how to get asd dd to go to school

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Dd (age 10-y6) is hfa. She is happy at school, but refuses to go when she is "too tired". If I try to force the issue she goes into a violent meltdown.

This happens around once per week (today this week), but can happen on any day of the week.
I am fastidious about bedtime, and she is settled in bed between 8.30 and 9pm. She is woken up at 7.30am, and on a good day out of bed at 7.45am.

How can I persuade her to go to school when she wakes up "too tired"??

Polter - she can't attend because she is too tired to get out of bed. Once she is at school, she is happy and doing well. She has friends, and skips off to school with a neighbour most mornings. I am happy with the school.

I honestly believe it is that she can't manage that horrible time when you're tired in bed and the alarm goes off and you realise you have to get up.

By 10.30am this morning, she was happily putting on her uniform and getting ready to go. I got her into school just before 11am.

Does she have meltdowns/shutdowns after school? If shedoes that could be an indicator that she has un met needs at school! I agree with polter if its purely a transition thing then you may be able to work through it with incentives or a special job to do at school first thing in the morning!

If its unmet needs causing the problem then you might have to dig deeper.

Being in school all day everyday is exhausting for childrenwith autism! Sensory stuff, social stuff, communication stuff is all so much harder and thats before she starts working!!

I stopped forcing Dd3 to attend school in yr 6 and she stopped attending all together in yr 7, she is now home ed!

We all follow different paths!

Good luck

Ineed…

We are getting fewer meltdowns generally now, occasionally one at bed time, but we have a rigid bedtime routine which works well now. After school she likes to play with her friends until tea.

Just a thought but could you set the clock half an hour earlier? Just so that you can say "Ok you can have another half an hour" and then walk away and give her some time,

We used a visual timeline to help Dd3 get ready from about yr 4, she is extremely demand avoidant when stressed and me giving her instructions in the morning was seen as extremely annoying! Once we introduced the timeline she could get through all the steps required to get herself ready without me saying anything other than "look at your timeline" occasionally!

Good luck

yes. She decides the night before whether she is going to get straight up but later, or snooze and I wake her up earlier.
Alarm clocks are out because of the noise, and if I leave a gadget in her bedroom for music, then she plays on it during the night.

Any suggestions??

Polter, thats interesting. Thanks

I do try and wake her nicely, and gently, but sometimes it seems the rot has set in during the night.

Sometimes I think a Wallace-and-Gromit type of contraption would be the answer to getting her out of bed!!!

Or a bed that becomes prickly at 7.30am!!!

getting up in the morning is horrible. maybe not an affordable long-term solution, but perhaps you could try turning up the heat in the morning. it is hard to leave a nice warm bed when there's a chill in the air, but if it's a little bit hot and stuffy, bed isn't quite so comfortable.

oh god, this is my dd who is potentially on the spectrum. Shes not a morning person, and would likely be fine if school started at 10.

Its so hard to get her up, she fights me, complains, removes her clothes as im trying to dress her, screams at me, bites me, runs and hides.
Sometimes I go apeshit at her and then it ruins everyones morning and it doesnt make it easy at school either as she will cling on to me, cry, try and run off.

Its got a lot better very recently, i had a big chat with the senco and her class teacher and they let her go in and sit in the reading corner/nook and read when she gets in for a bit, instead of joining straight in with class, and theyve got an LSA to be hanging around the cloakroom, in case she kicks off.

I havent got any good answers as even if we find something that works, it only works for so long.

Sometimes I go into her room and put on a story CD that she likes, or a cd that will wake her up happy, or i bribe her with being able to go on my phone for 10 mins if shes up and dressed on time

I was going to suggest one of those alarm clocks that light up too. Is she the same throughout the year, or worse at getting up during the winter?

I like the story idea. I could put it on in her bedroom, then move it around the house when it is breakfast/bathroom time. She might go for that.

Brilliantine - she is the same all year tbh.

On the whole, things are better now than this time last year, when bedtime was a huge battleground as well as mornings. So I guess this is the problem we are tackling now, but we are definitely moving down the list of "behaviour to address", and ticking stuff off.

We had a asd worker/counsellor working with us for a lot of this year, and she has really helped.

Thanks everyone. I thinks she's really tired at the moment. We had quite a bad day today with a public aggressive meltdown too. I wish I didn't have to work, then I would consider letting her be ill for a day!!!

Good luck everyone!!