Five year old with ASD - aggression

[FourSeasonsTotalLandscaping]

I have a five year old daughter who has very recently (about a month ago) been diagnosed with ASD. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment with it to be perfectly honest. Her behaviour can be very challenging.

She has just started P1 (we're in Scotland) and is having particular difficulty with being aggressive towards other children - her default reaction when stressed/upset/annoyed/thwarted is to lash out. Today I collected her from school to be told that this morning in the playground she slapped a P6 child. I also overheard another child saying that my daughter is always pinching her. I was mortified by this.

Does anyone have any advice for how to try and tackle this? I try to talk to her about gentle hands, and using her words, but although she seems to understand she can't seem put it into practice in the moment.

I feel quite depressed and anxious about her future just now, and don't know any other parents of neurodiverse children to discuss any of this with. I feel like I have completely failed as a parent and I don't have any idea how to control her.

My nearly 5yo DS has also recently been diagnosed, and can have similar aggression. In the moment he generally cannot stop it, so the key for us is not letting him get to that stage of stressed / overwhelmed.

Have the school got suport in place? DS has full time 1:1, and also a safe space (play tent) in the classroom he can go to when he feels himself getting overwhelmed. We've done a lot of work with him on recognising his own emotions, and having strategies in place to help him calm down (fidget toys, quite space, breathing exercises).

If it's rampt up since she started school, then it's her communicating that she's not coping there, so the school needs to work with you to make sure her needs are been met, and in the mean time supervise more closely to prevent her hurting others.

Not sure how it works in Scotland but dose she have an EHCP or equivalent? (a document outlining what help she should get), if not you need to talk to the senco about applying for one.

Also you have not failed her as a parent. Parenting an autistic child is really fucking hard, your doing everything you can and have come here to ask if there's anything more you can do. Your a great mum, in a challenging situation, give yourself a break.

Hi!

We definitely need to try and discuss the support with school - getting near anyone is virtually impossible as the place is still locked up tighter than Fort Knox thanks to covid

As far as I can tell we don't have EHCPs in Scotland - the equivalent is something called a co-ordinated support plan (CSP) but they seem to be far less common and very difficult to get in comparison to an EHCP (and I don't think it's that easy to get an EHCP!) We have a child planning meeting scheduled with school, the council, the educational psychologist etc, but it's not until the 7 December.

My big concern now is that yesterday her teacher said something about her spending some of her playtimes sitting in the head's office "to give everyone else a break". I've been mulling that over and I'm not very happy with it as an approach!

Sorry the school are been so difficult, is there any chance of organising a teams meeting with the senco/ class teacher, before then. If they don't do anything until after the December meeting, it will be next term before she gets any meaningful suport.

I certainly wouldn't be happy about her sitting in the heads office at playtime, for me that sounds to close to punishing her for having ASD. If they've identified playtime as a trigger for challenge behaviour (possibly because of noise or lack of structure), then they should have targeted intervention at these times to help her. Definitely not just shoving her out the way, at this age they learn as much through playing as in 'lessons', and she's missing out on the opportunity to develop her social skills.

DS struggles to engage appropriately in free play, and often dose things like clawing at other kids, because in his game he's a cat. So when the class are doing that (in reception they don't have a set playtime, as it's all playbased) his TA organises more structured games like jenger or what time is it Mr wolf, and he picks a 1 or 2 of the kids to invite to join in. He still gets to socialise but copes much better when he know the rules. Would something like that help her integrate?

Educational establishments base their responses on the traditional model of behaviour management for neuro typical children - rewards and consequences. It takes a huge shift in their approach to manage children with more challenging behaviour effectively.

Are they watching to see what the specific trigger is for the aggression? Beware anyone who says it's for no apparent reason. While she may not be being provoked in the usual sense, something specific is going on there which is triggering for her.

I'm reading the Explosive Child which is a real eye opener and made a lot of sense to me. It approaches behaviour management from a completely different angle more suited to children with extremely challenging behaviour, focused on helping them acquire the skills necessary to solve problems in collaboration with you as a parent. Much of our own learning has been influenced by the traditional approach that children do well if they want to, rather than children do well if they can. If you focus on the behaviour rather than the cause of the behaviour nothing will ever change. And by 'cause' I don't mean a formal diagnosis. Our kids think differently, the school need to get into that mindset. A good senco will know this.

@Whatafustercluck

Educational establishments base their responses on the traditional model of behaviour management for neuro typical children - rewards and consequences. It takes a huge shift in their approach to manage children with more challenging behaviour effectively.

Are they watching to see what the specific trigger is for the aggression? Beware anyone who says it's for no apparent reason. While she may not be being provoked in the usual sense, something specific is going on there which is triggering for her.

I'm reading the Explosive Child which is a real eye opener and made a lot of sense to me. It approaches behaviour management from a completely different angle more suited to children with extremely challenging behaviour, focused on helping them acquire the skills necessary to solve problems in collaboration with you as a parent. Much of our own learning has been influenced by the traditional approach that children do well if they want to, rather than children do well if they can. If you focus on the behaviour rather than the cause of the behaviour nothing will ever change. And by 'cause' I don't mean a formal diagnosis. Our kids think differently, the school need to get into that mindset. A good senco will know this.

"It's for no apparent reason" was the bane of my life when she was at nursery. As I explained many times, there will have been a reason.

I've got a copy of the Explosive Child and really need to get on and read it as from what I have heard it makes a lot of sense.

I think it's clear we need to push the school!

@FourSeasonsTotalLandscaping definitely read it, I'm half way through but really hopeful it will help when I put into practice the things suggested. Good luck.