Rant/rambling. No replies required, long.

[xenzani]

It's all came to a head. Dd2 is 8 and year four. Always been slightly different to her peers. Hated people looking/talking to her when younger and would arch her back to have her head over the back of the buggy. Quite often refused to follow rules while pointing out someone who wasn't and telling them off/telling an adult. Had trouble with friendship groups, still does, tries to make them play her games or she gets angry. Possessive with her friends, doesn't like anyone else playing with them. Fussy with food. Most of what she eats is plain or flavoured with garlic. Used to eat anything and everything. Hates changes. There is more. She can be the most loving girl and loves to please people. No confidence in her abilities. Dx of tourettes.

That's some background to what she is like.

School, many exclusions for defiance, threatening behaviour, hurting children/staff. Reception, by Christmas, the infant school had started putting things in place. Wasn't working. By easter, a CAF was completed. Had behaviour support and CAMHS requested, things weren't going well. Behaviour support came in for year one. Put things in place. Worked for a short time before needed changed. CAMHS came and had two meetings, said they couldn't help her as she didn't want to kill herself. Play therapy started, didn't work as not structured enough. Dd controlled the therapist. She is very manipulative. Knows how to play people well. First exclusions happened.

Year two, consistent management plans bought in by behaviour support. Support from learning mentor in class of the mornings and class lsa in the afternoon. Practically had 1:1 support. More structured counselling with outside agency through play to work in getting her to talk about feelings etc. She is a very angry girl. More exclusions at first, but started to settle down. Things were working. Behaviour support closed the case.

Transition to juniors went well, ubtil she started there. They hadn't read her file, not a single thing put in place for support, no plans, nothing. Not pleased. First exclusion of 8 days before October half term. Told them they needed behaviour support back, needed to put stuff in place, things wouldn't have been so bad if it had. But what do I know. Should have seen the red flag then with what the juniors would be like.

Stuff put in place, behaviour support agree with it all. All not great but not as bad. Refusing to do work and being defiant. Loves her teacher and forms a strong bond with her. Back after Christmas and within a week, teacher goes off sick until after easter. School get a supply to cover. She was good and dd settled, but still had wobbles.

Her teacher came back with a phased return over three weeks. long story short, dd became more violent and defiant. Worse then ever. Hurt deputy head more then once. Fair few exclusions. By July she was out of class all day, every day. Working with another child and lsa. SA request put in. Chasing and fighting for a pead appt again. New teacher assigned for year four. She has a male teacher. Doesn't go down well. Unless family or friends, she hates men.

Term started and within an hour I had a call for a meeting. New tinetable put in place. have a thread on it, 'possible illegal exclusions'.

First full week and four exclusions. Horrific week. she hates her teacher. Has choice to be in class or out with lsa. She has become even more defiant at school, apparently it's all a game to her. Came to a head yesterday when she told her tacher she wanted to get a knife, stab him and kill him. I have NEVER known her to say something like that and can only assume she heard it from another boy in her class last year who constantly was downright nasty to her.

She is now on a part time timetable for a week, and then doing all day tuesdays until she tolerates that, ubtil they can get behaviour support and other experts/specialists. Although no dx, she has got to be on the spectrum somewhere, and I was wondering about PDA as she has traits of that too, however, she fits ODD perfectly and that scares me more then anything.

She hates school, when I've gone to pick her up after being excluded, she hasn't run away from me or refused to come home. She has been quite happy about it. She has these behaviours at home but not to the extent of school and it is usually because I have asked her to do something, or told her she can't play disney infinity (her latest obsession) anymore today.

Have peadiatrician appt in three weeks and hoping something comes out of it this time. Not holding nyt breath though.

It sounds awful. I've been through a similar thing with exclusions and part time timetable with DS (ASD) so I know how frustrating it is and that was with a statement for full time 1:1!
Has Dd got a statement? It sounds to me like she needs a specialist provision. Ms clearly isn't working despite all of the intervention from camhs and behaviour support. It might be worth looking at some independent schools that cater for PDA or EBSD as local authority ss don't normally specialise that much. Just be prepared that you might have to go to tribunal to get the right place but it's worth it in the end.

I've just seen your other thread about the statement refusal and exclusions
Its complete bullshit that they don't give them for behaviour. DS got 27.5 hours of 1:1 on his statement, aged 5, no diagnosis, for behaviour. I hope you get one on appeal because dd definitely needs one!

Fairgame, no statement, trying to get a SA for one, it was refused so I am trying to take it to tribunal.

CAMHS didn't work with her as she wasn't suicidal. They took her history from me, had one meeting with dd three years ago and said they wouldn't help her.

I want to get her statemented, she needs it. I have also thought about a specialist provision for her, but don't know how to go about that, and I don't know if any of the schools in the area will take her as she has no learning disability, the opposite in fact with her, working at least a year ahead with no effort put in from her. Although, that is only when she actually does her work. I am in South Essex, and did have a google for special schools here.

PolterGoose, she now wants to be at home, we had sleep refusal last night, deliberately annoying her sister who was trying to get to sleep because she didn't want to go to school. Before this term, she would hate being sent home, wanted to stay at school even when she was refusing to go in before she was taken out of class end of last year.

She is refusing to go into school, but still gets up, and gets ready like always, and is okayish until we get into the school grounds. She goes in through the office to meet the class lsa and dd has to be peeled off me now.

I know she is manipulative, has been from a young age, and probably does do it to be sent home, she hates her teacher that much, but she also hasn't given him a chance. As soon as she found out who she had, that was it. She would refuse to go near him. I actually don't know if they have anything in place to reward her good behaviour when she does show it on the very very rare occasion now.

Lots of things to think about still.

Hi Xen I have nothing to add but just wanted to say I really feel for you and your Dd, she has been let down very badly by the system

You absolutely can get statements for behaviour difficulties. I would recommend making a list of all the provision that has ever been put into place for your Dd. Tell the tribunal how much extra support has been put in place for your Dd and they will see that even with all the extra your Dd is still getting excluded!!

Never mind whether the school is actually doing the stuff, just concentrate on what BSS has told them to do. It is shite when you feel you are bigging up the school when you know they are really crap but it will help you to win your tribunal.

Fwiw, my Dd3 will never change her mind about a person/teacher once she has decided she doesnt like them, that is it!! It makes school very hard work sometimes.

Dd3 has Asd/Aspergers and sensory processing disorder and she can be demand avoidant when she is stressed.
Have you read much about PDA? I thought Dd3 might fit the profile but she doesnt really, only when somebody (usually a teacher) has stressed her out.

Take care, be kind to yourself and good luck

Oops so much for nothing to add

Took dd in for her first half day only to pick her up an hour and half later for a three day exclusion. She has hurt an adult quite badly although I don't know what exactly happened.

She was refusing to go this morning, lsa came to get her from the office and told her they were going to talk in a quiet room about what is happening.

Dd admitted she wants to get kicked out of school. She hates it.

Ineed, I have read up on PDA a fair bit and she does fit it quite a bit, but fits ODD more.

School are still trying to get behaviour support back in to open up her case again.

Thanks again for listening all

Do you know the best thing this school could do for your daughter is to permanently exclude her. Whilst I definitely didn't think so at the time it was the best thing that could have happened to ds1 because it got him the support that he needed and which his school just was not capable of giving him. And I wouldn't automatically assume ODD or PDA it is far more likely to be just a very anxious child like ds1 was. He hurt teachers too by the way and wanted to kill them. Now he is getting good support he has no behaviour problems.

Meanwhile , , and chocolate (why is there not a chocolate smiley?). You will get through this and your daughter will get through it too.

Well said one
I really think you should try to avoid the ODD label if you can!

For most childen it is anxiety that makes them behave in this way, they do not set out to deliberately defy people they are just trying to preserve their own sanity

I wouldn’t worry too much about the ODD thing at present. When he was 6 my DS’s behaviour also fitted ODD better than anything else. He was very clever and chatty, but everything had to be his way, on his terms, and he’d blow up violently over the least thing. I started using “Explosive Child” (which was originally about ODD) and it’s very effective. Then my DS was diagnosed, not with ODD but with an autism-spectrum condition. The “Explosive Child” way of handling things still worked very nicely, mixed in with autism-specific strategies. Mostly it was about understanding how DS’s ASC issues (which were mainly social and communication) make him so very anxious, and how his intense anxiety fuels his rigidity, rudeness, rage attacks and aggression. It’s really just “fight or flight” and my DS always chose fight! Some kids with ASCs will shut down or withdraw from situations they can’t handle - but not him. He'd just explode.

When DS was diagnosed I was surprised to find out just how profound his communication issues really were. (What you said about telling off adults reminds me of my DS too ) I’d thought he was mostly just being difficult and his communication had seemed pretty normal to me, even advanced in some ways, and there was nothing especially odd about his eye contact etc. I didn’t realise just how much he couldn’t understand and couldn’t respond to until I saw him with the SALT. Then I could really see why he is so fussy and controlling.

My impression is that people mostly get an ODD diagnosis if they can’t pin down another underlying cause, so if your DD has ASC signs that’s probably the diagnosis she’ll get in the end, and it’s probably a more useful diagnosis too because it explains why she’s behaving like that.

Ineed and Polter, I am trying to avoid that label, I can't help but feel with how everything has gone lately, and the report the school wrote last year to give to the pead/SA, it is what will end up happening, on the surface, it is her completely. It's why ODD scares me more then anything, I know it isn't down to shit parenting, I have another dd who is a complete angel.

The learning mentor in the school reckons it is all because dd doesn't want to conform. That's why she hates school, and why she behaves like she does.

I also know that what is in place for her, her CMP etc doesn't work because it is all being done in the wrong way, it just gets her back up more, and it is a never ending viscous cycle

I do believe she is an anxious child, and that is where a lot of this is coming from. Take her work for example. If it is something she has never seen before, she will refuse to do it, saying she can't. She tries so hard to hold it in, and tries to be good and do the right thing, but she can't. She is always on edge (my friend says like a cat that has its back arched ready to attack) and the smallest of things will send her over.

Kleinzeit, she does have ASD/C signs, quite a lot really, but a lot of them are not typical ones. Two years ago, when she was first seen by the pead, I had a questionnaire to fill in, and the report said she was below borderline for any ASDs. The pead also said she showed no signs of it either.

We do have the tourettes diagnosis, and she is ticcing a lot at the moment.

I do actually wished the would hurry up and permanently exclude her, it is coming, this will be the year it happens, and they done it to a boy last year in year four who was also challenging. I can't help but wonder if they are interested in her for the year six SATS, if supported correctly, she could achieve levels 5/6. She was level 3 when came up to them last year, they do tests the first couple of weeks for settings in maths. They have recently became a 'Good' school by ofstead.

There are two meaning of “Doesn’t want to conform”. One meaning is to deliberately choose to do things differently from everyone else in order to be different. That doesn’t sound at all like your DD, not if she is often eager to please and “be good” and “do the right thing”. The other meaning would be that conforming or not conforming are simply not relevant to her, perhaps that they are not things she even understands. Instead, if your DD thinks that she already knows how the world should be, then she requires the world to conform to her expectations, and she is getting upset because the world is doing it wrong! And that would be autism. But I wonder if the learning mentor really understands the difference.

My DS does not understand about conformity. Or at least, I think he does now, certainly a lot more at 16 than he did at age 8. But he didn’t used to, not at all. And he doesn’t (didn’t) understand about authority either. A thing is either right or wrong and it doesn’t matter who says it. And what DS believes is right, is right. If an adult “in authority” tells him to do something, even if he knows they’re the world expert, and it clashes with what he already expects, then either the adult is wrong or the whole world is a mess and DS is likely to break down and thump someone. Most kids would just go along with what the adult says, but not my DS. He needs things to be consistent. It’s to do with black-and-white thinking plus the very literal way of interpreting things plus the lack of social awareness. And it’s very hard to manage when people don’t understand how DS thinks.

To me, these things are very much part of the autism spectrum. And the professionals I met seemed to see it the same way, which is maybe why the child-psych said “well maybe he doesn’t quite tick all the boxes for Asperger’s but I like to be creative in my diagnoses”. And that diagnosis has really worked for DS. But some professionals will leave kids in limbo if all the i’s aren’t dotted and the t’s crossed. If you haven’t already done so, can you get a SALT to see your DD? Perhaps the paed would refer you? Because that’s where my DS showed the most obvious signs.

Kleinzeit, what you say makes a lot of sense, and is exactly what my dd is like. In all honesties, the learning mentor is not very good at all, she was supposed to work with my dd and her emotions, and some social skills, but it still hasn't happened. My friend who has a son with Aspergers, her ds is supposed to have help from her too but again, it doesn't always happen. The school is failing him too, my dd and her ds are the best of friends, they get each other really well, but he is getting bullied for playing with a girl and the school do nothing.

Dd saw a SALT three years ago because she had problems with some sounds so had some sessions for that. They had no other concerns about her, they tested her comprehension which was above average for her age. Behaviour support done some assessments too, and all of those she was either average, or above average. Emotional literacy was all above average too. I think a lot of that with her is that she has been taught about it a lot in infant school (who actually supported her well) that she knows the answers, but it's only on the surface.