Advice please...one to one support at school and exclusion

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Our Aspergers son had a major meltdown at school today which resulted in him trashing a room (which is at the side of his main classroom). He was throwing things around the room, and knocking things off shelves. When I arrived to collect him the head teacher was waiting for me. Our son has 1:1 support but his 1:1 is just one of the mum's with hardly any training in ASDs. The head told me that they can't take any more and that they don't feel that things are working, and that it is no longer suitable for him to come to school. I am having a meeting with the head tomorrow but I think she will try to expel him.

He is funded for 25 hours 1:1 help. I just think the school have taken the cheap option of employing one of the mum's rather than a qualified person trained in ASDs. It seems that ever since our son has had 1:1 support his behaviour has got worse!

I don't know if there are any legal requirements for schools to actually train 1:1s. I wonder if the school can exclude him because of his behaviour.

Any advice would be great!.....

i don't know what your regulations are in England, but here in the states parents could call an emergency PPT to discuss further placement

What I am wondering is this --

In England, is the school still responsible in some way to provide education, even if it's to a different school?

Are there any schools locally that are for children with learning disabilities?

If your son cannot currently handle the demands in a school, is there some sort of online school that would be beneficial? Maybe he could do an online school while you search for another option?

Kris

yes the school can exclude him but that is because they don't understand people like us. but if you contact the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal (SENDIST) they can help. it happened to me before (a meltdown like that but i broke a window) and i got excluded for a week for it but that was because the school did not understand my needs as it was mainstream.

our son's school is mainstream too. willnormanuk, how come you were excluded for just a week and not permanently? did you have 1:1 help at school?

the trouble is all the mainstream schools in our area are oversubscribed and have large class sizes. there's only one school with a special unit which is about 10 miles away but that seems to be for ASDs with learning difficulties. Our son is high functioning. Seems there's nothing that fits the bill around here for that! Mainstream or mainstream!

i can't believe that to support an asd kid at school you don't have to have any training. anyone can do it. how does that support kids with asds in mainstream school?

It would definitely concern me if the one-on-one support were making my child's behavior worse! I've noticed here, in our school district, that the aids can vary a huge amount in the level of training, but the parents seem to be able to request a change when that person is not working out well. After all, ANY time you ask two people to be working closely together (as you are when you give a child one on one support) there is the potential that they just don't match up. Can you ask that they try a different support aide, to see if that improves things?

Does your son get any counseling, to help identify issues that might cause meltdowns? Any occupational therapy, to identify and work on sensory issues?

Also, how old is he? That may provide some indication as to what is going on.

Ultimately, being forced to try a different school could end up being a positive thing. Still, you want to be in control of that, not the school. Something in the current situation is not working for your child, and leaving that environment may be for the best.

i have asked for help with anger management but have been told he is too young for it! he doesn't have these anger issues at home. the head teacher is quite rigid. i could ask if she can change the 1:1 supporters that he has but i know i'll have a fight on my hands for that! i know our son really hates of of his helpers!

as for therapies, i don't know if there is anything available for kids this age is there? no one has suggested anything before. if anyone has a kid the same age and their child has had therapy i would be interested to hear.

How old is your son? Sorry, if you've posted it in this thread, I've missed it.

My son has been counseling/therapy through the school off and on since he was diagnosed at age 7. Since the school counselor is very over-scheduled, and he sees her only once a month (basically worthless, in my eyes), we contacted a community mental health organization last year, when my son was 9, and having some very aggressive outburts related to stress. They concluded it wasn't a mental health issue in that the source was the world not being to conform to my son's needs (which makes perfect sense, but we couldn't think of a better resource to try to access) but told us if they ever started a social skills group, they would let us know. About a month ago they set up a group situation with 5 children ages 9 - 10, and my son was given a spot. The focus apparently has been on anger management, with some work on stress management, and my son tells me it's been overall helpful (some sessions more than others, of course). Given that he has to leave school during his favorite part of the day once a week to attend this group, I think that is very positive statement - he honestly seems to feel good about what he gets from the group.

We have been fortunate to have a very pro-active special education team at my son's school. They worked aggressively to get him his diagnosis (it's school use only), and they worked aggressively to help us access the community mental health organization when we became worried about how stressed my son was getting.

If your insurance covers it or you have other resources, you can always choose to purchase these types of services. We needed to go through the school last year because we really did not feel we could afford, at the time, the services we wanted for our son.

Our kids have outbursts because of stress, more often than not. It isn't a manipulative thing with them, it's a "I can't handle anything right now" thing. So talk therapy seems to help, when it's done properly, at least.

Other services my son gets that have been helpful are occupational therapy (through the school), resource (pull outs to work on special skills), and lunch bunch (a social skills group once a week at school). He does not have an aide or one-on-one support person, although another child at the school last year did, and she would sometimes help other special ed children like mine.

Dear collywobble, the reason i was only excluded for 1 week is because they where going to press charges and take me to court for it so they considered exclusion as not too much of a concern. i was not receiving 1:1 support at the time and i was getting into loads of trouble because of my poor anger management skills which meant that i was eventually kicked out completely, i was then moved to another mainstream secondary school where i did receive 1:1 support and was not put into a classroom straight away but then they started putting me into class for all the lessons which made me nervous so eventually i stopped trying to go to school, instead i walked around my village thinking of maths. P.S i would very much like to be able to speak to your son 1:1 because i think that maybe we can help each other, my msn address is on my user profile here so maybe we can chat im free all day because i have no school atm. yours sincerely William Norman (willnormanuk).

Hi collywobble - My youngest son(AS, now 9yrs), like many, did not cope in mainstream school here in the UK, despite having secured a statement and being granted an aide. The aides(all mothers of children at this particular school) were untrained, inconsistent in approach and never stayed in their positions very long as was a common complaint among parents.

The NAS' latest statistics tell us that "autistic/AS children are 20 times more likely to be excluded from school than other children. The main reason being that the school was unable to cope with the child." Having worked with special needs(including autistic) children for many years, having three children(all AS) and being AS myself, I have learned that behavioural difficulties tend to develop incidentally/accidentally as a result of repeated patterns of responding to over-stressed children as they seek to escape that stress. Your son's behaviour, however aggressive, is 'communication behaviour' and is a clear indicator that he is sinking rather than swimming in this particular environment. The problem is that most teachers cannot "speak" or understand autistic communication through behaviour, often not even in special schools. Your son's behaviour means "Help me! I'm anxious!" Anxious children cannot learn when they are fighting to stay afloat. Children swiftly learn that specific behaviour results in teaching staff responding consistently in a specific way. That may mean that the child is removed from the stressful situation for reasons of safety. The child thereby learns that negative behaviours are a wonderful form of communication that forces staff to let them escape from stress.

If the school is to assist your son, they need to find out what it was that overstimulated him, with an emphasis on "over". All children are meant to be under some structured and planned stress in schools and expected to adapt to that stress, in other words, learn. It's when stresses are excessive in intensity, duration, or both, and staff in busy classrooms fail to read/pick up on the subtle signs of beginning anxiety, that problem behaviour develops. Often the young ASD child has neither insight or communication to state "I'm anxious!". Staff generally only realise there's a problem for the over-stressed child when the child explodes and hits, bites or runs etc. The problem is then that the patterns of communication behaviour that receive attention are not the subtle signs, but the loud screams of violent actions. Invariably, the child is labelled "aggressive" and behaviour management is sought to "fix" the child. What actually requires "fixing", is staff training. Staff need to be trained in reading subtle indicators of anxiety, as well as better management strategies(formalised into a standard intervention-teaching plan), as part of your son's whole school programme now and for the future.

I now home educate after my son's mental and physical health deteriorated. He is now thriving in every sense of the word. There are various news items and information on schools, (particularly the state of mainstream schools here in the UK for those on the spectrum) in the "Home Ed Articles" thread here in the Parents Forum.

Sincerely wish you and your son well.

our son is 6 1/2 yrs old.

we had a meeting with the headteacher, and agreed to keep him at home this week, and he can return next week but just for mornings. it will relieve stress all round. when he can better cope at school he can go for full days. i have been teaching him at home for the last 2 days and have quite enjoyed it. he clearly has a real problem with writing. he is capable but unwilling. he says he hates writing.

i am exploring the possibility of a mainstream school with a specialist unit. i would home school him, but my husband is not keen, however, he has been so calm at home for the last 2 days despite the fact that i have been doing school work with him.

I hope the reduced day will help.

My son has an issue with writing, and it caught us by surprise initially. He had started to write at 3 1/2, unprompted, so to discover how difficult and stressful it was for him in school was unexpected. Writing for my son is VERY stressful. Writing is a multi-task function, requiring several thought processes at the same time, and I think it is easy to underestimate how hard this can be for certain children. Because my son can write when adequately inspired, it was assumed initially to be an issue of work ethic. But it is not; it is a real stress for him.

There was another thread on writing recently and I would suggest asking the school to try some of the ideas in that thread with your child. Perhaps you have discovered one of the triggers for his meltdowns, and can start by reducing the stress related to it. The one thing that will not help is his aid insisting he can do it (that common NT way of trying to inspire). Instead, the task will need to be broken down or altered, and your child may need to clear his head before attempting it. It still can surprise me how quickly a large sheet with writing (even solving math problems, which my son loves, when it requires multi-steps that need to be recorded) can switch my son off and into defensive mode. And it is VERY difficult to transform his attitude once he has switched off. At that point, pushing or making suggestions, any steps towards progress, seem to spiral him downward. This is something the teacher and aid will NEED to understand. Refusal to do a task is not stubborness; it is a very real and strong barrier that your child is unable to express.

My son has many school authorized accomodations for writing. We can reduce the number of homework problems he needs to do, or allow him to dictate to us while we write it. We're always walking a fine line on encouraging him to do as much as he can, while helping when needed, but having these options goes a long way towards reducing my son's stress.

Sorry for the long diversion into our situation, but hopefully some of this experience will be helpful to you.

Hello Collywobble,

What a bummer!

According to Tony Attwood, the 1:1 aides are doing work that he believes should be done with someone with pHD level training. The aide needs to be highly trained and skilled. But that is a long-term dream ....

I have 2 sons with Asperger's 9 and 7 years old (I have a 3rd 4 year old son too). The boys starting intensive anger/anxiety management counselling immediately after diagnosis (they were 6 and 8 respectively).

The counselling was at a private Autism/Asperger's clinic.

It is not too early for your son to start counselling/therapy for emotion management.

My sons were not coping at school last year so they only went to school 4 days/week for a few months. The other day they were at the clinic having counselling.

I am fortunate to have very supportive parents. A strategy we use regularly is to send them up to 'Nanna's house' for a holiday. I pull them out of school and send them to my parents for a week.

I am sorry your school is being so unsupportive. Obviously they have little idea of how to successfully manage a child on the spectrum.

When I read posts like yours it makes me fantasise about being a billion-aire so I can fly my private jet to schools all over the world and give them a piece of my mind!

Willnormanuk sounds like an excellent mentor for your son. My sons love meeting older Aspies - my 9 year old was so excited to meet an 18 year old man with Asperger's (Damien Santamauro who has co-authored a book for Aspie male teens).

Anyway, Damien told my son he was smart and this had my son on a high for 1 week. Damien also had a long chat with my son about his experiences and my son keeps saying, 'Damien said this and Damien said that and Damien is wonderful and Damien is my friend and Damien is clever and Damien is wonderful etc etc'

Hele