Anyone know what my legal rights are with an aggressive ASD child in mainstream?

[nikos]

After a really good start to the year at the preschool attached to our mainstream school, ds aggression has come back and he is hitting teachers and throwing chairs etc. He is 4 and his current setting has been hugely supportive of him so I feel very down about this.
I can feel within myself a feeling of 'I must sort this out so he can stay' and I think I need to stand back and let them take a bit more of the strain.
What are the legal rights for my child in this situation (there has been nothing remotely confrontational with school yet but need to know to prepare). Also what have those of you who have been there before felt was your obligation to sort.
We are quite new to this and have two older children who have never caused problems so it's really hard to see your child slap others

He could join in, if they'd thought about it... They should have set the singing group up so that some have a musical part, for example, or some sort of part that plays to their strengths. If there's only singing, and one child can't do that, it's pretty unfair anyway.

You're absolutely right Amber. I wish I'd thought of that and I will mention to them about ds could have played something. I think they would say that they were following his lead i.e. ds chose to go to his work station.
I didn't take him in today as he was very tired but I felt we were a bit excluded by default

I would appreciate some insight here. Weve been out for a meal with all three children. Ds with ASD is normally very good when out for meals and was good tonight. After the meal he reaches over to give me a cuddle which he does and then he whacks me in the face really hard and then does it again and when I restrain him, he makes attempts to head butt me.
At the moment his dad is reading him a story and throwing off punches from ds. How do we deal with this? It's really causing us all so much distress.

What I don't get though is that he was in the middle of cuddling me.

Nikos, to a young child with an ASD, people are not yet entirely 'real'. We can't imagine that hitting someone hurts them, because we can't feel it when it does. But it does make them do strange things like shout, get up, wave their arms about, make strange facial expressions...and sometimes the children use it as a scientific experiment to see what reactions happen when they do something. They honestly don't realise it hurts. Restraining him probably overloads him, which is why he's trying to headbutt you to get you to stop it. He just hasn't put together the he-hits-you-it-hurts-you-you-restrain-him sequence properly yet. Faulty filing in the brain.

The less you react, and the quicker you can say a firm NO and remove him to something he won't like, I think the quicker he'll realise that it's a bad thing that gets him no interesting scientific conclusions or entertainment value.

I would never, ever recommend the following action, but it was interesting all the same to see one lad with an ASD who was always pulling a lad's hair, despite the lad and parents doing everything to get him to stop. What worked was the other lad pulling his hair in revenge. All of a sudden he realised it hurt.

Strangely, this morning ds came into bed with us and pressed on my stomach by accident as he was coming in. I let out an ooww and he said sorry (seemed genuine). Since then when he has been slapping this morning, we have just said an exaggerated ooww and he has stopped and said sorry.
That would fit in with him not realising before that it hurts people.

Nikos, yes, the same thing works with training puppies. If they play-bite a little too hard, their mum will let out an exaggerated yelp to explain when they need to stop. I'm not exactly comparing us to puppies, but it's a similar principle . So I think you've maybe found an answer.

Ds has chicken pox!!! Funnily enough when I spoke with his play therapist by phone about his deterioration in behaviour, the first thing she said was 'Is he coming down with anything'. He had it very mildly when he was 1, the last in our line of three to get it. And my nephew was visiting 2 weeks ago and he had it but I thought mine would all be immune.
Wonder if this has been the cause of all the recent behaviour? Honestly, I'll get a job with Scotland Yard at the end of all this

Hi I'm in the same situation with my ds in reception. I think it is really important for the school to look at the environment of the classroom, lighting, over stimulating displays, too much teacher talk,not enough visual cues,and as you say loud noises etc My ds was running out of class and hiding. It turned out it was at tidy up time when the teacher put on loud music to encourage the children to tidy up quickly.
We are trying to get a quiet withdrawal area set up for him but this is proving difficult due to there being a lack of space. We don't have a statement yet and I too feel like I should be trying to sort things out for them as they don't have support. I feel awkward and demanding asking them to make these changes when there isn't any funding attached to him yet but that's inclusion.
We have asked for reward strategies to be put in place and he is coming home with lots of stickers and going to the head's office.
With regards to "sorting" I am just trying to make sure all the outside agencies are working together, trying to ensure there is support for the school with regards to helpful strategies and making sure there is enough professional advice to support a statement.