Are my son's school handling this right? I think not.

[frazzledazzle]

My ds1 is 6 and has asd.Twice this week he has been sent out of class for 'bad' behaviour.

The first instance was in p.e. The children were practising for sports day and my ds didn't win so he had a bit of a meltdown and got angry with the winners and so was made to stand outside the lesson.

The 2nd time they were handling snails and he said he wanted to kill them and eat them.He wouldn't really do this he was just cross because they wouldn't come out of their shells and he said they were biting him.

I have no problem with teachers disciplining my ds,but when the bad behaviour is due to him not being able to handle his feelings or express himself properly I think it should be handled differently.

I want to discuss this with his teacher later today,do you think I have grounds to be a little concerned over his teatment? Or am I being oversensitive?

He doesn't have any help in the classroom atm as they say he is coping but I've never fully trusted this judgement.

Its a tough one.

Dd1 is the same age and has Aspergers, she can get very upset if she doesn't win, her teacher will remove her from the room to calm her down rather than disciplin her. I am happy for them to do this as it causes less disruption to the class and her class mates don't get to see her whilst she's having a meltdown. Dd1 is happy to be removed because it gives her time to sort herself out and think about the bigger picture.

I think sending him out of the room for saying he wanted to kill the snails is a little harsh though.

I agree with Marne.

Taking a child out of the room so that they can calm down is IMO a good thing. My only concern would be that if your ds starts to see leaving the room as a punishment.

Ideally the school should be helping him to get to the point where he recognises that he's becoming angry and teaching him to remove himself from the situation so that he can calm himself down. If he thinks of going out as a punishment then it's going to be harder to do this.

The snails incident sounds a little harsh. After all, in some countries they do kill and eat snails.

Does the class have a TA or is it just the teacher?

I think I had better clarify with the teacher why he is being removed I assumed it was a punishment as everyone who misbehaves gets sent out.It never occurred to me it may be to let him calm down.

With regards to the p.e incident I think he would've handled it much better if they explained to him beforehand that they were doing something competitive and then let him know an appropriate response to losing.

Is it unreasonable to expect them to prepare him this way? I was going to ask the teacher to try this way next time,how is he going to learn if he just gets removed from a situation?

There is a TA in the class.

frazzle- i think in an ideal world a teacher would explain to him that there was going to be a competitive game but sadly its hard for other people (who don't understand ASD) to remember that a child may react badly to certain things.

Talk to the teacher and hopefully next time she will prepare him.

Its so hard to know what to do for the best, should people adjust things to fit in with a child to save melt downs? or should the child be treated the same as the other children and hope that in time he will adjust and do what is expected of him? I find this hard with my dd's (more dd1) as we have spent years tip toeing around her and trying to make her life easier but now i am begining to think 'maybe i have done the wrong thing' as life isn't like that and she's going to come up against things/situations that will upset her (not winning being one of them).

We are trying to teach dd1 that winning is'nt the be all and end all, although its good to win its also just as fun taking part. We have been trying to get dd1 over this since she started school, she's now six and will now just about handle someone else winning (as long as she can win sometimes).

Talk to the teacher, tell them its fine for him to be removed if he needs quite time to calm down but your ds needs to know that its to calm down (not a punishment), also ask them to prepare him before hand if there is going to be a competitive game.

Fuckety fuck.

DS (5) has been excluded again. The school cannot cope with his violent behaviour . He has pretty much full time 1:1 support at the moment and still isn't coping.

Sorry, that was supposed to be a totally new post! Dont know what happened. Didnt mean to crash your thread!