phoebe

My DS is like this with his money also - concerns me really it slips through his hands like water. He will like to buy things for other people, like recently on holiday and grandad gave him spending money - his first thought was to go buy Grandad a present with it - which he did!! Conversely he is not good at sharing really at all?? It seems to me that he just enjoys sepnding money no matter what he is spending it on - himself or others, what a worry for the future. It doesn't grow on trees

hooooooooooraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay -that is great. You sound so well pleased as well. WEll done you <'>

DS definintely doesn't understand sarcasm at the moment - glad to hear that they may get there though!

No chance anyone is getting off the hook here - too much is at stake. We will go all the way if necessary. Seem to be meeeting a few brick walls and a lot of procrastination in the meantime though! Thank you for your replies. Phoebe

Hi Fletts, I just wanted to add my welcome to you <'> and to agree with the other's who have posted above. there is a difference though, between things getting on top of us and really not being able to bounce back. I was forced to admit this a couple of years ago and went to the doctors. I am a fighter and a survivor, but sometimes you just need a little extra help. He suggested anti depressants and couselling and I was really concerned that since nothing about my life would basically change, that I would become psychologically dependent on taking a-d's. I took them for just over a year and stopped in July. I wish I had sought help sooner, even though it was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. If you really think you are depressed, please ask for help, it need only be a short term "helping hand". If I find myself feeling like that again, I would not hesitate to ask again. In the meantime, I have also found this forum, which to me is like a support group but better. You can visit as often as you like. You will always find people who know what you are going through. Sometimes you will want to post, other times you just read - I am so glad I found it!! WELCOME - look forward to reading your posts. Phoebe

Thank you all for your replies and suggestions. We are currently at the proposed statement bit of the statutory assessment, so meetings with the school and written reports are already ongoing and in full swing. He has been to school today and did quite well until he was asked to have another go at a piece of work which he felt he had already done. Then he lost it again. Sadly and inexcusably, he punched his teacher in the face. He was removed from the classroom by controlled restraint and taken to the quiet room. Such a worrying time. The school does not have a breakfast club, but he has always happily gone to school. The problems we are going through at the moment....... I think he is struggling to understand some of the work and thinks he cant do it, then wont try and refuses. If I sit with him (as I did Last night after school) and do it 1-1 after a few ups and downs and a lot of positive reinforcement, he can manage. He does tend to rush things and not read the question through and does not appreciate any effort at mediation. This does lead to him making mistakes and then he loses all confidence in his ability, calls himself stupid, headbangs. You are spot on, all of you who have said that this behaviour is about his not being able to cope with the way he is currently being schooled, but I do not know what else I can do. Thanks again for all your responses, I thought I should post a bit of an update too. Love Phoebe

Can anyone help me out here. DS is currently in mainstream and we have been going through the statementing procedure..........the proposed statement allows for 10 hours 1-1 and after meeting with the school, we both returned the forms, reflecting a request that DS be allowed to continue his education at said mainstream but in the "resourced provision." At the same time, we were given the impression by the school that DS would in fact not be treated any differently and that they are already making provision for him (although, apart from careful selection of his teacher and peer group every year, this is mainly of the firefighting kind). So we requested a meeting with the LEA to firm up the wording and to gain their understanding of what this statement would provide ....etc .....etc. Having not heard anything for the past 2 weeks I called them to see about this meeting and during the conversation I said that DS was having a really tough time of it at the moment (see other recent posts) and that apart from anything else, we didn't think that 10 hours was going to be enough for him. I didn't expect her to discuss this or really want her to ( that is the purpose of requesting to see them). Anyway, she said that since he was being considered for the resourced provision (RP), if he were to be accepted, it would be like him going to a special school and as such, statement's weren't provided as the funding was from a different source, so it would become irrelevant how many hours were in the proposed statement. So........ can anyone shed any light on this statement from the LEA? Is there a time scale by which they have to have conducted this meeting that we requested to go over the proposed statement? Doesn't there seem to be a contradiction between the schools comments that they will not in fact do anything differently and the leas statement that being in the RP would be like him being in a special school? Any tips from anyone who has a child within a RP in a mainstream primary? Thank you - sorry for length of post!! Phoebe

He is generally happier and more setlled at home, but then he only has Me, dad and his little sister here. He has always tried to dictate the way that things happen and to bend everything to his rules, both at home and at school. We are currently going through the statementing procdure and have been offered 10 hours 1 to 1. we have requested a meeting with the lea because we think he needs more and because it needs to be tightened up as the school think they will just carry on giving him the support which he currently gets?!??????? He is also a clever lad and I feel quite positive that we have been able to get him a statement at all, but am so worried about his future and secondary school. Having a why me moment - sorry.

Didn't mean that to sound ungrateful - at least there was something to make me smile today. I could look at him all day!! Why doesn't he love me?!! Thanks BD.

Help Another bad day. Dont know what to do or how to handle him. All the usual consequences are being met with defiance and "WHATEVER". Dont know what has got into him. Why is he being so oppositional? What is going through his head? Why cant I help? What can I do to get through to him? He now tells me he is going to make himself sick every night so that I cant take him to school the next day. Had to walk home without him and just hope he followed tonight He is 8 and had to cross some roads by himself, but ................what am I supposed to do? Feel sick.

.........of course i am not sure about the disappearing ladies bottom!! Something a bit more rock DJ would be more appropriate for my sensitive feminine values!!!!!

or......if you could give me some links for some good places to look, I could try again myself. Every time I try, I get "Sorry, but the URL you entered for your avatar was incorrectly formatted or the link is not valid." Any ideas?

cool thanks. X

Me too, please. I have read the posts in the techy corner about how to do this yourself and cant seem to get it to work for me. Love the ones that dance! Love Robbie Williams too!! Any Chance - please, pretty please. XX

My DS does this also, it started when he was very young. Before he could communicate at all and when he was stilll crawling. He would repeatedly bang his head on the floor even in the kitchen and would graze/bruise himself in the process. We asked around about it at the time (it was way before diagnosis) but were not given much help or advice and assumed it was frustration and that it would stop when he could communicate his feelings. He is 8 now and hasn't actually headbanged for about 5 years. Now though, he will punch himself in the head at times of high stress/frustration/emotional strain. It is upsetting to see and I hate it when he does it. Unfortunately it is a behaviour my dd can be seen copying sometimes - to my horror. I dont think there is anything we can do about it except what we do now and that is to be supportive and loving. To keep learning about DS and what makes him the way he is. To try to teach him strategies for when he is stressed and to reinforce the fact that he could really hurt himself and he is too precious to us for us to want that to happen. <'> <'> Take care of you X

OOOOOEEEERRRRRRR YESSSSS!

<'> <'> <'> <'> Well done you, and thank heavens for small mercies in the form of local angels! Similar thing happened to me the other day too - it was over a paper decoration in a restaurant. He wanted another one, I told him that he couldn't keep going and asking for stuff and that the people were busy......he asked could he just get this one, I said no that he wasn't to etc etc. Next thing I know, he is holding 3 more in his hand and saying "see they gave me three anywaaaaaay." Paper decorations are not the issue!!! I kept asking why I hadn't just let him ask for one!!! From the histrionics that followed, it surely wasn't worth the public spectacle or the bruises....... I hope you are feeling a bit better now and that you know we are all out here to listen and try to help in any way Take care of you X

Thanks for all your replies folks. We had an inset day following the restraint and now have a week off for half term, so ......if the school does have anything to say, it will be after half term now. We are going away, so I will be just trying to make the most of it and hope that DS' oppositional behaviour lately has been because he has been stressed about the holiday, and that when he gets there, he will enjoy it! During half term, the appointment with the LEA to discuss our proposed statement (10 hours) should arrive, so we will have plenty to say at that meeting!! Onwards and upwards!! Thanks again Phoebe

Dont know, maybe I jumped in more quick because I know him better and I could see where it was going. Maybe I was too quick. I wasn't angry in myself, it wasn't about that, it was about preventing him from causing more damage. I never know what to do in school and where they expect their discipline to end and for mine to take over. They did ask me if I was allright after (of course I was ready to cry and full of the emotions of it) and they thanked me for "coming in and for my help." It is just so bl****y difficult!! I will talk to them because I think it would be better if when I get there, they would explain to me what has happened and what they expect of DS before he goes (tidy up/ whatever) and then leave me to deal with it rather than having 3 adults on to him.

We are having a right royal time of it at the moment. DS is oppositional to everything it seems. Everything is a battle of wills, it is so draining. We are also getting a lot of swearing and an increase in meltdowns. Today, I was called into school because Ds had totally lost it. His classmates had been removed for their safety and he had been escorted to the EBD room, not of his own choice. (often he will go there and use it for calming down or venting off. He had thrown around furniture and was intent on causing damage. Each time we thought we had got past the anger, it flared up again. He got out of the EBD room and went to his classroom (by now it was after school hours) and he was off on one again, trying to break stuff in the class. I didn't want anything else to get broken and so I physically restrained him on the floor until he was exhausted. This in front of two of the staff. This is only the second time I have ever done this and never before in school. I feel really miserable. Anyone help?

A new challenge is raising its head and I wonder if amyone has been through it or can offer any advice? DS has always been a great eater, he is health conscious about his food, but there are a few things that are beginning to worry me. He will not have school lunch (understandable)! so I send him with packed lunch every day. It is really difficult to know what to put in it because he has different fads. Both yesterday and the day before, he came home without having eaten any lunch. Yesterday, he didn't even drink the carton of juice. I try to put things in that he will eat and I ask him to chose from the "goody box" his extras, but he still will not eat someimes. Last year, he was weeing a lot and washing his hands a lot and I went to the doc about it because his hands were raw. The doc tested his wee, but also advised that he limit his drinks to 5 during the school day. (he only ever drinks water or milk anyway). This has helped with the wee problem and the hand washing, but his take on it all was to STOP DRINKING at school. We have tried various methods of encouragement/monitoring his drink, but he now basically believes he is doing the right thing by not drinking. Back with the food. He reads the information on packaging and if he believes the salt or fat content to be too high, he will not eat that thing anymore - less and less things are on his menu. I cook from scratch a lot, and I have tried to explain to him about balancing a diet and that all things are ok in moderation...... Also, if he is doing his screen time or wants to watch his fave show, he will ignore all bodily needs to do so. This includes eating and drinking. If allowed to, he would have missed his dinner last night too, but I said that if he didn't come eat, there would be no more TV for the rest of the day, and he came. I dont want to start making an issue of food and I dont want him to get the wrong message as with the drinks, but I am getting increasingly concerned that he is "controlling" himself and would like to try to nip it in the bud. Anyone been here? Phoebe

mine too - it has improved a bit with age, but sorry no advice!

Thank you for your replies. I am feeling a bit less panicky now and have requested a meeting with the lea to discuss the proposed statement. I had never seen a statement before and have no experience of what it should include, also the school seem to think that they dont need to provide any extra support. These issues we need to clarify and that is why I have asked for the meeting. My son doesnt need SALT or ocupational therapy or any very specific help that you would expect an outside agency to come in and provide, his needs are totally around interpretting and fitting into the world, about learning about social interaction and how he affects the way other people are towards him, about accepting the hierarchy of society, about not following his own agenda, about listening to the work set and at least trrying to do it, not changing it to what he wants to do, about anger management...... I could go on!!!! What I dont know is how I can get this support for him, or how I can make the school/LEA provide the right opportunities within the 10 hours per week that they have allowed. The proposed statement, I fear will make no difference at all to how he is educated. Mother in need, if these are the sort of issues for which you have gained provision within your statement, then yes, please, please let me have a look at it.I will send my address by PM.

WOAH......................just read all of this , dont know how I missed it before. Welcome to the forum, you will find it a useful resource as well as a way of keeping a bit sane!! So many of the things in your post are familiar to me and to many of us . Reading it makes me want to . It will get better. You have done so well so far by doing what you instinctively knew was the right thing to do. I am worried about your apparent isolation and the ever decreasing spiral that comes after diagnosis. It is so important to find people you can talk to. Glad you found the forum. Also, though, do try the HELP course and do try to find a support group locally. Behaviour management is such a difficult issue. I can well remember trying /trialling allsorts of different BM techniques, both at home and at school. Before diagnosis and even periodically afterwards, you still hold in your head the traditional view of he is a child and he just SHOULD do whatever without question. The reality for our children is that they do not hold any preconceptions about the hierarchy of society or know any of the rules of social etiquette. Also, you do have to evolve the system that you decide on regularly to keep it fresh. Visual timetables and charts will definitely help, but the key is to find something that is important to your child. Something that is his "key". Is there anything that he is obsessed with? With DS, it is his screen time (any gaming media). It could be television time though, anything that is impoortant to him. You say that he is bright, with a good vocab, this helps. As someone else said, you need to make small changes. When our son was the same age as yours is now, we had all the same problems as you describe. We made charts for everything and had a reward system, between home and school that we linked into his screen time. Also, we stopped all squash and fizzies. (this began as a punishment and made such a difference during the week that I have never been inclined to go back to allowing them). We were recommended to follow a system called 123magic (from a book of that name) which is behaviour management technique for not only stopping the behaviour that you dont want to see, but for encouraging behaviour that you do want to see. He is 8 1/2 now and we are just going through the statementing process at school, but we have learned so much about him. I really got to the stage where I was totally exhausted by it all and I did not feel at all close to him. He was just a huge millstone. I was being judged by everyone as a bad parent. It gets you down. Diagnose and dump is so difficult, but in the end, you are the only person who will learn to know your son the best and along the way on this journey there are so many good things that will happen. With each of our children, I believe there is a "list" of things that we would like to change. It has some things on it that are more of a priority than others. Keep chipping away and one day you will realise that you are working on the things that were much less a priority a few months ago. My son will now get himself washed and dressed for school (previously a huge problem) and will put away his bookbag and clear out his packed lunch bag after school. If I want him to do something, anything, I need to give him a reason to do it. This reason is usually a consequence of something that will happen to him if he doesn't do it. He is limitted to 1 hours screentime per day. If he gets a full house at school, he gets an extra 20 minutes, but 1 hour 20 is the maximum. If he is doing something that we want to stop, we count that's 1, thats 2....if he gets to 3 he loses 10 minutes screen time. Either from that day or the next days. Similarly, he will refuse to do stuff if it is not on his agenda and we will count him to get him to do it. He doesn't like it much, but we utilise his "key" to control his behaviour. WE had tried explaining why we want him to do something or why he needed to stop doing something, but for the most part our reasons arent important enough to him to make any difference. At the same time, we try to help him to organise himself and to try to prioritise by using the charts and we try to teach him about the world and social situations by using social stories. It is just a case of keeping chipping away. Always there are new and different challenges cropping up and sometimes, something that he has previously done before he totally takes against for no apparent reason. We try to show him understanding and patience and most of all love. TAKE CARE OF YOU. Phoebe

Poor you, I can imagine exactly how you felt. Recently, I was given an IEP for my daughter by her nursery school. I was so shocked. It was about social interaction and wanting to follow her own agenda. I was so shocked, she is so totally different from DS and I have never even considered that she might be on the spectrum. I have been through all sorts of public dressing downs and humiliations when out with DS and can only just cope with that most of the time. The very thought that history might repeat itself is too much to contemplate. I can totally identify with your response ....... <'> <'> <'> <'> I am sure you will talk to DS2 about it - you probably have already. I really hope that you are feeling a bit more in control now. Wish there was an emoticon for giving an "up yours" to all those judgemental people who haven't got a clue!!!! Take care of you Phoebe