ds1 (3.5) refusing to come home from pre-school or anywhere

[MrsKoala]

I would really appreciate some advice. ds1, who has suspected ASD, has been going to pre-school for a year now. He absolutely loves it and loves the other children (he loves all other children and wants to be friends and play with every one he sees and doesn't understand if they don't) but since christmas he has been refusing to come home. I have to physically drag him home kicking and screaming, which is hard because he is big and i am also pushing ds2 in the buggy. He bites and scratches me. I am covered in bruises.

He goes 5 half days a week. Mon and thurs afternoons and tues, weds, fri mornings and stays for lunch tues & weds. These are the only sessions available.

This week it has got so bad that on Tuesday (the worst day as his best friend stays on) he smashed up the house when we got home, slamming and kicking the doors, pulled all the pictures of the mantle piece, tried to climb out of the window, bit ds2, was choking and gagging and banging his head on the walls he was so hysterical. I had to lay on the floor holding him tight to stop him hurting himself or us.

Today i tried to bribe him with a trip to lidl on the way home to get a cookie, which hasn't worked before but seemed to today. But when we got in there he didn't just want his cookie he wanted to get a trolley and do a full shop (he loves food shopping) i said no, that we had to get home becasue grandad was watching the baby but he ran away and i spent about half hour chasing him around the supermarket. I had to hide like a prat and jump out as he ran past, i caught him by his hood and then had to drag him home kicking and screaming. When we got in he laid on the floor screaming for half an hour.

This happens now when we have to leave anywhere, bounce, soft play, shops, parks etc.

The paed and the people who have met him say he is so focussed on what he wants that nothing else even exists to him.

But i cannot go on like this. As much as he loves pre-school and as much as he has developed and thrived there i am tempted to stop taking him. I know it sounds terrible but i could just let him watch paw patrol all day and not get beaten up.

I don't know how much longer i can do it.

I love that idea Meir .

Youarent - i can see how that would work if your ds is anxious. But i am struggling to think of how i can adapt it to ds1 who is over confident. When in an airport he loves it, it is very exciting and he cannot control himself, so he will run off, climb escalators/travelators, luggage belts, try to run round people with trays of hot food, try to run thru the machines, laughing manically with a look of pure joy on his face. He can't regulate himself to stop. And this is kind of what he is like when he is out with me but a little more toned down. I am unsure if i could even get his attention long enough to show him a picture or tell him a story or show him a thing which transitions to the next thing. By then he is in a frenzy. In fact he sort of lives in a frenzy out of the house. It is total stimulation overload. At home he has his moments but he also seems to really like quiet time here and often doesn't want to go out, but then when we do wont come home.

Yes, Meir, we do a similar kind of story of 'Once upon a time there was a little boy called ds1 and and today he did....' Then tell the story of the day. I whisper is to him as we lay in bed and he twirls my hair and drifts off.

One of the best 'social stories' I wrote happened by accident. I'd made a scrapbook of a cottage holiday we had one year, which included photos of the cottage interior (every room!), and all the places we visited. Maps, postcards, receipts - all sorts of things. A couple of years later, a friend booked a holiday to the same area and it turned out that by coincidence she was staying in the same cottage. She had two boys with autism and they really struggled with change. I lent her the scrapbook and it was a perfect ready-made social story for them, including photos of 'their' bedroom and all the other rooms. They even went to a lot of the local attractions we'd visited and it was made so much easier for them because they had a lot of information about them beforehand. They had a fab time .

Queen, that sounds great. I must say i'm a bit like that when i travel anyway, i get guide books and do print outs of everywhere we are going, i decide where we will eat every meal and i like to see the pictures of the rooms we are staying in. I have an itinerary folder with every day planned including all times and maps. I find i enjoy it way more like that. I can get a bit anxious and disappointed if i feel i've wasted the first few days finding out where things are then missed out because x had a festival/market whatever the day before and now i've missed it.

As for my mum i have told her in no uncertain terms what she is very much not allowed to say. She adores ds and is much mellower now so has taken it on board. Once i was bfing ds2 and ds1 was pulling my hair so i asked dad to take him upstairs. He didn't realise the intercom was on and i heard him say to ds1 that i didn't love him when he was naughty and if he carried on i wouldn't love him anymore. I tell you i have never moved so fast (even post c-section and carrying a stone baby attached to my boob). I flew up the stairs and opened the door and said 'ds1 that is not true, i love you all the time and nothing you do makes me stop that' i gave dad the death stare and then when alone i bollocked him good and proper.

For children that wander off or run around it can include esp citations of behaviour etc. It would really depend on 'what' your DS responds to.

So something like....

At the airport I have to put my suitcase on the luggage belt. This takes my case to the airplane. It's heavy so I have to do it carefully.
When I've put my case on the luggage belt careful the lady will give me a ticket to get on the plane.
I will then walk, holding my mums hand to ........
I will need to stand in the queue nicely and quietly and then I will be able to out my bag on the X Ray machine.

Just a thought. If your DS is getting so overwhelmed in busy environments have you thought of trying ear defenders? It may be sensory overload that means he can't control what he is doing because it's his bodies natural reaction. It's nigh on impossible where ASD is concerned to teach any skills or develop/moderate behaviour before their senses are ready - because they don't have the same control over them as nt children do iyswim?

I will also confess that when at the airport DS had his story and just 'set off' alone whilst reading it while my mum and me got the suitcase out of her car!
It never occurred to me that "after we get our bags from the car we will get in the lift to departures and then find our check in desk" would mean DS did just that - on his own, with his bag

That's why you find and adapt the best method for your own child. It may not feel like it some days but you will.

Please can I ask a question about social stories. As I mentioned further up the thread, I'm a teacher (early years). I have used now and next boards, visual timetables, objects and pictures of reference, sign language etc. but am not very familiar with social stories. I can imagine them being useful to a number of children I teach. Do you illustrate yours? Are they purely verbal? Do you use them to be introduce something new, to help resolve something that's already happened, or both? I'm going to have a look at the NAS stuff when I get a chance, but wondered if you had any simple guidelines to get me going.

Frussi - thanks very much for your help.
MrsK - sorry for hikacking your thread slightly.

Littlefish My stories were full of pictures - photographs, clip-art, word bubbles - anything that would have an impact on how effectively the message was delivererd. Eg if you're doing a social story about getting ready for school in the morning, it often works better with photos of the child's own clothes, toothbrush, bathroom, lunch bag etc because they are personal and the child can relate better. The word bubbles were very useful because I'd overlay them onto photographs to show positive interactions between people, eg ds and his grandma, ds and his teacher etc. When combined with Choice Cards, they showed positive and negative consequences of different ways of communication.

The key though, IME, is to keep them personal. Very often I hear people say "Oh I tried social stories, they didn't work" when in reality what they've done is downloaded one from the internet that has no personal link to the child so they haven't engaged with it. It's definitely worth the time and effort to make them as personal as possible. I also proof read ours with ds, before printing a final copy for us to use, in case the font or a graphic or the layout wasn't right in some way. The tiniest things can make a difference, I found. Far better to get them right if you can.

Queenstreaky Thank you very much for your reply. That all makes perfect sense. I already personalise visual timetables by using photographs of the child concerned doing the activity (if you see what I mean), and use photographs in each area of nursery showing children engaging with resources in that area. I'll have a think over half term about how I can use social stories too.

Ah, if only there were more teachers like you Littlefish, school would be a much easier place for a lot of our children . Keep up the good work!

Thank you queenstreaky. What a lovely thing to say. That's really cheered me up.