School said DS has had a good day - I'm mortified!!

[fairgame]

Just had a phone call from DS's teachers. She told him that she would ring me as he has done some lovely work this afternoon - fabulous, how brilliant or so i thought.

This afternoon's lovely work has followed an awful morning where DS saw fit to rip up his work (standard for him), tip up tables (does happen sometimes), take off his clothes (not the first time) and purposefully piss on the floor before trying to break the whiteboard . I am mortified.
I'll be honest, DS has never been anything other than challenging at school but i feel like we have taken a huge step backwards. DS hasn't pissed himself on purpose since he was 4/5 and this is the second time he has done it in 3 weeks (he is 9).
He has only been at this school since September and it's an indie ss specifically for Autism. Prior to that he was in ms with full time 1:1. He has form for running round school naked and ripping down displays but it's only ever happened twice. School don't seem to be fazed by it all and say he is just pushing boundaries and it takes time for him to settle but i really thought i would be seeing improvements in his behaviour by now. The whiteboard will be broken eventually as he has become fixated on it for some reason. He does seem to be doing a bit more work, he is doing some writing now and actually wrote a christmas list at the weekend for the first time ever.
Maybe i was expecting too much too soon. I feel a bit deflated .

and . Been there - well ds2 prefers setting off fire alarms to running round naked. I console myself with the fact that we did warn them in advance what they were taking on and they are getting well paid for it. It has certainly taken ds2 a long time to settle down (he started at his school around Easter). He did progress last term but then of course a step (or several) backwards with the summer holidays. He does now go to most lessons and his rate of fire alarm setting off decreased. As long as school can learn from the experience and avoid the triggers next time then hopefully things will improve soon. I have to admit we have had to work harder with the school than I expected to get things in place for ds2 but we are getting there I think now.

I'm glad i'm not alone. I think i was a bit naive by thinking that as soon as he was in a small class and a specialist placement that there would be a massive improvement quickly.
The school are very good. They are very positive and seem to know what they are doing. They knew what he was like before he started there. The problem is that he has a very short fuse and goes off very quickly so you can't always act fast enough to prevent it.
DS suggested to the staff that they should put a sign over the floor where he wee'd so nobody treads in it. How considerate of him

Trust me they have seen everything! It has taken my son a year to settle and even now we have days where he has wobbles. I hope the placement will sort everything out but they still have their difficulties. The difference is having experienced staff who know exactly how to deal and handle it and then move forward in finding out why they had the behaviour and wht they can out in place to help the child. I could tell you so many stories about my son but he is absolutely in the right place.

They definitely seem to know what they are doing. It's good that they can find positives even after such challenging behaviour and i think that's the bit that's a shock to the system because his last school would have given him a fixed term exclusion in the circumstances. This school just take it all in their stride.
I probably need to be a bit more realistic about when he will settle down.

Yes but how fantastic that after a morning like that he picked himself up and did aforesaid amazing work. And that the afternoon not the morning was what his teacher wanted to ring you about.

Often a sign of real progress observed with DS (8 and a challenge!) is that a bad morning or episode doesn't signal an unstoppable spiral into meltdown and even worse behaviour.

All the best!

That's really good way of looking at it actually thankyou! Sometimes i get so stuck on the 'oh my god what has he done now?!' that i probably miss some of the little steps of progress. A few years back a bad morning would have led to a bad day and now he is able to turn it around so that's a real improvement