How do you know when its time to back off?

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DS is 7.5, HFA, in 2nd grade this year. We are at a new school and the special ed teacher is brand new. His classroom teacher is experienced and was previously a spec ed teacher herself so she has some skills (though she also seems to have an odd propensity to want DS to be a round peg). We are still struggling through updating his IEP and his BIP (behavior improvement plan). This has been hard, not for lack of effort on anyone's part, I think it's due in part to the spec ed teacher's inexperience. DS has an aide with him about 50% of the day. In general he is doing much better than last year which is a relief. I still walk him into the classroom every morning before the first bell rings and help him get ready for the day. There are like 6 things he has to remember to do each morning and it seems like a lot for him. He then goes to the spec ed classroom to eat breakfast with another boy from his class. I usually walk him to that classroom and end up staying for 5-10 minutes. I've noticed that I am the only second grade parent that comes in with her kiddo every day.

He has had very few meltdowns this year but whenever I hear that one has occurred, I get really upset. I can't help but feel that is the staff were doing their jobs, he wouldn't have meltdowns. He is a high anxiety kiddo and it just kills me to think of him suffering through the panic I know he feels when he is overwhelmed.

It has been suggested to me by a person whose opinion I value that I may need to detach some, maybe step back a little. So I am asking for some thoughts from you folks. How do you know when the time is right for you to step back more with your ASD kids? With my older son I didn't have this question because he gave me obvious signs that he was ready for me to let him start to learn to fly. Like he started refusing to let me hug him at school drop off, he did not want me to walk him into his class in K, etc. I guess I was kinda waiting for DS 7 to give me those signs but he isn't doing it (yet?). I am concerned that when it comes to the line between advocacy and enabling I might have more than one foot into enabling.

A lot of it is going to depend on the quality of help you get, naturally. We stopped walking our kid in everyday (after the first day or so) in 1st grade b/c it was school policy. However, b/c it was a school policy they wanted to stick with, that meant that they were responsible for getting him to do the morning tasks they expected, which they did b/c they did not want to pay anyone to do it for/with him, and the 1st grade teacher would not have done it. When we were in public school, the one thing I did manage to get them to do, was take ownership of that kind of thing.

So at our IEP meetings prior to the next year (where the new teacher always came) I let everyone know straight up not to expect anything that was executive function-like and they would either need to teach him, make accommodations or have someone do it for him. The best answer would have been to teach him, but they tended to pick accommodate. He did manage to make it to his classroom, and slowly take out his folders, put his coat away, and all that stuff, but they would have to take the hw out of the folders.

I did not freak out over one meltdown, b/c for us that was a vast improvement. A fantastic day would be zero meltdowns, but usually there was at least one. The main thing was getting them to be less intense and shorter. So, I don't think it is back off, so much as change the goal posts. As your child improves you increase your expectations.

Right off the top of my head (and this is hard-- both hard-handed and difficult), you're going to have to lay aside some of the empathy for the kid. OWCH. But-- even as little as he is, the time to start learning to deal with melting down is NOW. It's going to take time, and he can't do it in an environment where he's sheltered from having them in the first place.

I'm not saying to toss him out there and leave him to fall apart 57 times a day, without accomodation or support or guidance. That's stupid-- a recipe for learned helplessness at best.

I am saying to understand that floundering, getting frustrated, and melting down is part of a learning process, and both of you are going to have to learn to see it that way and work with it as such. He's 7-- even if it doesn't exactly manifest in an observable fashion, he still takes a lot of him cues from you. If you don't learn to see it that way (and ideally likewise the folks at school, too), he won't either.

It sucks for any parent to see their kid hurt. It sucks even more when you have the impulse to protect an extra-vulnerable child. But, unless you honestly think (in your rational moments, not your scared ones) that he's going to spend the rest of his life in a sheltered environment where people will do things like tailor the environment to prevent meltdowns, it's something you have to do. It doesn't sound as if that's what you think, so-- it's going to be longer and harder (take more time, and involve more and bigger falls) but that's probably what needs to happen.

I think what got my dad through it, was that he thought he was raising a normal kid. That had been his learning process, so he understood that it was going to be mine too-- but nobody understood it as An Issue. It was just How This Kid Needed To Do Things-- and believing and having it reinforced that it was right made it easier to take ('cause he was practical enough to always get that the goal of this process was to have an adult at the end of it, and logical enough to make statements like "Kids are like dogs.")

He'd have gone completely bugshit if he'd had terms like "high-functioning autism" and "Asperger syndrome" when he was raising me. I wish I had had access to things like pragmatic speech therapy and social skills training...

...but on the whole it was probably best that we had no freakin' clue.

Wanting "round pegs" is what special ed teachers (and especially general ed teachers-- they're basically line bosses in a round-peg factory) DO. Getting round pegs, as uniform as possible, is their JOB.

We all want to believe that teaching is about imparting knowledge and skills and helping kids learn to use it-- and that's the line we all go about it with-- but the fact is that it's also social engineering in its most blatant (and sometimes sinister) form.

I think it's awfully sad and a terrible shame-- please remember that the public school system was originally conceived to keep kids off the streets while their parents were at work in the mills and mines, and to skim off the so-called cream to be the next generation of inventors and mill owners and such and train the rest to take their parents' place. The "mills and mines" have turned into cubicles, but neither the structure of the system nor the purpose of the machine has changed (and we wonder why we lost our competitive edge years ago and continue to fall farther behind no matter what we do).

What to do about that?? Well-- What do you get when you cross an elephant and a rhino??

Yup-- ELEPHINO. Say it out loud if you don't get the joke.

What I'm doing about it, is hoping that becoming a round-ish peg doesn't tear the boy up so much that it's not worth the price. If it does-- well, I've got K12 on the back burner and I'm working on developing a home-made homeschool with lots of social opportunities, something I really need to talk to MMJMOM about. And I hope that he turns out to have my interest in being a self-reliant survival farmer.

Final thought (for now anyway). Spectrum kids DON'T want to fly (or at least, none of the ones I knew ever did. Hell, The Great Saint Alan moved out of his mother's house and into his wife's, out of his wife's and back into his mother's, rented a house that he hated living in, then bought a place next holler to his sister, where he lived-- by his own choosing-- in her shadow until he married again). Flying is confusing and scary and fraught with the potential for huge falls. Not only do we not ask for it-- a lot of us (I think especially the high functioning ones) resist it like crazy.

Flying solo sucks-- if I had to do it, I would probably choose to live a pared-down life in a tricked-up van (and I mean tricked up with a bed and a kitchenette, or a truck with one of those piggyback campers). If I had to fly solo with my kids, I'd have no sustainable option but to go back to West Virginia and repeat Saint Alan's trick-- take shelter in my cousins' shadows, and pray that my kids didn't pick up Omega Syndrome or hard drugs (the main cottage industry of Northcentral West Virginia seems to be cooking methamphetamine).

Like my father, I flew because I knew I had to, but I was scared to frackin' death (and still am). I'm pretty sure that spectrum kids have to be shoved-- gently and gradually and patiently and with a lot of repetition and support-- out of the nest. Even when we fly, we tend to do it like geese with no grasp of geometry-- we're not in formation, but there's usually another bird there somewhere as a reminder of how to flap and where to go. Hey-- I married young, and I knew what I was doing. I was looking for a bird going in a direction I didn't hate, just so I wouldn't be flying alone.

Very gently, very slowly, very gradually-- and with a LOT of hopping, flapping, and then flying lessons-- shove the little bird out of the nest and onto the limb. Go slowly-- you have all the time in the world-- but GO.

You start by dropping him off, setting him up, walking him to breakfast-- and leaving. Then he starts having to get his own stuff set up while you give instructions (or someone else does). Then he has to do it himself, while someone watches and reminds. Then he has to walk himself in-- sometimes-- while you sit in the car clutching your cell phone and calling the office to make sure he made it OK (once you finish bawling, anyway). Then he has to do it more often, then every day...

Try very hard, during all this process, not to even THINK about the somewhere-out-there potential day when you just might take him to the bus stop, watch him walk up the steps, and wave at the back end of a yellow limousine. I do this every morning-- and I walk back up the road practically retching with nerves and praying to whatever God it is I believe in to just please, please, PLEASE get him through the day. My kid has been in trouble ONCE. ONCE-- and that was for inappropriate honesty, nothing more-- and I still can't bring myself to run out for milk and stamps until I find my cell phone (the bills are late, and the kids are awful sick of drinking Nido).

Yeah-- I have regular panic attacks. The girls in the office recognize my voice. The teacher has my phone number committed to memory (and I've only been called over behavior once-- it's just that she has to return my calls so often). I hope the half-moon marks in the heels of my hands from where I've dug my nails in white-knuckling it go away someday...

...and only the last statement is in any way, shape, or form a metaphor.

Thanks, that is some good feedback!

This especially made me think, it is my own discomfort that I am avoiding by hovering around in the morning. *I* have a full-on panic attack whenever I even contemplate letting him ride the bus (a ride which would last all of 10 minutes. The bus only picks up kids on our street because there is one major 5-lane street the kids would have to cross).

I agree with a lot of BuyerBeware's advice. With my daughter, I realized it was me that was having a hard time stepping back and that even though she was ready, she probably didn't know to give me those cues. I still struggle a lot with her being in the care of other people and it causes me a lot of anxiety, but I have learned to trust a few people at the school.

Oh, and I still don't let her ride the bus to school. But I use the excuse that we live right next door and I prefer her to experience walking in the elements. Besides, she would require a harness to ride the bus and it would take them longer to get her set up, then it would to get to the school.

From the perspective of a parent of an older child - I've always worried about the line between enabling and helping. What I notice in hindsight is that DS develops on his own schedule and trajectory, and when he's ready for something, he lets me know. Sometimes, he needs a suggestion first - but he's rarely successful if I just walk off with the training wheels. Sometimes the timing on his development feels like he's "stuck," but the reality more often is that he's doing his development "behind the scenes" and might have a big leap at a later time.

For instance, a success story: he used to be allowed to leave classes at the "5-minute bell." Since he was doing so well and they couldn't come up with any IEP goals for him other than pragmatics, his caseworker suggested fading out that support. I pushed back, sure that he needed it - but when I told DS about it, he shrugged and said "I don't like being different and don't want to leave early anymore." He didn't bother with fading, just on his own stopped using that support and figured out how to keep himself organized (the reason for it in the first place) while doing so. No pushing from anyone, just a suggestion, and it was done.

OTOH, once, we found out that our old school's sucky social worker had decided he didn't "need" his afternoon break, and was bribing him with a toy to keep him in the classroom every day for a week - wanna know how we found out? DS came home beside himself with rage for a whole week - we finally asked him whether he was taking his breaks at school (God knows how I realized that was it) and he told us that he was holding out for the Lego he'd been promised. (We immediately scheduled a meeting with the principal and got it sorted.)

You really have to go with your gut; you know your kid best. I don't think anyone (including you) will have an 100% success rate in preventing meltdowns, but if you think there are supports or specific procedures that should be offered that aren't, you're the only advocate your son has. If he has a meltdown at school, I'd ask for some kind of documentation of each instance including the antecedent behaviors, etc - like in a functional behavior assessment - don't ask for it like you're trying to place blame, see if you can approach it like you are troubleshooting and want more information.

Another thing to remember: I can't speak for all kids, but my own son doesn't WANT to be different. He hates having supports - so if you ask, and he says he needs X or Y, he definitely needs it.

No one says you have to give him complete independence all at once. Start with opportunities where you know it will be mildly challenging and the potential consequences are not a big deal. This might be giving him some more independence with something at home, or in a familiar place where it is safer for him to experience struggling. When he is able to be independent with those small things it will really help with his confidence and perseverance, as well as giving him experience with "failure" that shows that there is a learning curve, it's okay to struggle a little, and there a different ways to solve a problem.
As he becomes more independent with those little things you can start giving him opportunities for independence in more challenging activities/locations/etc, Second grade is a tricky year because the kids are really starting to act "grown up" but they are still so little!

I have AS and my four kids are NT, although my older son had ADHD and my younger son - 18 - still has ADHD and for a while now I've been suspecting mild AS in him, so I'm going to give you my opinion from the AS kids viewpoint, not the parent of an AS kid.

We didn't know I had AS when I was a child. I'll be 50 in the spring and wasn't dx'd until my 40's and only then because I was going to therapy for something else and my therapist suspected it, mentioned it to me and we went from there. However, I had a lot of allergies and respiratory problems as a child and my mother was extremely overprotective of me. I'm not saying that you are overprotective, mine was though and I was raised by her and my grandparents and she had my grandmother come in to school with me every day, pick me up at lunch and take me somewhere else or bring me a separate lunch etc. She was there a lot, and hovered all the time. While the other kids went out to their parents cars in the afternoon, or at least to the outside of the school and met them there, my grandmother came to the classroom and was waiting outside the door when the bell rang. This was in case I got sick, or hurt, or just anything really.

I was bullied and picked on and made fun of from day one really, because of how weird and awkward I was and how I didn't understand things and didn't know what anything was or how to do anything for myself. It just got worse as the years went on and my grandmother stayed there, a constant presence at school. She volunteered as a room mother so she was there for lots of the other things that other mothers and grandmothers were there for too, but following my mothers instructions, she was there every single day. I wasn't even allowed to go on field trips because they were too dangerous. The few that I was allowed to go on, I never got to ride the bus with the other kids, my grandmother drove me in her car, following the bus. While she didn't agree with my mother, she did what she was told to in regards to me.

By the 4th grade my grandmothers presence was just another thing to pick on me about and when I would mention it to my mother she would explain how those kids were wrong and how I was special and needed my grandmother there, etc. I was "special" because I had allergies to milk and a few other foods, some drugs, animal hair, and pollen. My respiratory infections, which were chronic, were not helped by living with chain smokers who didn't go outside to smoke and smoked around me - but this was the early 70's nobody really knew much different. So, I was sickly, I missed a lot of school, I had basically no socialization even at school because the other kids wouldn't have anything to do with me unless they were forced to, and there was my grandmother every day, just like a big old exclamation point to remind people that I was different. I believed my mother, that I was frail, could get deathly ill at any moment, or might fall and sustain brain damage for no reason (yes, I have the clumsiness of AS, but still...) and I thought that the kids were just being mean by laughing at me and thinking it was weird that she was there, because I believed I needed her there.

I was saved from the hovering because one rainy day in 4th grade she was walking in to get me and fell and broke her leg. After that I had to be dropped off at the back door covered entrance and picked up there just like everybody else. No more special lunches. No more grandmother being in there at all. It saved me from the hovering but the damage had already been done socially. Not only did the teasing not stop, but the fact that I was lost and scared without her just made me a bigger target. Everything got worse until I met some friends when I was about 13 that actually helped me learn things and taught me what was what and took the time and years that it took to "fix" me. Remember, we just thought that I was shy, awkward, weird, ignorant, gross, etc. Nobody knew AS existed. My mother said she was trying to keep me safe doing all that and make me feel secure, but all it had done was make me weak and a target.

I'm not saying don't go in with him. His situation and his AS may be very different than mine was, other than the obvious fact that ya'll know he has something that can cause some of the problems that get spectrum kids picked on, but his school setup could be different from mine, other parents could actually be around and inside there rather than just dropping them off and going about their day, teachers and students could (and obviously do from experiences with my kids and their teachers) have a different mindset today about how things need to be done, etc. However, you said he has a lot to remember in the mornings and you help him with that. I understand that. You want to make it easier on him if you can because the AS is going to make it hard enough as it is. However, learning to be able to remember them is important too, and it's a lot harder to learn the independence type things and self reliance type things in 4th grade than it is in 1st or 2nd. Right now if he doesn't remember something it's small time stuff. It's second grade stuff. Yes there will be pressure on him to remember it and he may get demerits or whatever for not doing those things, but that's how kids learn the skills. Those small consequences now are easier to deal with than learning a skill when the stakes are higher later on in school.

Also, something that you may not have thought of because you weren't in the situation yourself, is that when you are a little kid and your parent is there every day and doing these things for you, and it's not for a special short term reason, you think that they need to be there and they are doing them for you or helping you with them because they need to be doing that and you couldn't do it without them. You see other kids doing things and learning to do things themselves and when your parent is still there helping you do it, or letting you try and if you fail a few times they are right back there helping again, you learn the message that you can't do things on your own, you need help. You need somebody else. Even if they tell you that you are going to be able to do it on your own, soon, the entire time they are helping you, it's the fact that they are there doing it every day that teaches you that you need them there. It makes you very scared to be on your own and very dependent on your parent.

A lot of people think that if the kid doesn't need or want you there, he will tell you, and that's true with kids who have had independence and self reliance and done things alone in other aspects of their lives. The kids who went on the field trips, to parties, to church (yes, even going to church and being left alone in a Sunday School class was an adventure in independence for me) to camp even, all those kids had friends or knew how to interact with the other kids and did so readily and enjoyed it, and they actually had life experience away from the house, doing things by themselves and depending on themselves, and because they enjoyed talking to the other kids and just being kids, they wouldn't want their mother or grandmother or whoever there and would say so, but kids like me wouldn't know any different and wouldn't have anything to compare it to, so we wouldn't know to ask for it. After a while, we would be scared to try it alone even when the parent suggests it.

It's kind of like Plato's Cave Allegory and the I was in the cave with the rest of the kids who were in my situation, none of which went to my small, private school. An analogy in modern terms would be if you adopted a kid from a poor, third world country that had only eaten bread and rice his entire life. You bring him here, put Western clothes on him, and on your way from the airport you take him to a nice vegetarian buffet (only rice and bread his whole life, he's obviously a vegetarian and a buffet usually has some food that is also not too spicy so it wouldn't disagree with him). At this restaurant there are lots of other kids his age and dressed like him and he looks like them and he speaks fluent English but he's only learned it from books and teachers whose first language is not English. He can speak to the other kids, but he doesn't know what to say to them or talk to them about and doesn't understand any slang or their humor or pop culture. He gives up on talking to them because you know how to talk to him and you are slowly going to be teaching him the vernacular so it's just ya'll two. You take him to the buffet and he sees these other kids getting all these foods he's never even heard of or seen and he has no clue what they are and the other kids by now have just written him off and are doing their own thing so he knows to put something on his plate and he gets rice and bread. It's what he knows. You might suggest he try something else but he already feels so out of place that the rice and bread are familiar and he likes them (as far as you can call it like, since that's all he's ever had) so he sticks with the rice and the bread. It's all he knows and he doesn't know he's missing out on the squash and the refried beans and frozen yogurt because he doesn't know what they are or how to eat them even though he sees the other kids eating them. It's what he's had all his life and on top of that, everything around him is different and he's got no peers or friends and nobody else but you to tell him things, and right now he just wants what he knows and whats safe. So, after weeks of this same thing, every day (in this analogy, the entire world only eats one meal a day and they eat it at restaurants - its the only way the story will make sense) he's still got nobody but you and wants nothing but the rice and bread. One day you tell him you'll make his plate and you put everything else on there except rice and bread. Good stuff too! He sees the other kids eating it but he doesn't want it, doesn't know what it is, and it's probably just something else weird that he can't fit in with so he gets mad and throws a fit for the rice and bread and since in this little world we all only eat once a day at a restaurant, that's his one chance at nutrition for the day, so you give him the rice and bread. Everything is going along fine until the restaurant runs out of rice and bread one day and he's got to eat something else. That just happens to be the day that you have to be busy at lunch on the phone with the lady at the bank and so you sit him down at the table and go outside where you can hear on the phone and he doesn't know what to do at all. So, either he gets up and tries the other food or he goes hungry. A lot of us go hungry.

Now, I'll explain that analogy because it makes perfect sense to me but it might not to someone else or someone who doesn't know me and isn't used to my analogies. The kid is obviously an aspie. The third world he came from is being at home with his family or regular babysitters or what have you, until he starts school. You, who just adopted him and brought him here, are like the teacher at school, and the new country is school and the world outside of home every day with mommy. The other kids are the other kids at school. Pretty much same type of cultural and social differences there too, but his can be fixed with about three months of tv and video games and a cooperative and patient neighbor kid his age to come hang out, but ours aren't fixed that fast, that easy, and sometimes at all. Now we are getting to the point of it all. The buffet is his little world and life away from you. It's his choices, his opportunities, his successes and his failures. It's his taking chances. All those things are represented by all those different dishes in that big ole buffet. The rice and bread are the security of having you there, which he brought with him from home (the third world country) and which is the only thing familiar and since he knows he has to eat, he chooses the only thing he knows, the rice and bread. The kid in real life sees other kids choosing things and doing things, and trying and failing and trying and succeeding and all the ups and downs of regular ordinary kid life, but he's never really had that like they have, so he doesn't know he should tell you to go home and let him try on his own, just like the kid in the analogy sees the kids there, who have eaten different kinds of foods their whole lives, even if it's not that particular food, and those kids get their favorites or they try new foods and sometimes it's good, and sometimes it's bad and they dump it out or their parents tell them since they got it they have to eat it, but the kids keep going back to try more and other foods. Even the kid who accidentally got the peanut butter and his tongue swelled up and they had to call the ambulance to take him to the hospital and get a shot still came back and tried new foods. But he has no idea what new foods are, what they are like, he knows that other kids eat them but if he doesn't have to, he's not going to. There are already enough things that he doesn't like or that don't like him. He will eventually try new foods, but he will always be extra cautious because everything else to eat is new, it's hard to choose, it's hard to tell if he will like it, if it will make him sick, if he will be able to find something again there that he really liked but they rarely serve. In other words, he won't have a good, balanced diet and even if he makes sure he does from reading about what to eat, he will never enjoy his meals like other people do. Just like a kid whose parents are always hovering, helping, smoothing the way, protecting him. He won't willingly tell them to stop, but he might because of how the other kids are to him, because with a parent always protecting and hovering, he will be a target even if you don't intend for him to and even if it's ridiculous of kids to be that way - they are kids, they don't have the best skills at interpreting impressions of others. When the parent starts pulling away he may not want her to go. She's there. She makes things the same. It's safer, it's easier, it's less stressful. That's a good thing, but unless he seriously cannot handle the stress or learn to get used to it at all, then dealing with the stress and self reliance and the pressure to get it done and done right himself will just be harder and harder to deal with the older he gets. Imagine walking across your livingroom carrying a plate. Simple, right? If you drop it, it might break but so what? If you trip over something, it's not a bad fall, right? Now, imagine walking across a six foot wide piece of flooring that is fifteen feet off the ground. You have room if you fall but the risk is greater that you'll fall too bad and fall off the edge. Make the plate a one of a kind plate from the Queen of England's collection. It's harder to just walk across there now, right? That would be middle school maybe, and still being "overly" reliant on parents and having more than the usual amount of restrictions that the other kids don't have. Now, walk across a two foot wide piece of floor that's eight stories off the ground and on the Queen's plate is a nuclear bomb that explodes on impact. Then blindfold yourself. That's high school and not having learned independence and self reliance.

You probably think I'm overreacting, but it's hard as hell to learn to find your own seat when you are in the 4th grade. You know where it is, it's always the same one, you just walk over there to it, you see it. The physical part is easy, it's the mental part. What if I drop my books and she's not here, what if somebody trips me and she's not here, what if something has spilled in the seat and I need to ask for a paper towel to wipe it up and shes not here? Just that little task, walking to my seat by myself, had that kind of pressure. It's not that I couldn't wipe up a spill or pick up my books, but the other kids would look at me, wonder why I was doing that, what I did wrong, why I'm doing something that is yet again different. It took me years and years to not be mortified when I call attention to myself by dropping something, clearing my throat, having to leave in the middle of class, etc. I'm already different, anything I do that isn't exactly the same as the others calls attention to that, in my head. When my grandmother was there, I was still different, and I was more different because she was there, but there were no other grandmothers in there so she was different too and she was different with me. Plus, at that age I felt absolutely protected and safe and right when she or my mother was there. Any kid would. To a kid that's very different anyway, being alone and different is very hard and stressful. The parents presence is like a cocoon. When the kid gets older it's not so much a cocoon, but it's a safety net, or even like glasses for someone half blind. You can hardly function without it.

I had my grandmother there until 4th grade but I was overly reliant and afraid and protected until I was about 13 years old. That's when I had to start learning things. So, I threw in the stuff about the in general being overly reliant and protected just in case you were interested or thought that might be a problem too, or maybe one day somebody else looking back through the old posts will see it and it's something they are having a problem with, so there it is. But, in short, I'd say let him learn now to do things himself, when the consequences aren't as bad, and other kids are also still learning so he won't stand out too much for it.

Sorry for the very long post that I intended to be very short. My son had company tonight and they just left and the ones here have just gone to sleep and my older son and his gf and baby are here and the gf just went to sleep, so I'm up. Menopause and hormonal changes keep me up all night at least once a week, and the caffeine makes me talkative.

TLDR; Don't go to the school unless you are called up there. It'll be easier for him to try and fail and keep at it until he learns how now, rather than later.