and social stuff.

We made a communication leaflet to send to camp with her with a list of what she finds difficult and how best to help her. A lot of preparation happened before the trip.

I am not sure if Ed psychs are allowed to dx ASD to be honest but that is probably for another post.

I would try to organise a meeting with the Cub leaders to find out what went wrong and how you can move forward from here.

Good luck

Thank you that's really helpful advice. The cub leader works 1-1 with children with SEN professionally but with hindsight we should have prepared in the ways you suggested. He has been going to cubs for ages but a whole weekend in camp is different. It may be the push he needs to read his anger management books and keep working on strategies to calm his temper.

many how old is your DS?

I've had similar probems with my DS and his attendence at Cubs.
TBH I eventually gave in and stopped sending him- a decision I regret as it still feels slightly discriminatory as I had told them his diagnosis.

But I had other battles at the time.

I've found mindfulness and self-calmiing techniques really useful for DS.

Yes Many a weekend away is a different ball game altogether, the children are expected to be quite independent, then they are all thrown in together, deprived of sleep, wound up as high as kites and then asked to play some kind of complicated game or something equally stressfull!!

Hard for any child but add in a touch of Asd and bang it goes off like a rocket!!

Hope you manage to get it sorted

Well we had to pick him up and it's spoilt the start of half term. I'm interested in self calmimg techniques Redoubtable, what worked for your son. We tried the count to 10, breathe etc approach but it didn't work this weekend, strangely enough he enjoyed the last cub camp but it was a different colony who were less strict so he may have had similar difficulties last time but just got told to stop it.

Re what works for us?

I downloaded apps for mindfulness and he loved this one which has a child's session on my version.

But he prefers and has recorded my voice doing something similar but the visualisations are specific to him and his interests.

I dont wait for an 'event' to practice it; we do it all of the time and I am a convert.
There is lots of evidence of the effects of mindfulness on anxiety, resilience, self-confidence etc. I've recommended it to lots of parents and the initial reaction is always huh? ; but it works.

The other thing that I've found to work is the How to talk so kids will listen book.
I found it good for 'emotional coaching' so helping him to recognise his feelings e.g. 'you sound like you are feeling frustrated about that' or 'I think I would have felt annoyed about that - were you?'.

Thanks everyone.