DS with AS excluded today

[unfitmother]

DS was sent home with a letter saying he was excluded tomorrow for hitting a child across the face with a ruler.
He said the kid tried to rip up his work and (understandably) he couldn't cope with it.
I'm torn between and

does he have a statement? is this his first exclusion?

Yes he does have a statement, had it since Yr 1. He has just started High school, in Yr 7.
Yes, this is his first exclusion. I met the SENCO last week ago told me all was well!

you should have a meeting with the head arranged for when he starts back and at this meeting i would request an emergency review as he obvously needs more support to prevent this from happening again!

The exclusion letter doesn't invite us in at all!
We'll be requesting a meeting though!
DH is furious and want to appeal, I don't know what to think.

check its a formal exclusion because if it is then you should have a meeting for the morning he is due back at school. this is standard.
My DS has ASD and was excluded quite a few times (he is 8 was 6 and 7 when excluded!)
The school have to be very careful as excluding a child for behaviour that can be attributed to his AS is discrimintation .
Do you think the way your son reacted was due to his AS? Would a NT child act the same way?

It's a formal exclusion, DH checked and has come with a very formal letter stating that DS cannot be 'present in a public place in school hours during the exclusion'!
I do think that his AS contributed to his reaction.

Thats really unfair. Exclusions for As children only worsen the problem. And I think that not allowing him in public places is a bit over the top. I know this is the general rule for behaviour exclusions in NT children but this should be a different case entirely. Sorry i can't help just felt mad for you and wanted to rant!!

ACE (Action centre in education) have an exclusion helpline and information sheets. www.ace-ed.org.uk just incase it is helpful.

What should be done then? It's just not acceptable to have kids attacking other kids, whatever the issue. Also everyone needs to learn how to behave in public situations.

I'm not asking to stir (SALT in this field) but just really concerned about addressing 6everyone's^ needs fairly.

i think exclusions for NT children work as a punishment but children with AS just do not understand the concept of exclusion. I think this highlights that the child needs more support and help with anger management, I think that whilst exclusions work with NT children to help change the behaviour with children on the spectrum all exclusions do is label the children as naughty and damage self esteem which can actually have a snowball effect on their behaviour as they feel rejected by the school.

What's the solution then?
What do you think schools shoud do B?

my son was excluded lots when he attended mainstream because the support and flexibility he needed was not there.
he has for the last 3 months been attending a specialist school which uses various strategies to combat/work with his needs and behaviour.
If he is getting angry he can go to a soft room for time out or he gets taken for a run outside or has a bounce on the large trampoline till he feels calm. He has a schedule to follow which details waht will happen when. He uses a visual chart so he can plot how angry/calm he is feeling. he has full time one to one support from a TA who knows him well enough to recognise when he may find things difficult and will divert him away from anything that she feels he wont cope with.
Personnally for my son he was labelled as the naughty child in mainstream school and so when he got angry the teachers concentrated on removing him which enforced the other childrens views that he was naughty, My DSs behaviour became uncontrollable as he never had a chance to fully calm down after incidences.

I dont know what the answer is. For my son the answer was a smaller more specialised setting, for alot of ASD children who can function in MS its about using strategies and rewards that they are able to access and gaining a deeper understanding of them and thier condition.

oh no feel really for you and your family unfitmother.

my first thought was after reading through was how is a child who is statemented and i presume has a TA in a situation where another child can rip up his work,why was this allowed to happen?

my DS would probably have done the same thing had he still been in mainstream,i agree with bonkerz that you need to request an emergency review and a meeting to see how this could have happened.

i agree with moondog as well that its not acceptable behaviour BUT it is more than likely that it is because of his AS that he reacted this way.

my DS is also in a special school,the same as bonkerz DS and i agree that this is the only thing that worked with him,small class,there are about 6 in his and 3 members of staff and they are able to spot the "rumbling" stage where a child with an ASD is about to blow but surely his TA should be able to spot that as well,i would be asking the head why he was in this situation in the first place.

sorry cant be more help but i sympathise greatly with you.

I had a good talk with the SENCO today, DS is absoltely fixated on the perceived injustice of his punishment, to the detriment of him reflecting on his crime.
I did a social story with him tonight but he just doesn't get it.
DH is taking him in tomorrow, where they will be met by the SENCO.
I have so many concerns, it's exhausting!

Unfit,I would keep on reading the social story to him regularly.
Bonkerz you said
'my son was excluded lots when he attended mainstream because the support and flexibility he needed was not there'.

That's entirely the point.M/s by definition can often be unsuitable for this reason.

I am noticing worrying trend (not suggesting you people btw) to ascribing too much 'bad' behaviour to ASD. Most peopel, with correct instruction can quickly learn what is and isn't accaptable.

When I started work as a salt 15 years ago, there was 1 person in my whole area who had a diagnosis of AS. Now, every other person seems to.

Have lots of experience of DS (who has AS) being excluded from ms school for hurting others (although in his case at the moment he is 9 so in junior school). As Bonkerz says temporary exclusions are no use whatsoever to AS children in teaching them appropriate behaviour and only serve to show the affected person or their parent/carer that the school takes a serious view of their actions. But this is in an NT context - my DS sees exclusion as a bit of a treat as he gets to spend time at home with me or his Dad.

As Jenk has said if he has support from a TA in school they should have been there to stop this situation occuring. But obviously he may not have full time support and will need reinforcement of the social story at school too as it will be more contextually relevant to him. A review would be useful too just so you can ask all your questions and seek reassurance that your DS will be supported to continue his learning with them. I would also casually drop in that his behaviour was obviously a reaction to the anxiety he was feeling and a completely to be expected reaction from an AS child and as such exclusion in this case is contrary to the provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act. Make sure that the incident has been investigated properly as well - if the other child was threatening to rip up his work then this should also have some consequence that your DS is aware of - this could help him to come to terms with some of the feelings of injustice.

As this is the first time the has happened and he is now in Y7 then it says a lot for his self control and how well he copes at school. His stress levels must have been very high for him to react like this and the school need to be aware of that too.

There are other alternatives to exclusion that more enlightened schools use, for example in my school (am a TA working with an EBD poss ASD child) we use seclusion to great effect. The child still comes to school and does work but does it in a room apart from all other children. It serves to show the child that the school finds their behaviour unacceptable but is not rejecting them for it.

Seclusion sounds like a reasonable middle ground. My ds got excluded twice in year 1 for hitting/throwing things. It was pointless as he had no idea what was going on and not just because he has ASD but also because he was only 5. I agree that children can't be allowed to be violent without consequence but exclusion makes no sense to me, a really badly behaved child with no SN who gets expelled probably wouldn't want to be in school anyway and would see it as a bonus!

Sorry for you and your son Unfitmother - I hope he can get passed this blip. Like wedgiesmum say to get to Y7 without this happening sooner says a lot for how well he copes.

Never knew about restriction on being 'present in a public place in school hours during the exclusion'.
Surely it's unreasonable to expect someone to stay at home to supervise a DC for 6 hours per day at a moment's notice?

Agree also that no point in exclusion if kid effectively being rewarded for behaviour as he wants to be home.
Happens a lot with 'time out' too.Most kids delighted to leave the class.

This is wrong just wrong he so should not have been excluded, i would park myself outside the heads office all day with a loud stereo playing the ian dury track spasticus autisticus wich ian did for the 1981 united nations year of the disabled becuase it was more of a plan to patronise the disabled. the bbc wouldnt play the song from fear of offending people! it has to be the special needs anthem nearly 3o years on. i know of an autistic boy who was praised by the school teacher for hitting a n.t. kid because it was a sighn the boy was learning to stand up for himself.

Moondog, perhaps it's being identified better. You sound a bit like my ex m-i-l "it wasn't around in my day etc. etc.'

SALTs round here don't dx. The people(psychiatrists) here that dx do a very long, thorough process to dx ASD and it's not (here) a random 'oh, it must be AS' thing. From ASD forums I go on, I know that my area is not unusual in that.

"I am noticing worrying trend (not suggesting you people btw) to ascribing too much 'bad' behaviour to ASD. Most peopel, with correct instruction can quickly learn what is and isn't accaptable." ASD does, by definition, lead to behaviour that is outside the norm, because actually people with autism often do not learn quickly and certainly do not learn instinctively and need to be taught again and again. I found your post a bit as you seem to be implying that a) ASD is used for an excuse and b) those with ASD who aren't behaving haven't been taught to, which is quite soul-destroying to those who teach and teach and re-teach quite basic skills but still don't (for some bizarre reason) have the skill to eradicate the effects of the autism.

I do agree that correct behaviour needs to be taught and that violent behaviour needs addressing but please respect how difficult it is for some autistic/ ASD children to learn. If you saw the input that my lad has got for years and years from me and from every possible agency, you'd see that although he's gone from being a biting, spitting, clawing animal-like child, he's certainly not 'quickly' learned to be some perfect child. And that's not about lack of correct instruction.

Unfit mother, hope things sort out. Y7 is tough and very often things do improve as they move up the school.

I think the schools need to rethink of ways to handle instances like this, as a child with special needs is not going to look at a days exclusion as punishment but just a day off school, so when they want another day off it might unfortunately happen again for no reason, just to get the day off, my son is 5 with special needs and he is always tries to say he feels sick to try and come home, anyway maybe they should sit the 2 in a room made to apologise to each other, then sit and do an activity together whilst supervised, to show its better to try and get along together, if this other child is in yr 7 and tried ripping up the work, then they should know better at that age.

Yup, when younger we're REALLY slow learners for some things (not everything), and even if we do learn something really well, put us under a bit of pressure and all the filing on "what to do and how to behave really nicely" goes missing again.

Sending us home for it does absolutely nothing whatsoever other than lead us to think the world is a very very stressful, painful and unfair place that wants to disrupt our routine even more and make it even scarier for us.

The school should have had a cunning plan already in place - safe zone for him to be in to calm down, social story to work through what happened and re-explain why it is wrong, proper apology from him, take expert advice, work with child parent and expert to see if the plan for that child needs amending.

Removing them from a situation where they or the other child is unsafe is acceptable if it's done in a sensible and temporary way. A formal exclusion that teaches them nothing and makes them even more stressed out is counterproductive.

People don't realise how much a piece of work or an object means to us. For someone to try to rip up or damage our work, it's worse than if they'd tried to hit one of our relatives, to be honest. Even dh at his age will go into a complete shutdown and panic if one of his pages of his book gets damaged by someone - he just cannot cope with it at all, and he's a businessman! How are we expecting a child to cope? Clearly at our age we don't belt people with a ruler (not many of us do, tbh) but a young child may well react in a very extreme way because their priorities for what's important are absolutely not NT priorities.

So yes, he needs to learn that there is no violence allowed, but the school needs to make it very safe for him by ensuring no child is in a position to try to destroy his work. And if it does happen, he needs to learn safe coping strategies - including plenty of time to grieve and rage safely over the damage to his things.