Dilema

[LS2242]

Hi All

 

For the past 3 weeks now our son has asked to go to a new school everyday. His perception is if he goes to a new school, people will be nice and he will have friends. They always are if your new, apparently! Tried to explain that all schools have children who can be mean but he is having none of it. In his eyes he is picked on / bulliede daily however it is not the case. Yes sometimes it is clear bullying but more often than not it is his perception of a situation. He thinks he is getting picked on when really from what I can work out is that these children are just been typical NT children. He says all the time he has no friends, yet plays with various children at playtimes. I realise his play is all superficial.

He does not appear really upset though, he laughs, smiles and gets involved at home. I understand he may be unhappy, regardless of if it is bullying or not, that is the way it makes him feel.

My dilema is that we feel if we change his school, the problems will just follow him, due to his perception and unfortunately there is no magic wand. Our son is 9 and does not see himself as any different to others and is asking for a cure to his friendship problems.

 

We want to do whats best but not sure what best is anymore. When he is in school, teacher's say he is not unhappy and just gets on with his day.

 

Any advice anyone

[justine1]

Hi All

 

For the past 3 weeks now our son has asked to go to a new school everyday. His perception is if he goes to a new school, people will be nice and he will have friends. They always are if your new, apparently! Tried to explain that all schools have children who can be mean but he is having none of it. In his eyes he is picked on / bulliede daily however it is not the case. Yes sometimes it is clear bullying but more often than not it is his perception of a situation. He thinks he is getting picked on when really from what I can work out is that these children are just been typical NT children. He says all the time he has no friends, yet plays with various children at playtimes. I realise his play is all superficial.

He does not appear really upset though, he laughs, smiles and gets involved at home. I understand he may be unhappy, regardless of if it is bullying or not, that is the way it makes him feel.

My dilema is that we feel if we change his school, the problems will just follow him, due to his perception and unfortunately there is no magic wand. Our son is 9 and does not see himself as any different to others and is asking for a cure to his friendship problems.

 

We want to do whats best but not sure what best is anymore. When he is in school, teacher's say he is not unhappy and just gets on with his day.

 

Any advice anyone

Hi

 

I think you maybe right if you feel there are no issues with the school itself then it is probably best to keep him there.I believe you undergoing assessments??? Also he will be due to move to secondary in a couple years? So for these reasons again moving schools means starting from scratch,them getting to know your sons needs etc and you may find that he either becomes calm and no problems at a new school,but then problems return when he moves on,or he will regress furthur.

 

I know its hard,Sam has generally been unhappy at school for a year now and I sooooooo wanted to take him out,but with the statementing process this was not a good option,now at last he is going somewhere better equipped. He has been to three mainstreams,not due to his AS,just moving,and they have all been almost the same as the next.

[LS2242]

Hi

 

I think you maybe right if you feel there are no issues with the school itself then it is probably best to keep him there.I believe you undergoing assessments??? Also he will be due to move to secondary in a couple years? So for these reasons again moving schools means starting from scratch,them getting to know your sons needs etc and you may find that he either becomes calm and no problems at a new school,but then problems return when he moves on,or he will regress furthur.

 

I know its hard,Sam has generally been unhappy at school for a year now and I sooooooo wanted to take him out,but with the statementing process this was not a good option,now at last he is going somewhere better equipped. He has been to three mainstreams,not due to his AS,just moving,and they have all been almost the same as the next.

Thanks Justine1. Gosh how daft am I. I never even thought about a new school and staff getting to know him all over again and what makes him tick. Not been an easy day, well thats my excuse anyway:-) It is hard listening to the begging day in day out and son thinks we are being horrible, and that we like him getting picked on! Could not be further from the truth.

I think also because he is so unaware of his difficulties it is quite difficult to explain to him what maybe the reasons why things are going so wrong. I cant say to him that these children are just behaving as any other 9 yr old. As he is so unaware of the difficulties he faces and we dont want to force AS on him, when he truely believes he is the same as everyone else, or everyone else is annoying etc.. rather than him)I dont want him to feel as if he is at fault. Does that make sense. Once we have a confirmed dx and he is realising he is behaving differently to others that is when I would try and explain.

 

Change of subject - Contacted the CP today, who keeps making false promises, Asked him to arrange this IQ test he keeps promising and to contact who ever else needs to do any assessments so that a dx can be made. He said he wont discuss it and will send me a letter - Get the distinct impression the letter wont have any way forward in it, but time will tell. I think until we know the full picture and where on the scale he is, or not for that matter, I wont settle. I need to know. All I get off him is the label doesnt matter, the help and support does - Absolutely help and support does but I cant get through to him without the dx help and support is more difficult. Wish private dx wasnt so expensive!

 

Pleased to hear Sam going somewhere better and settles into the new school life!

 

Thanks

[Sally44]

If you think it could help you could start to explain to him about how he might experience things differently. I did this with my son and he did seem to understand what I was saying and it did seem to help. For example he used to be very tactile sensitive and he thought children were hurting him when they were only touching him or nudging him. So I explained to him that "yes you feel it like it hurts you, but other children do not feel pain like you do when they are touched". And we talked about incidences as they arose about noise, smells etc.

If he is being assessed towards a Statement now it would really help for the SALT to assess his speech and language and social communication skills because problems in those areas do need support otherwise the child will keep failing with social interaction and not understand why.

And because I now explain things, my son still gets lots of things wrong, but explaining does help him. For example his class recently went on a trip to a mine. Yesterday my son was talking about it and said "we went to a pig mine". Now that has got to be wrong! So I asked him what a mine was and he didn't know. So explained what a mine was and said "do you think it is possible to have a pig mine? Were the workers digging out pigs." He found that very funny and could accept the maybe he had heard it wrong.

Everyone, including our children, experiences things through their perspective. And if you don't know there is another perspective then you can only interpret things through your perspective, which might not always be the right one.

You don't have to go into indepth discussions about AS itself. But you can talk about differences eg. in sport at one extreme you have people who are not very good at sport because of all kinds of difficulties and at the other you have olympic atheletes. Talk about what the differences are and see if he can place himself correctly on the continum.

[baddad]

Hi LS2242 -

 

I'd agree with pretty much all of the above. The problems at his current school seem very minimal and more to do with how he perceives things/himself than 'real' problems, iykwim. Not that his being unhappy isn't 'real', but that the reasons are subjective rather than external. So a move seems the wrong idea for all of the reasons already mentioned, with a good dose of 'out of the frying pan and into the fire' thrown in.

Justine1 said she thinks your undergoing assessment, so does that mean you haven't got a dx yet? That being the case, it does seem wise to avoid mentioning AS at all, but, as Sally 44 suggests that doesn't exclude talking about his difficulties and making him more aware generally. That's not forcing anything on him - because his unhappiness is a sign that he's already aware to some degree. Explaining why he is unhappy (not that AS, if he has AS, is the reason for his unhappiness, but his lack of self-awareness would certainly be a factor) should be helpful rather than making the situation worse. At the moment he's got no 'handle' to gauge himself or others by, so he doesn't know what to work on to alleviate some of his problems/unhappiness. If he knows this might make other kids reluctant to play or that is the kind of thing that might annoy people he can start to modify some of that behaviour/learn better alternatives. If he doesn't know, he's going to keep making the same mistakes. Of course, knowing isn't going to solve everything, but as the tesco's ads say, 'every little 'elps'.

 

L&P

 

BD

[Suze]

Just gonna mention if it has,nt before, the summer hols are nearly upon us....it could be he is just ready for a break, my kids are, particularly the ASD one.The summer break will give hi time to chill out and hopefullt he,ll feel more positive next term, suzex

[LS2242]

Summer hols. I love summer hols, always miss the kids when they go back to school. I take on board all your comments and your right, moving school is not the answer. I have tried and tried explaining how people are different and given examples against myself and a friend with emotional, physical and various abilitie differences etc etc.. Asked son how he is different to a particular person and the answer was his finger print. I am still trying and will carry on doing so, as he wont learn it otherwise. the problem I think is because he thinks he is always right! at everything! No matter what the situation is, it is always someone elses doing/fault. They/Us have always done it wrong.

 

Also your right in that I would not be forcing anything on him, but would I be making him more aware that there is this gap with social developemnet between him and other children his age. There will always be differences and he does understand that people are different in the way they look, reading, writing, but cant seem to grasp the social and emmotional differences. I am not sure how I would get this across to him, without him personally feeling everything is his fault. When he tells me about

 

When he tells me about an incident, I try and understand what happened before and after but he always says he cant remember. I am not sure the best angle to take with this or is it just a case of perseverance.