sylvm

Thank you both of you for your replies. Mel – sanctions wise, we have tried various things including no computer/TV time. There is no issue with this from her because afterwards she is horrified at her behaviour. In fact, she begs me to take the computer out her bedroom, or to phone the police etc. We have always followed through on punishments. We do need to draw up a list of acceptable/non acceptable behaviours and sanctions with her. However, the thing is she does know the behaviour is unacceptable and the rest of the time she is a well behaved girl – it is almost like she has 2 personalities. She says she doesn’t know why she does it. I think she is unable to recognise what she is feeling and it kind of explodes. That is why I do not think calling the police will achieve anything. Yes, it will frighten her but I don’t think it will stop it happening. Sally – she is higher functioning. I suspect you are probably right and there are other families who are affected and feel isolated. Social Services have done an assessment following being notified by the mental health unit (this apparently is a legal requirement). This was a general assessment to check there were no safeguarding issues (which there weren’t). I raised the behaviour issue with the social worker and gave her examples of the incidents. She initially said they sounded like typical ASD outbursts but when her written report came back she said it was typical teenage behaviour!! It is my feeling the social worker was “got at” by the unit at daughter’s pre discharge meeting where we were left sitting outside while the professionals had a preliminary discussion without us. One of the recommendations made by the social worker was intervention by the targeted youth team. I am not sure what that will involve and whether it will be any use. I do not think we would get Direct Payments for her based on our income whilst she is under 18, although on her income at 18 I will definitely look into it. She is almost 17 and children’s and adult social services are so separate here that I think it would be a wasted exercise to go through an assessment now, to be redone this time next year. I would be very happy for daughter to be on medication for anxiety but the mental health unit have not gone down that path. I suspect (hope) it may be different now we have been referred back to CAMHS. I do believe she didn’t have outbursts whilst she was in the unit. I think that it was because she was holding it all in and only relaxed totally when she was with us. Thank you for the examples you gave about your son. I do think that we have probably “lost our way” a bit. I think we are giving more sensory input than she can cope with when she is already getting in a state. We need to go back to what we used to do which was similar to your son going to his room to calm down. Daughter struggled with mainstream school (never had a statement – we were told she wasn’t “bad enough”.) With hindsight, I wish we had just gone for it ourselves. She ended up, coming out of school June 2012 to be home educated as she just wasn’t coping. However, the anxiety just continued to get worse until she was eventually admitted to the mental health unit. Although she has been discharged, she will continue to attend the education centre which is on the same site until next summer. The Head is talking about her sitting 1 IGCSE plus a functional exam in Maths next year, so she obviously has huge holes in her education. I do not think she will cope with more than supported learning. I have been looking at the local colleges which do some highly thought of supported courses which would hopefully build her confidence and skills and enable her to move on to a mainstream course at some point. Again, both of you, thank you for your replies.

My daughter is 16 and ASD. She is also dyspraxic and has severe anxiety which have led to physical symptoms. This culminated earlier in the year with her being admitted to the local adolescent mental health unit. She coped here surprisingly well. Her physical symptoms have reduced and she has now been discharged. Their view is that we have taken on the role of "carers" for her ie. not encouraged her independence. I would dispute this - the fact is that she didn't fit in with neuro typical young people and was badly bullied at school and we have found over the years that she has better been able to access "special needs activities". Anyway, the main reason she does not do as much as she might in terms of stuff around the house etc, is that she has always been very volatile and likely to lash out. This usually happens if she is under pressure ie. when you are trying to show her how to do new things or when she doesn't understand things (I feel there is a processing problem involved). I have raised this issue with the unit a number of times. They said that they had not seen any evidence of this behaviour and initially put it down to the mother/daughter teen dynamic. I dispute this as it also happens with my husband. It is just I am around more. Anyway, we have had a lot of violent incidents since she became a day patient and these are continuing. The mental health team say I should phone the police but I do not see the point in doing this. By the time the police come, she will be a just a vulnerable little girl sobbing her heart out and absolutely terrified. However, equally I know I cannot carry on like this. There are times when I really feel I do not want her to be at home. I can't spend the rest of my life under fear of being hit. I have just had another episode which started because she was agitated by making her sandwich for her lunch tomorrow and feel I am close to reaching rock bottom. We had a visit from a social worker while daughter was in the unit and are supposed to be having "parenting support" - not sure what that will entail but don't feel terribly optimistic. If anyone has any suggestions on what we should do I would be very grateful. I should have also said that daughter says she has absolutely no recall of what happens, although the unit seem to think she has.

My daughter aged 15 has an autistic spectrum disorder, dyspraxia and visual processing disorder and has always found life, particularly school, very challenging. She has never been statemented. The GP has referred her to CAMHS for help with anxiety but I know this may take a long time for an appointment to come through. Keeping things as brief as possible, she never settled at secondary school and ended up with what is known as a functional visual impairment (somatic loss of sight) during year 7. She was to all intents and purposes totally unable to see although all medical tests were clear. Her sight returned after about 7 months (during the school summer holidays!). The school were very unsupportive and we made the decision to remove her from there early in year 8 and she was educated at home for a few months using online schooling. She can be a very difficult child to live with 24/7 and this was not working for any of us. She then started at her current school at the beginning of the Summer Term of year 8. They were extremely supportive, she was on a very restricted timetable which gradually increased over time and they used a "circle of friends" to support her, take her round school etc. (she would not go into school or come out on her own and needed to be taken to classes etc). This ideal phase lasted for just over a year until last summer when 1 member of the "circle" had had enough of my daughter and basically the group fell apart. Since that time my daughter has had no friends to "hang out" with round school and spends her lunchtimes trying to find a club she can go to (even if it not really her cup of tea) or just waiting for lunch to end. There have been various incidents of bullying, lack of support in classes which I am fairly sure have been resolved but they have had an effect, also the SENCO has been off long term sick since November time. As she was my immediate contact and my daughter's "person she could go" to this has made things very difficult. I have met with the Head of Year but he is basically "fire fighting" problem pupils (and teaching for the majority of the week). The school also made 30 member of staff redundant last summer which means there is less general support to go round than there was before. It has seemed that when things get too much for my daughter she gets a physical manifestation of illness - headache, leg pain, feeling terrible (and looking it too). The other manifestation was obviously when she lost her sight. We have had a number of times when she has become too ill to go to school - for a long time I genuinely thought she did have a virus. Now I tend to judge it on temperature and glands only. She is currently in the middle of one of these episodes. How can I best deal with it? She has been off school since Tuesday - she did go in this morning for a Physics GCSE module but they sent her home again afterwards. This occasion, seems to have been triggered by the stress of exams, plus the fact that they did not allow her her permitted 25% extra time in last week's exam (all sorted now but difficult at the time!). To me, it seems like things build and build for her for some time, then all at once she tips over the edge and becomes "ill". Eventually, this resets but then of course things also start building up again. Any suggestions on how I should deal with this would be greatly appreciated. I was wondering if it would be a good idea to ask school for a reduction in her timetable to reduce the stress levels. I am anxious not to make things worse than they already are. This morning, we have really had to cajole her to go to the local shops with my husband - somewhere she has been many times - she said it was because there were "people" there. This worries me greatly. The GP is not really interested, really had to beg him for help - he was like "what do you want me to do, I can't give you any anti anxiety drops".

Thanks Trekster - I will follow up these links - thanks for sorting them out for me. DD was under an occupational therapist for years but eventually discharged as she had made reasonable progress. I will have to dig out the criteria for both Tourettes and ASD to compare but she hasnt had any tics for years now, but the behavioural issues continue.

Sorry Puffin, I was rambling a bit there and became rather incoherent! She did not meet the criteria for autism when assessed by the Social Disorders Clinic at GOSH several years ago. However, they said she did have "traits". At the time, she had been having a number of different tics and the Professor we saw felt that this was enough to give a diagnosis of Tourettes which can apparently result in aggressive behaviour. She has also been diagnosed separately with Dyspraxia and also has Dyscalculia.

Thank you all for your replies, any more comments gratefully accepted. I will be on the case tomorrow! It will be down to where there are places at the end of the day, or where we stand the possibility of getting a place before too long perhaps. We will be applying in between admission times, so won't come up against the formal admissions process for Herts but not having a statement is of course quite limiting. I know that technically we could apply for a statement while she is at home but I really feel I need educational support with this. She does not have a formal diagnosis anyway, only a "likely to fall somewhere on the spectrum so far as social behaviours are concerned". However, it does seem to us that many of her behaviours are asd, more so as she is getting older. The volatility has been put down to Tourettes in the past although I have never been totally convinced. We don't seem to have a secondary autism unit anywhere in Herts.

I wonder whether anyone has any experiences of particularly supportive mainstream secondary schools in Herts. If so, I would very much appreciate it, if you could pm me. I know that everyone's experiences are going to be different but I am very anxious not to make the same mistakes twice. To cut a very long story short, I deregistered my DD (yr 8) at October half term. She has been at school action plus for most of her school life. She finds school life very difficult - the organisation, social side of things, processing etc. The other side is she is very volatile and with hindsight I suspect has antagonised greatly the learning support staff through her aggressive behaviour. She is currently learning using an online school but we have now discovered that she has been sending rude messages to some of her classmates. I am also finding it very difficult to have her at home all the time to the point that I dont think I can take much more of it. I need to try to get her back into a school but am anxious that it should be the right one. Of course, most of the popular ones are going to be full but I am equally aware that the so called best schools ie high achieving ones are not always the most supportive for SEN children. So any suggestions, help, ideas would be very greatly received. There have been times recently where I just want to run away from it all.

I've found all these posts very interesting. I'm intending to deregister my daughter on Monday and hubby raised the question of what the school will do with her records. Do they pass them on to the LEA or dispose of them, does anyone know? She's only been at this school (secondary) for just over a year, but I know that records are passed from one school to the next so presumably it will have everything on her from starting school. I know when my other daughter moved from state school to a private school aged 7 (ten years ago), my friend who's son was still at the state school was asked if she thought I'd like the records as they were about to bin the contents ..of course things may have changed and there's a lot more key info on younger daughter's file than there ever was on the eldest's one.

Things have been hugely stressful here recently for all sorts of reasons and by breakfast time I can feel the back of my neck and shoulders tensing up, followed by headache and the tension never really goes away after that. How do you all manage - both in dealing with things at the time they happen and so far as getting regular "time out" is concerned. It would really help me to know how other people cope.

No, nothing at all.

No, in effect she is severly visually impaired - her measurements come in at 6/190 and 6/230 if that means anything. She can't read and longs to go on the computer but can't. If you don't watch when we're out she would go straight into something. The consultant says it will improved, I believe it is classed as "non organic visual impairment" from my research ie. there is no cause. I don't know how we are supposed to deal with it though.

We've done all this, she's been tested ...CT scan, drops, electro physiology ..that is the problem ..nothing wrong has been found.

That says it all really. DD is 12 and diagnosed with very mild ASD (although I have always thought there is no doubt it is more than that), Dyspraxia and Tourettes. She has had some tracking type eye problems but was fine with her eyes really. She made a successful transition to mainstream secondary last September. Before Christmas she complained of blurred vision and her eyesight has got worse alarmingly quickly since then. She has had CT scan, electro physiology plus ordinary sight testing. She cannot read, watch tv or go on the computer, bumps into things, cannot see she hasnt finished food on her plate. Completion of testing and specialist appointment were yesterday and he basically said everything is normal, things will improve and put it down to either problems at home or school (her sister is very ill with ME but has been so for 2 years and is improving. We have always done our best to give DD as much attention as we can). I have read about visual processing (she already has auditory processing issues) but am not sure this would cause as much difficulty as she is experiencing, nor come on so suddenly, she was an avid reader before this, good speller and so on. Technically she is at a level where she could be classed as severely visually impaired, except we have no diagnosis or no idea where to go for help. Has anyone experienced anything like this ie. real and physical symptoms of any sort without a proper condition?

Lizzie - I have PMd you. Sylviax

Haven't posted on here for a long time as things improved for us. Daughter is now coming to the end of Year 5 with secondary applications looming in the Autumn. We feel it could be a good idea to get an upto date assessment done to use with our secondary application plus to use when opening communications with the new school but my question is what sort of assessment would be best. I thought about getting a psychologist's report but am not really sure whether this is the best way to go or not. I am also confused about whether it would be best to get an educational Psychologist's assessment or that of a clinical psychologist. M has coordination difficulties plus was diagnosed with mild ASD 2 years ago now. She was also given a diagnosis of Tourettes as an attempt to explain the behaviour issues we were having with her (she also had tics although these have almost disappeared). At that time, she was temporarily excluded 3 times due to physical attacks on pupils/LSA. Although things have been better, she has recently hit me a number of times and can be very volatile. She is not statemented but was given earmarked pupil funding until the LEA abolished this recently. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.