Learned behaviour or is this usual?

[anamechangedregular]

Ds is a teenager with ASD's and has been in a residential school for just over a year since ms school failure. He is in residential only because there is no suitable school nearer, not because he really needs residential care.He was considered to have challenging behaviour however recent sensory assessments show that he reacts badly to, and struggles to function, when there is too much noise and sensory overload around him. In the last few months he has changed from being generally nice and polite when he comes home to being verbally abusive to me and dh and showing a total lack of respect etc.

Now I know teenage years are very difficult for all children with ASD but I am wondering if the environment around him could be partially responsible for this.Not a day goes by when he doesn't have disruption around him with children either hitting,swearing at or spitting at the staff. We have raised this as an issue at school but they assure us things will be better in another class next year.

Dh feels that his behaviour shows that he is in the right place but the whole issue is placing a big strain on our marriage at the moment. Any advice/suggestions would be helpful right now. Thanks

Not very useful but my dd is a great mimicker so the hitting&spitting we started seeing wasn't a product of her asd but NT children's behaviour from nursery ( I found this out when I hired ABA tutors to shadow at nursery)

So it could well be that. What are the staff putting in place to manage this?

DS has also learnt swearing, shouting at school. Brought it home but I managed to extinguish it with lots of positive reinforcers, doing things he loves etc...school hasnt managed to do so, its actually breaking my heart each time I go there most kids are swearing, shouting, manipulating and bullying younger pupils and staff.

You know your son best, I know DS learnt it as we dont use that language at home. Moving to the next class isnt going to solve the issue as the whole environment ie the laud kids swearing will still be around him...

I am sorry its putting a strain on your marriage :(

Thanks all.
I managed to speak to ds about it but he said as it goes on around him all the time he does the same and can't just switch off at the weekends. I'm not sure if he is saying that to excuse the use of language and blame others or not though. He definitely never used to be like this so the hormones probably are also playing a part.

He has recently spoken to a psychologist and he explained how stressed he was. The psych is shortly going in to do a class observation which will be helpful as it would be good to know if the disruptions are as bad and as frequent as he feels they are. A neutral observer will hopefully give us a more accurate picture of what's going on.