School prom

[bonbons]

Hi , my 16 year old daughter previously went to mainstream high school but due to her difficulties , ended up excluded, and after a bit if a battle and a lengthy time out if education, we managed to get her a place at a superb special SEN school where she has spent the past year and has made encouraging progress . Her school don't however, hold a school prom, something she really desperately wants to attend! I have contacted her old school to see if an invitation could possibly be considered for her to attend thier prom with her friend who is still a pupil there. They will get back to me but I suspect the answer will be no!

I have suggested buying her a prom dress and all that goes with it, and perhaps going for a meal but ' it's not the same' us her answer! Holding a party of our own is tricky to, as she only has one close friend. My main worry is that she will feel rejected.....again! Has anyone come up against this problem and if so, how did you handle it?

Beverley x

[LancsLad]

Bonbons as soon as I saw the title of your post I was left feeling very reticent about posting an answer whilst feeling compeled to do so so after thinking it through for a bit here goes, if this is not what you were expecting my appologies.

 

Firstly I have AS and can translate my own experiences of Proms from that position as an Adult. Secondly I was a secondary teacher for a number of years and that included time as an assistant head of sixth form. I have as such experiences of proms over a number of years and in a number of schools.

 

In my opinion this is one of the worst things we have ever imported into this country from American culture. My experience started with requests from 18 year olds, the last manifestation I saw was at my partners primary school leavers do with 10 and 11 year olds getting out of stretch limousines yet an hour or so latter the girls are in little groups dancing uncomfortably and the boys are charging around like lunatics doing knee slides. So much for a mature do and a meal I say!

 

My experiences of 16 and 18 year old proms is that no matter what the best intentions or how structured and formal they are you can not control the overall behaviour of the idividuals concerned. Please believe me that I have been in some schools in poor areas when we have had to collect suits and dresses from friends and relatives of staff to get kids there because they didn't own anything other than their uniform and a tracksuit, the prom being at the local rugby leauge club, through to schools where I know the lads are wearing designer suits over a £1,000 and the girls are in dresses double that, their prom being in a four star hotel and tickets at £75. You might think that this would result in very different events, it did not. The kids see this as a rights of passage event. For a lot that means getting around a friends house to get ready for the girls to do their make up. Inevitably a well meaning parent will provide a bottle of wine or champagne to make the night feel grown up. That will be on top of bottles of spirits in pockets and handbags. For a small few drugs will be part of this process the odd E's here and there. Now I am sure you have no intention for this to be the situation with your own child but I would put any money on the fact it is happening around the corner.

 

The next stage of the evening is the meal at which invitably as some are not used to this drinking behaviour involves throwing up in tolilets, why they have mixers with high levels of colouring in because they simply do not go with cream dresses and white shirts once the vomit starts splashing around. So there is then the emotional fall out from trying to clean clothing. Once the meal is over we then hit the dancing great fun. We then have three groups to deal with as staff the sober, the half pissed and the completely out of its. Dancing is good because it is a chance if you can keep it going long enough and if you can stop them from going outside through fire escapes etc to where mates having been rung up on moblies and are waiting with more booze to sneak in, you might get the half pissed lot to sober up a little.

 

As a teacher we then get to the best bit policing them off the site. Some parents at this point will try to pick their children up as pre arranged but wil have to contend with the post prom parties and get togethers. For the lads and a lot of the girls these days this is where expectations are highest, whats a rights of passage if you don't get your leg over is one way of putting it. Thankfully as teachers we don't have to witness this, though I have had to break up a pair at it behind a wall once at the event. Unfortunatly we do have to listen to the rummours which filter back.

 

Now you might well think Bonbons that this does not happen with 16 year old events in my experience this is all cultural, and there is a cultural expectation about what these events are all about and as such it is a very strong driving force and enevitably these little angel of children far prey of cultural pressure. Now not for one minute am I saying that you daughter is going to get drunk and have sex with the nearest lad or girl, far from it. What I am saying is do you think she would be able to understand and relate to this type of behaviour if it was going on, what I am talking about at the very least is massive social interaction with inevitable emotional fall out, erratic behaviour, loud noise, peer pressure to have a good time and what that means for some etc...

 

As someone with AS but not a diagnosis at the time my last prom I had to ask if it was ok that I did not attend, though this was a disapointment for some of my students. Why because I new I could not cope with the environment and the behaviour I would inevitably have to deal with. In the past I have been out for a meal with my own tutor group, I have been on nights out with my design students at the end of their 'A' levels where we have been to a few pubs and ended up having a lot of fun in a night club, at times with their parents. I have also been to a colleauges barbecue where our partners have been there with students. In these sorts of numbers and knowing every individual and importanly them knowing me things have always been fine and we have all had a great time. The important thing was that we invited them into our responsible culture they knew the rules and felt privalleged to be invited to be honest and as such respected the position and as such did everything they could do to impress us, which is more than I can say of myself when dancing in the night club.

 

What I think the problem is with Proms is that this is not a culture of the teachers who invite the kids in, nor is it a culture of american teacing staff which has come across to here, nor is it a culture of American proms my American student friends say it is not really like that in many cases over there, rather it is a movie culture whic has been interperated badly in the most immature way by young people in this country. The same thing has happened to freshers weeks at university which I have experiences both in the early 1980's and recently, these are events which are seen as a good excusse to drop conventional rules and behave how you like.

 

Beverly your gut reaction is right on this one try and take the best things in a mature way and transpose them into an event of your own which is appropriate to your daughters capabilities, and she would have a lovely time I am sure of it, might like an invite myself! But you are up against 'this is what I want to do', and a desire to feel part of her culture is very strong even at 16. In recent years I have met very mature 18 year olds at university, I lived on campus for 2 years, who were disgusted by the worst elements of student life and wanted no part of it. To get to this position they had to witness it I suspect first had or they were of the opinion they were too mature for that sort of thing. At the end of the day we have to do our best to give our children the skills they will need to cope in life. It may be the case that her friend comes around to your house, you drop them both off at the event, you ask an adult there to keep a very special eye on them both, and you pick them up pretty early, they might not like this but can they accept it. If the friend can not because you are spoiling her perceptions of what this is about then I think you have an answer there. If your daughter can not then I would sit down and ask why this is not acceptable, because to be honest it would be my approach for my son when he gets to 16 and I will have the final say on it why, because I have seen these events close up. When he is 18 if he has the opportunity at the end of sixth form there not a lot I can do I have to simply hope he holds my values.

 

My final point is do not feel emotionally blackmailed into having to go through this. There is no precedent for proms in our culture, and I for one would be glad if they faded away, but because we have left our kids to their own devices they have been able to develop their own sub-culture and mature adult thoughts and behaviour plays very little part in it.

[bonbons]

Thank you Lancslad for your very honest and colourful reply ! An interesting perspective and you have raised pints I have considered myself. We have 3 older children who all attended school prom with the same school, and who's experience wasn't quite as you described as they had a thoroughly good time with no excesses( thankfully!!!!) and my daughter remembers these events and sees the photos of her siblings on the wall, and I guess she wants what they had ! Why should she not have the same experience as her peers and feel like a princess for a day? ....... But..... My concerns are more centered around this experience, should she be allowed to go, falling way short of her expectations or even causing her distress. She had a difficult time in high school and suffered episodes of bullying and I can't really understand why she would even want to put herself in such a potentially difficult social situation, surrounded by youngsters who made life so difficult and enjoyed pushing her buttons day in day out! She struggles with using a knife and fork and I'm sure it wouldn't take long for someone to pick up on this around the dinner table!

So I am very torn! I don't want her to go for me, but she wants to go for her , but the more you say she shouldn't , the more she says she should .....but then I think that perhaps disappointment now will save heart ache later!

Beverley

[bed32]

It might perhaps be easiet if the school were to say no.

 

Knowing nothing about your daughter it is hard to say much - but I would have thought on balance she should be allowed to go.

 

It is a rite of passage these days so excluding her may increase her sense of being different or even isolated. There are pros and cons but on balance are you sure the cons outweight the pros sufficiently to stop her from going if she realy wants to?

 

Even if the evening is not happy then all that has happened is that she has had a disappointment and you can try to make it up to her afterwards. I would say that it is only if you think the experience could have a long term negative impact that you should veto it.

 

We can't wrap our children up in cotton wool all their lives - there comes a time when they have to be allowed to make their own mistakes; but only you can judge how/when to do so with your children.

 

It sounds positive that she has a friend still there who wants to go with her - that on its own is worth supporting. Presumably if she (assuming it is a she) is a good friend and so understands your daughter well. Would you trust her to look after your daughter on the night?

[LancsLad]

Beverly wiil try to explain my thinking a bit so you can see where I might be coming from in my reply. Having AS in my personal experience does not make me blind to what is happening in social contexts, what it does mean is that I need to take a big step backwards and be really thoughtfull in processing what I have experienced before drawing conclusions, as I have got older this processing time has become reduced. I real life social situations I can normally cope when I am on good form as this thinking pause might only be down to 30 seconds or so. When I am tired and not processing very quickly and might need a minute or so between interactions this makes things very clumsy in one to one situations or in small groups. The same is true of things such as a reply to my post on this forum, and at times I might need to spend an hour or so in working out what someone is saying before posting a reply. I am also aware that I can be impulsive and when I read back a day or so later what I have written I am not too sure if I am really answering the points raised in a previous post.

 

The point I am making is that steping back is important, and that initially emotional forces can really cloud our best judgements if we have ASD, that is my experience anyway. My question would be for yourself where do you think your daughter is in this process with this potential prom. When I wrote my initial reply and was having a cup of tea afterwards my thoughtful reaction was, god its only at the end of Feb and no where near the end of the school year. I guess for the young people at the school they are all still wrapped up in the emotional energies of the event, and that is a very strong pull for a young lady who is possibly desperate to fit in as are the vast majority of her peers at this age. If this is the case then I think you are in the short term in an almost impossible situation. I think there might come a point when your daughter will be able to take a step back and start to process at her own level the social ramifications of going to the event, yes I might be alongside my friend on a special evening, but then I will need to deal with people I know whio might not have been too kind to me in the past etc...

 

My mature response when faced with similar situations at university recently and was being invited along to parties was, I will let you know when do you need to know by. What this gave me was space to simply get away from the emotional energy. Other students would come up to me for a few days and ask are you going to the party on Saturday, I would have to say I had not thought it through yet, then I would get things like oh you must come. It was only when all of this emotional inluence had subsided did I even think about starting to think about going or not. My advice would be wait untill all this energy has subsided and buy some time, write to the school and put a second class stamp on it and ask for a written reply might be an idea.

 

For me the next phase would be if I go to the party what support will be there should things not go too well. My solution as a 44 year old would be to take a neutral friend who knew me well, I will come if someone can come with me. This was not the same as asking someone who would naturally be there to keep an eye on me. The reason being I know that I might find things to be difficult and the guilt around spoiling someone elses evening is enormous, far better to say to someone who knows me well I might only cope for an hour or so so expect me to want to go and if that happens we will go an get a curry on me on the way back. This is why I think you both need to be honest about the friend and is it fair on her to chaperone your daughter at her end of school leaving event, in my experience it would be an exceptional young person who would be comfortable with doing this and not feel she was in a compromised position, her friend may well be that type of individual but as adults we need to thing about what we ask people to do at times and is it really fair. I would not be surprised that in the emotional turmoil she may have offered to your daughter a lifeline back into a social environment ,but in hindsight might regret ever mentioning it, if she ever has?

 

When things have calmed down a bit the final thing I would say from experience is regarding our perceptions to what our presence may be like at events. As I have highlighted working through social situations is not my strength and I often have blind spots. One of my biggest blind spots when it comes to parties is underestimating the impact I have on events. It has taken my chaperone friends to point this out to me, they call me a magnet for attention. THe first point is I do not go very often and so am often a bit of an attraction the 'oh you have come wonderfull'. This can be great for a bit, feel part of the event, but can quickly lead to overload and me getting tired. I could easily see this happening for your daughter through the very best of intentions, possibly with her trying desperatly to think of names or even having weak recollections of who people even are. In my experience this is tough, people describe me as being very charesmatic and as such it might be inevitable, your daughter might be very quiet and reserved and go under the radar in many situations, but to be honest Beverley she will stand out as the odd one simply because she is no longer a member of the year group to be honest.

 

I think there is a time for these thoughts to emerge through a natural process. It might be in a couple of weeks that your daughter comes to her own conclusions and says she has had a change of mind. As a parent I would ask her friend to give her a bit of space and not to stoke her emotional fire so that they both might arrive at the best conclusion. I think you can be quite mature in this by saying you are not trying to kill the idea but have genuine concerns that her own evening does not get spoiled as it is a special night. At the right time I would go through the pros and cons of the event if she has permision from the school to go. This is important in that it is showing her how to model behaviour and thinking in mature ways. The more of this that can come from herself the better as it shows understanding and maturity.

 

At the end of the day it is important that you and your daughter and her friend see this as a risk, with possible rewards and consequences. If I go to a party it is a risk and as such I plan for it and have support structures around me but even so I can not plan for every eventuality. One of my last major parties at universtiy I thought I had managed the risks well as I had made the decision not to attend the start of the celebrations which was an informal get together in the department but would with a neutral chaperone friend turn up at the main party a bit later at a student house. Everything was sorted out in my mind and I had gone through eventualities with my chaperone mate. What I had not realised was that I had won a competition with a cash prize which had tried to be presented at the first part of the evening. When I arrived a lot of focus was on me half of the people were pleased I had won, the other half resentful which I can kind of understand. The issue was at no point could I get enough breathing space to distance myself from the social consequences to work things out in my head, time in the kitchen, toilet etc.. didn't work even had a tour of the roof on the building which was covered in plants from an RHS Chelsea show garden to no avail. My closest friends tried their best but in the end I had a full blown panic attack which didn't do anything to help in fact it only drew more attention, and I guess is the thing most people will remeber about the night. The party was all about risk management and in this instance it did not go too well, I could give example of great parties I have been too without a hitch. Do I regret going to this party no I do not, in fact it gave my peers a real understanding about the person I am, I was not appologetic but said I knew it was a risk and one I decided to take it simply hadn't turned out to well for me but I hoped they had a great night out despite the incident.

 

As a parent we have some control over risk managing our children, we can help them plan for eventualities to an extent, but they will in adult life have to weight up in a calm and unemotional way the factors involved. If your daughter can prove she can do this then I would let her go to the event even if you have a strong feeling it might end in disaster, we all hope to be proven wrong on this one. Good risk management plans will have exit strategies built in. That might mean sitting outside in a car in case your daughter needs you, might be for a 10 minute hows it going, you are doing really well to get this far, am so proud of you, now get back in there and finish the night off with your friend pep talk. I am sure it can be done, I would also polietly from an ASD perspective suggest rehersal might help, go to the venue before hand possibly have a meal there if thats possible, let her get a feel for where doors are , toilets etc... this is all good planning. I would posssibly think about cutting down variables and this might be physical things such as wearing a dress which is unfamiliar. It is easy for some NT's to completely underestimate things such as the physical sensitivity that some of us experience. The feel of a new dress which fits differently could be like attending the event in a psychological straight jacket, the emotion at present might be I get a new dress fantastic mum you are going to pay for this one! In reality this might be the most important dress at the event to get right simply because of her condition and what that means. The same could be true of wearing make up. I remeber being in a school production, and I do not get that nervous with public speaking never have even as a child. On the first night I was litterally freaked out by having to wear make up something I had forgoten for over 30 years, these posts bring things back, it felt like having a plastic bag sucked around my face and I couldn't breathe. In areas such as this trying not to introduce new variables is important. It may be the case your daughter wears prom type dresses all the time and is a Goth and you wonder what the kid looks like below all that stuff, I don't really know just throwing a few thoughts in Beverley.

 

To conclude, yesterday I was highlighting some of the realities of these events, today i can see the emotional draw this has on your daughter, I could see it myself like a ticket to social inclusivity, but then I know I am very naieve at times. For your daughter to go to this event I think is a massive ask, for her to come out of the other side relatively unscathed a massive achievement on her part. There is a lot of planning and thought which needs to go in from a number of individuals not least your daughter. I would not say "you can't go to the ball my princess", what I would say is you might be able to but please understand I am your mum and not your fairy godmother and as such I do not have a magic wand to make everything go perfectly. At the end of the day this is not a fairy tail, your daughter currently might think it is and that is to be expected for a period, it is a reality, and realities can be very messy as I previously gave experiences of, but we gain experience from real situations even if at times this means making the odd mistake or two. If there is a good chance she can get through this, and with a lot of thought you can manage out risks, then I would say go for it. I am pretty sure and hope you will be the one as her mum deserving of an alcoholic drink once she is tucked up safely in bed after the event,

 

best wishes.

[alanm]

She had a difficult time in high school and suffered episodes of bullying and I can't really understand why she would even want to put herself in such a potentially difficult social situation, surrounded by youngsters who made life so difficult and enjoyed pushing her buttons day in day out!

I went through precisely this in my own teens with bullying, though these proms had not taken off then, my final year being 1987. Back then the simple leaving party cost £2, a small price to buy a "decoy" ticket to make peers think I was going, when I had absolutely no intention to.

 

I can't really give any advice here but so feel for those really unhappy teenagers who must be put under even more peer pressure to go to today's proms than I would have been in the 80s. I feel for your daughter's dilemma, on the one hand wanting to have the same experience her siblings had, but if the kids who picked on her in her days at the school picked on her at the prom causing her distress, ultimately feeling worse for going and being picked on having her night spoilt than if she hadn't gone.

 

As an aside, here's a link to a thread on the Gransnet forum, highlighting a few more views on proms:

http://www.gransnet.com/forums/am_i_being_unreasonable/a1188762-Why-do-school-leavers-have-to-have-Proms

[chris54]

Neither of my step children went to their secondary school prom. Not realy the sort of thing that either of them ever realy enjoy.

 

As I remember it, the last one (step daughters one) Only about half the kids went, it was at a posh country club and cost the earth for tickets.

There was a flotilla of stretched limos turning up (So I was told). It is realy out of hand.

The school was a mix of very well off and very hard up. A lot that went on at the school was socially excluding because of the cost, but that another story.

 

My sons primary school leaving do consisted of a disco at the school lasting about a hour and a half, for the children, one night. They were told to come smart but not to go over the top. That didn't stop a few turning up in limos. The next night there was a family barbecue, with a show put on by the children and prise giving. My son didn't want to go the either. Shame realy as he had won a prise for science.

Afterwards I think he felt a bit left out as the next day the other children were talking about it and he then felt like he had missed out.

[LancsLad]

Chris I think missing out on presentations is a fact of life for a lot of kids with AS, I have never been to a presentation for myself simply couldn't face the pressure, and also felt in many ways I was nothing special, did the courses because i wanted to and so the bit of paper never really mattered. This has caused no amount of distress for my parents in my school days and when I passed my first degree. I think even my partner wanted me to get a second degree a few years back. Last year I had the opportunity to pick up my masters and my son would have been old enough to understand the event and had seen me away from home durring the weekdays for two years, and I still couldn't face the graduation ceremony.

 

I suspect it must be difficult as you want him to get the recognition he deserves, but you might have to get used to the fact, for me this is the selfish side of ASD which doesn't really bother me but upsets and hurts others.

[puffin]

My daughter went to the Winter Ball at Christmas we armed her with a mobile in case she wanted early pcik up - but she loved it - and did the entire 6pm-midnight- and did stuff that she would normally never have considered such as dancing

 

She could not stop talking about it until 2 am and then crashed and slept the entire next day!