Embarrassed - and worried - by something my ASD 6 year old said to classmate

[LovedFedAndNoonesDead]

Please be kind; although it’s my first time posting on the SEN board I’ve been on MN for at least 10 years.

I have 6 1/2 year old twin boys who are in Y1 (summer born, premature, twins and boys so decision to delay school until CSA was an easy one) one with an ASD diagnosis who has fixations on specific subjects or repetitive and inappropriate use of certain words. This currently includes a lot of inappropriate references to “poo” and “diarrhoea” in general conversation which we are trying to guide him away from explaining its not a nice thing to talk about and definitely not nice to use when talking about other people (for example, he will often say someone is pooing themselves or has diarrhoea; he will say things like “mummy is going to poo herself at work today” or “the teachers at school give us diarrhoea to eat for lunch”).

Anyway, I’ve picked him up from school today and he’s in a bad mood (for various reasons) because of various things that have happened at school. As we were getting into the car, a mum from their class has stopped to speak to me and explained that DS1 has told her son his skin is the colour of poo - the issue here is this child is mixed race and has dark skin tones; the mother is upset with what DS1 has said to her child and I got the feeling thinks he has said it with racist intent.

When I spoke to DS1 about it on the way home, he explained that the child said sheep are stupid (DS1 has a toy sheep and says it’s his best friend, he makes up lots of stories about his sheep and, whenever we’re out and he sees sheep in a field, and that’s a lot as we live semi rurally, he says they’re his sheep’s cousins/family.) so, in retaliation, he replied along the lines of “well your skin looks like poo”. He was lashing out in response to the other child upsetting him with what he said about sheep.

DH and I have had another chat with him together to explain why being unkind about people’s physical appearance is not acceptable in the same way that he shouldn’t comment on someone’s size or their intellect. We’ve told him he needs to apologise to the other child and to draw him a card to say sorry (this is something the school try doing when children are unkind to each other so it’s a concept he understands).

I know there will be people who will reply that there must be another reason behind him picking that aspect of the child’s appearance to be unkind about but there really isn’t, other than DS1 being fixated on poo and lacking the empathy to understand the effects of what he said. I’m worried though that this is going to become an issue, especially with this mum and that she won’t realise his intent wasn’t innocent.

I can understand why you are worried, but you have spoken to DS and you are getting him to apologise. I would also apologise to the mother and explain you have spoken to DS. I would also speak to the school so they can keep an eye. I would try not to borrow worries from tomorrow that may not happen.

I think Coffee is wise. You've handled it in the right way and ultimately it does not really matter what his reasoning for choosing that specific retaliation was, at least it probably won't matter to the child or mother, so I would not worry about it too much other than the things you have done already. Apologise and explain to DS about appearance comments being hurtful and that's all it needs at this stage.

DS2 has gone through a few of these "taboo obsessions" - when he was going through his poo stage at a similar age to your DS, he tried to do a poo in the playground a few weeks before he was about to go up to "real" school. I was absolutely mortified and worried they were going to expel him before he had even started! The phase disappeared, presumably when he had satisfied his own sense of what exactly are the social boundaries around poo. I don't think there's anything at all I could have done to prevent it or make it end any faster.