Setback

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Well, it appears that our year of nonviolence has ended. I am hoping desperately that this doesn't become a full backslide instead of a setback but it's too early to tell.

DS had a truly horrible day at school: there was a drill, there was a surprise speaker on a subject he's uncomfortable with, and the final straw was that as kids were lining up, one of them cut him in line, and when it was clear to him that talking wasn't going to get him anywhere, he cursed at the boy and then grabbed him by the neck to move him back to his place. Pragmatics gone horribly, horribly wrong. I don't think the boy intended to anger him, at least initially he was just fooling around - but he gave as good as he got, and the two of them were in the principal's office when I got to school.

Unfortunately, the talk of the playground as I walked up to school was that DS tried to strangle the other boy.

This is going to take a lot of time to unravel. He took forever to calm down enough to talk about it, after that we went over what happened. DS can't fathom why a kid would do something like cut in line and refuse to move without intending to cause humiliation, and I can't find a way to explain that friendly kids sometimes do that (I have good reason to believe the other boy in this case - he stands up for my son all the time. I am guessing he was purposely teasing him, but I don't think he meant it hurtfully.)

The school vice-principal seems to have a good grip on the situation, and plans to keep the two of them in for recess to talk about alternative ways they could have handled the situation. I've had DS script and go over an apology for what he did that explains what happened. We implemented our consequences for violating the "no angry touching" rule.

Not sure what else I should do. DS is in bed. I think I'm going to go cry now.

Two steps forward, one step back.

This is your step back.

You can and will move forward again. Stick to the process, do what you know.

(((((((((((((((hugs))))))))))))))

^^This! Hang in there! Sounds like this was a perfect storm of troubles hitting him all in one day. Chances are those days will be few and far between.

I have had really good reception from my 11 y.o. DS from the book A 5 is against the law. I picked the parts to go through with him as it has some issues for older children. I made those issues more age appropriate. He has began asking is this just a 3 or a 4? and has made the comment, I think that is a 5 to actions taken by TV characters.

Let me tell you - kids take line-cutting seriously. There's no "friendly" cutting in line.
Hope the school makes sure BOTH kids apologize, and not just your son. He may not know the appropriate way to stand up for himself, but at least he was making an effort.

When I was in school, people sometimes let their friends cut in line. It wasn't an all the time thing, and sometimes the friend asked "can I cut" and sometimes they just assumed you would let them and stepped in. You might want to tell him that the kid probably thought that he wouldn't mind. Kids did that sometimes so that they could be in line together with a friend. That might help him to see it differently.

_________________
I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
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Thanks, everyone.

I am hopefully optimistic about how things went today: DS came out of school flanked by his female "social worker" friend, and was not a thundercloud. He'd forgotten something and I made him go back for it - and there was a minimum of fuss.

I asked him how things went, and he said he "hadn't needed to apologize" to the other boy, but had offered him the extra snack I'd packed by way of apology (they apparently often share snacks.) I asked if the other boy knew what was going on, and apparently the VP had taken them into the office and made them discuss it in a rational manner, so pre-scripting something had come in handy. The other boy is apparently not angry (that kid is pretty amazing, IMO.) DS seems to be in pretty much the same place socially. He said a few kids had asked him about it, and accepted his explanation.

That being said, this incident brought to light that DS is not doing as well socially overall as he seems to be. The kid he got in the altercation with is really his sole supporter, and the kids he considers friends are, well, not behaving like friends anymore. He's good at mimicking social skills, but that's not quite the same thing as actually having them, and it's starting to wear thin.

He mentioned that all this week his closest friend (not the kid mentioned earlier, a different kid) is now rolling his eyes at him a lot and asking him to leave when he approaches on the playground. Said "friend" has a brother on the spectrum, and I think he's just over the whole thing. I also think this kid, who might have been a tiny bit delayed himself, has caught up with the other kids and wants to talk sports and girls and whatever and has no interest in role-playing or incessantly talking about weaponry.

Sadly, instead of learning from this behavior, DS refuses to associate himself with the "nerdy" kids who might share his interests. I get it: he's not into sports, but he isn't exactly a math/science supergenius, either...but that's not leaving him a lot of options. I wish I could change his mind about them.

I'm going to talk to the school to ask that they work on the pragmatic issues of standing in line, as well as the pragmatics of teasing: while I don't think the other kid intended the situation kindly, I don't think he meant to infuriate DS, either - it's the middle ground, the neither/nor that he struggles with.

Thanks again, everyone, for giving me a place to vent.

Many Mom's probably wouldnt agree with me but I tell my son the truth....some people are just mean! If this boy has stood up for your son before maybe you should ask why he felt the need to be mean to him now? I think its ok to talk to the other child or the other childs parents without making it sound like your kid is the poor handicapped child (sorry about that word, Ive gotten used to it living here) and their child should know better. I or my husband will say that we know that our son is difficult and once he gets upset it may appear to other kids to look funny. He sometimes cries more like a child half his age and he was picked on in his public school and it has taken me a long time to teach him that calling someone stupid or annoying is not right. I have had the talk with him many times "does it feel good to be called stupid?" "do you want to be a mean person?". He is getting better....one moderately autistic boy in his class who does a lot of echo annoys my son but the other day he didnt have money for a candy bar so my son used his own money that he earned to buy him one....however he did tell me that he still doesnt like him .
I just think that its good to try to explain to the other kids about your son and even explain to your son that some people he may not be able to be friends with because they will not understand him and some people do mean things because they are just mean. No matter what you do you can not hide the fact that your child is different and always will be. Its our job to teach our kids that its ok and it doesnt matter if everyone likes them, its ok to be different. However we also need to teach them that violence solves nothing and he needs to learn to self calm.

Its very hard for me to understand why people are mean, and Im 44, but I know it would have been comforting to me if my Mom would have told me that it was ok and that she understood that there are mean people in the world. I felt very guilty growing up when people would be mean to me. To me they seemed mean but I was told that I was the bad one for hitting them or for calling them names because when I was upset I could not speak properly and could not explain what they did to me, like spitting in my hair....they would ask me where and I would look for it on my head and the teacher laughed at me and called me a liar, I was so upset I started to cry and he said that proved I was a liar (true scenerio). Later I explained to my Mother but she never stuck up for me at school but then again she is Aspie as well and scared to talk to people. In third grade I had a horrible abusive teacher that would paddle the kids in front of the whole class, she tried to do it to me once but I vomited all over her...they thought I was sick, I was only scared. She also would grab my face and force me to look at her because she said I was a liar because I wouldnt look her in the eye, it was when I started feeling guilty about looking at people. I wish my Mom would have explained but she would only talk to me and tell me she was sorry and that she had strict teachers too. She would tell me she was sorry I could not make friends and that she had trouble making friends but I wish she would have told me that some people are just mean. I needed to know that and it took me a long time to learn that. No one taught me how to self calm or that it was ok to do that.
Its a long learning process....like the boy who echo's, he is not mean, he cant help himself like Maddy (my sons sister)....I suppose that helps, that he understands her.

However the boys who stole my sons Pokemon cards and then told him he was stupid to think they were his. I picked him up sobbing so hard it took me nearly ten minutes to find out what happened. After my husband called the school the next day the boys lied to the teachers who, of course, believed them, that they found them on the floor....they were in his backpack, in his pokemon book, and my poor little boy was convinced by his teacher that these boys found the cards, that he must have dropped them....I was not putting up with that. I told him that I was sorry but some people lie and some people steal. I explained that the boys probably really wanted the cards as they were asking him for them when he brought out his book but that it was still wrong of them to steal them and it was wrong for his teacher to tell him that they found him when he knows they were in his book. Im not about to let anyone make my son question himself because they insist that he does. Im so glad that he is not at that school anymore and if we keep my daughter there next year we will ask that she does not have that teacher. If she did not understand my Aspie and abused him that way she will never understand my Autie and if she messes with another one of my kids I may have difficulty self soothing !

Im sorry for you, I know how hard it is when you think you have made headway and then it feels like everything has fallen apart. Maybe later you can talk to him because he probably feels even worse than you do, I know I would. I would feel like I disappointed everyone by screwing up. I just would not be able to explain how I felt. Maybe your son feels this way, maybe he feels that he upset you and his school and maybe his "friend". Its hard to put all that into words when you are an Aspie.