Makes funny sounds in assembly - help

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Hello
My five year old started reception/kindergarten school. It's been a week he's happy aboout going and he does have an assisstant for 3 hours in the morning. The teachers are saying he is fitting in nicely. He is already on reading books, I feel really proud about this (the other kids are still learning phonics), his speech is way behind the others, but is getting there.

His teacher told me that in assembly while other kids are quiet and listening to teacher talk, he makes funny sounds. My other son in grade 2/year2 NT, says it's embarrassing, and that he's the only one doing this and it makes him stand out and appear odd.

I never knew he would do this, as he's never been in an assembly type situation. I really want him to blend in and not appear different. I dont want other kids recognising him as the weird kid. I can't really teach him, as how could I make an assembly at home.

Please, can anyone help me, will he grow out of this? What can I do to stop this. He doesn't say proper words, just funny sounds. It seems he's not aware of the social situation he's in and that it's inappropriate to do this.

Please help!! !

I used to hate assembly - I would occupationally blurt things embarrassingly or make odd sounds. Assembly is long and boring especially if you don't understand what the point is.

I still feel very uncomfortable at church services and such gatherings unless strangely enough it is outdoors.

I have no idea how you could make him more comfortable, big halls have a unique acoustic property that gives ones own voice interesting properties I suspect you could simulate it with a microphone & delay line (a real fun toy to play with).

I hope this will not last long and not be a big problem.

I understand how you feel, but I think it's important to realize who really has the problem here... is it your autistic son who is stimming (that sounds to me like what he's doing - making verbal stims to comfort himself in what is an uncomfortable setting for him), or is it the people who find it embarrasing or 'weird'? I think it's the latter.

I would take this as an opportunity to educate and spread awareness to others (teachers, peers/students, and siblings) about what autism is and why autistic people do things differently, including stims.

I also have to add that if your son is autistic, you need to let go of your desire for him to "blend in and not appear different".

He IS different. In many cases, a parent's desire for their autistic child to blend in and look 'normal' will, over time, make that child feel that even his own family does not accept him for who he is.

Opening the world up to differences and diversities is one of the gifts that autism and autistic children offer us. The goal, in my opinion, should be to make sure he grows to learn as much as he can about the world around him (social language etc) but not in an effort to make him more 'normal', but rather in an effort to give him tools to cope and relate socially to the fullest extent that he is comfortable with.

Remember that your son is in school to learn and grow. It is not his responsibility to make sure his autism doesn't 'bother' other people. It's their responsibility to understand and accept his differences, help him with his challenges, and celebrate his gifts

my son also does it and while i don't care if he looks odd, it does disrupt the class and frankly we are afraid he might get kicked out because of that. we have several strategies:

1. we practice being quiet during the story time at home. it is not crowded but it helps him being more aware of his behavior.
while thinking more about it, going to the plays and movies might help too. it is crowded and people need to be quiet even if bored.

2. i am teaching my son to do a game with his hands, open and close fists or touch fingers. basically he needs someting to relieve the stress and "ground" him (like pressing feet or hands into floor).

the main ting for my son is that it is a long day at school and he needs to remember these tips even when he is tired and overwhelmed so i don't expect that it can build in just couple of weeks however i do expect him to improve.

Assembly was a horrible experience for my daughter. A gym is a very difficult place for someone with sensory issues-the noise reverberates and all those kids can be very loud and chaotic. Perhaps your son is making noise because he is uncomfortble with the sensory stimulation? We had to exempt my daughter from assembly, perhaps this would work for your son? I know inclusion is preferred but why have him suffer through the noise and chaos when he could be in the library in a more comfortable situation?

My son is 5 and has been doing this for almost a year. I believe it is his way of releasing stress, or a self stimulatory behavior. Your son may also be using this to block out noises in the environment (that may or may not be noticeable to the average ear). My son does it quite a bit at home too, so I haven't been able to pinpoint what may be triggering it. This behavior (verbal stimming) is worrying us because we are afraid that if he is too disruptive in class, then he will continue to be put in special needs classes, and we don't feel that he belongs there. He is fully capable of learning. So while I agree with Caitlin, that your son will not be "normal", you can teach him that there is an appropriate time to make noises and an appropriate time to be quiet. We have also tried to teach him to keep the noises lower such as a hum or a lower noise that is not as loud.

So far, we have not been able to totally get our son to stop at school, but he is able to sit through an hour of church on Sundays (we offer him a reward if he can be quiet during church.

We also tell him at home that if he wants to make the noises, he will have to go in his room to do them if they are bothering other people. And we just try to talk to him about how sometimes his loud noises hurt other peoples ears.

At school, my son likes to all of a sudden start clapping his hands and singing, and making loud noises. He is in special needs kindergarten, so the teacher is working with him by setting a timer for a short time, and if he can be quiet and pay attention for that short amount of time, he gets a reward. It is called behavior modification with positive reinforcement. It seems to be helping some, but he still does it.

At home, I try to let him do it to a degree to release any stress that he has, but I have to tell you that sometimes it goes on for a couple of hours at a time, and it can become very irritating to say the least. It is causing much tension in our household.

My hunch is that your son is getting overstimulated in the assembly, so if you want to take away the noise-making, you will have to give him something else to do instead.

I agree with Caitlin that the world needs to accept differences, but in some cases, I think our children can be taught appropriate behavior, and they can be taught that other people have needs too.

Good luck and Welcome to Wrong Planet!

I agree with Caitlin's fabulous post.

A lot of the parenting threads in wrongplanet are very upsetting to me. I'm a mum on the spectrum with a child who has ASD. I am doing my best to not say some of the things I feel compelled to. I hope I can be concise without offending anyone.

Love your kids for who they are. They are awesome human beings and deserve the very best. If you are getting frustrated and upset, get some therapy for your issues. Having a child who is different is a gift that forces you to be a parent who is different. You are not the boss of autism. You feel out of control and it's scary. That's how your children feel, too. Let the experience teach you to be a better human being, especially if what you are hoping for more than anything is that your child grows up happy, confident and able to live in this world without becoming despondent and suicidal.

I just watched the HBO movie last night about Temple Grandin. Her mother loved her and accepted her unconditionally, but Temple Grandin herself stated that her mother taught her manners and allowed her to stim at appropriate times. I LOVE my son and I am not embarrased by his behaviors. But, as a parent, I feel I owe it to him to at least try and teach him social skills. Sometimes, the stims are beyond their control, and I am not going to try and stifle them. But, if my son is going to be happy in this world, he is going to have to learn to adjust to some degree. I am sorry if this offends anyone.

I am a "time and a place" mom. And I am very much a "pick your battles" mom. Basically, everyone has a solid point, and now it is time to decide what to do.

I was one of the ones who ended up having my son excused from most assemblies, but we were able to make it HIS choice. If he wanted to attend the assembly, he had to do his best to follow the same rules all the kids were following. Most of the time, in those early years, he preferred not to be there at all. Over time, it changed, as he learned how to handle the over-stimulation flooding him. When he was more comfortable handling it, his desire to be there increased, and his need to act inappropriately decreased.

While generally stims are a sign that our kids aren't comfortable in a situation, it is also possible that your son (speaking to the OP) isn't even aware he is making those sounds. Before making any other decisions on the topic, I would ask him if he knows he makes the noises. If he isn't fully aware, the first thing to do is develop a set of quiet signals so that the teacher can make him aware. After you've settled that matter, find out how he feels about being in these assemblies, and how he feels about his ability to control his stims in those situations. Once you have all that feed back, you'll have a better idea what to do.

Absolutely our kids need to be accepted for who they are, but no one gets a free pass in this world to do exactly what they want to do, when they want to do it. While many, many social standards we've learned are too much to ask our unique kids, it does not mean they all are. Each familiy is going to have to find that balance for themselves; there really is no one set answer, because each of our kids come with their own limitations and their own goals. Those of us on the board have the benefit of children who can communicate. Use that. Ask the kids what they think.

Oh, and to the OP - this is a great time to teach the older child about respecting unique differences, and learning to stand up for other kids who are different. He has the ability to choose not to be embarassed by his brother; its all about becoming comfortable in your own shoes. Teach him the tools to make that choice.

i dont think this is about whether or not you love your kids for who they are. we also have to remember that the parents of the other 100 or however many children at the assembly love THEIR kids too, and their kids have just as much right as ours to a positive learning environment. our kids have to learn to walk a fine line between being who they are and not interfering with the ability of other children to learn. its all fine and dandy to say that our kids need to stim to self calm so they can learn to the best of their ability, but its another thing altogether if their stimming is causing OTHER children to not learn to the best of THEIR ability due to distraction and disruption.

and i do think that the onus is on our children to walk that line, not on the rest of the world to walk it for them. the difference is theirs, and while i expect other parents to teach their kids that differences are okay and "odd" behavior isnt anything to gawk at, i dont expect them to accept their child's learning to be negatively impacted by that difference. there has to be compromise on both sides, yes, but i think our children have to learn how their behaviors affect other people, and they have to learn to limit the negative effect their own differences cause for both themselves and others. this is more important in a classroom setting than assembly of course, but it has impact in all learning environments.

for the verbal stimming in assembly, i think the best thing would be to find out what the noises are, and see if you can find out why they are happening. it could be self calming, maybe he likes the noise in the auditorium, or perhaps its to drown out the sound of all the other kids. or maybe, hes bored! once you know the cause, its easier to look for solutions.

some autistic kids do well with deep pressure contact, or "heavy work", as a calming tool. weighted vests or lap pads are used in some classrooms for kids who need sensory stimulation at times when the classroom needs them to sit still. i am making both a vest and lap pad for my son for school use, as he has a hard time sitting still when they are doing quiet group activities seated on the rug. my son is very tactile and requires a lot of deep pressure contact tho, your child may not respond the same as mine.

i am also putting pockets on the vest with figdets sewn inside them, so he can get the tactile stimulation he craves without needing to be touching the things or people around him. if you can redirect your sons stims into non-verbal areas such as these, it may make things easier for assemblies and quiet classroom time.

I homeschool and have very little in common with people who put their children into the institution and expect them to behave so they can learn about 'the real world' from a fabricated state environment they will never experience anything like after they leave it. I am pretty much done posting in the parenting threads here. I end up shaking my head and feeling bad for too many kids. Cheers.

A few things...

First, I think we need to be careful about idolzing celebrity autistics and measuring everything we do for our kids by someone else's personal experience. The fact that Temple Grandin's mother helped her learn to manage her stims doesn't mean this child in this situation should be forced to stop his. It's a more complicated process than that.

Second, I think much of this discussion is missing the point in terms of the autistic perspective. It is an almost painfully neurocentric discussion - and I'm already painfully neurotypical. Someone even said it is their difference, and therefore the onus is on our kids to change.

Nonsense.

"Difference" is not something one person has and another does not. It's not something autistics have and neurotypicals don't. "Difference" is something we all have. I am different from you in equal measure to you being different from me. I bear no more responsibility to change than you do, so long as we are not hurting each other. To expect autistics to carry more of the 'change burden' is absurd and frankly, discriminatory.

My point was not that this child should be left on his own to stim at will. My point was that there is a reason for his behaviour and it deserves respect, not a quick tidy-up with a heavy handed broom that forces or coerces him to stop doing something that makes him feel better, but inconveniently embarrases some people. Odds are, if you react by trying to change that behaviour for the sake of sparing people embarrasment, you will end up with a child who is self-loathing, depressed, anxious, isolated and angry. Are we really willing to sacrifice our child's long term wellbeing and self-esteem for the sake of sparing some short-term embarrasment? I'm not.

The solution for the child is to first address the environment (the suggestion to avoid assemblies was a good one) and to teach him gradually about ways to self-soothe that may not draw as much unwanted attention (the suggestion to use sensory hand work was also good), all the while ensuring he understands that he is 100% entitled to be who he is meant to be, and he gets to make educated choices about where and when to stim.

But as great as that is for this one child, none of it has the far reaching, long term benefits of advocacy and social change that you get by using this as an opportunity for education and awareness. In my opinon, doing only the one (helping this child manage his stims) without the other (educating and spreading awareness and respect for autistic traits) does our autistic children a tremendous and collective disservice.

I think I just fell in love with Caitlin.

I don't know if this will help at all, as it has nothing to do with assemblies, but my DS had an absolute terror of movies. I finally realized (this was well before his DX) that the large part of his problem had to do with the volume of the sound (which is insane in movies, IMO.) He'd been invited to see a movie with his friends, and didn't want to be "different" (his words and choice, not mine) so we made the following accommodations: both his Dad and I went (not unusual for us, a couple other kids had parents with them) and we had him sit in between us on the end, ostensibly so we could help manage snacks/bathroom breaks. We told him, provided he was quiet about it and didn't disturb anyone else, he could leave for the lobby or even just the aisle by the door at any time. We got him noise-blocking foam earplugs and taught him to put them in so he could do it himself, and since he was sitting between us, he could cover his ears or eyes without anyone knowing. We also put him in a hoodie sweatshirt as another way to reduce the stimulation that he could control.

As soon as the movie proper started, he ran for the door, but I was able to stop him and convince him to stay in the aisle before he actually went out. We sat together in the aisle, going over all the things he could do to reduce the stress (hands over ears, eyes, hood up, bury head in Mom's shoulder) and he finally realized that with all the accommodations, he was OK. He went back to his seat and enjoyed the movie just like all the other kids (but with the earplugs in place, and occasionally hands over the ears when it got loud, and over the eyes when it got scary.)

I'm relating this story because in this instance, I think we did a good job figuring out specifically what my son needed and making it available to him, and I think there might be parallels with your son (who's awfully little to sit through an assembly, DX or no!) While I think no assemblies are a very good answer, I think maybe there are some intermediate steps you can take to ease his discomfort and reduce the need for stimming. Maybe you could ask if he could be seated near the door, and permission to go outside to make noise and wiggle as needed. Maybe a hoodie sweatshirt would work to reduce the noise, if that's what the problem is.

Maybe the problem isn't the noise, but sitting still for a ridiculous length of time. The vest described above might work; another thing that I'd heard that made sense to me was to stretch a thera-band around the front legs of a child's chair so they have something to press against the backs of their legs.