Little Bug has reached a new low when it comes to school. Any mention of school, school bus, new friends, results in NO. We saw a school bus yesterday. He looked at me with tear filled eyes and said. “No bus, daddy. Pease no bus?”
Hopefully this is normal, although he seems to be taking it to an extreme. We took him shopping for shoes yesterday and I stupidly mentioned school. That tanked the whole damn thing. He screamed and cried and stimmed and lashed out at the boxes and his parents.
This weekend, to try to ease the transition, we made a paper chain to count down until school. We thought he might like to pick one of his favorite colors- red or blue- for the first day of school. When I asked him what color should be the first day of school, he looked at me and said, “BLACK”. He *hates* the color black and yet this was the color for the first day of school.
When watching Thomas the Tank Engine, we saw an episode were Thomas had to help the children get to school. He immediately covered his ears, turned off the TV and then put away Thomas.
We have tried taking him to the school in order to make him excited about it as well as talking about other people who go to school. No dice. He isn’t interested in school.
He has also begun to regress and his speech therapist is concerned. He is unable to answer yes or no questions correctly 80% of the time. He has begun to show much more echolalia in his speech.
I need to email the school and tell them that they have a storm brewing. They need to know that he is petrified. They should have some sort of supports on the bus and to get him off of the bus. We also should get a recap of his first day.
4 comments:
I don't really have any useful suggestions to offer, though I agree that bringing the team together to look for ways to turn this around ASAP is the right plan.
There aren't many inviolable laws of autism that I think apply in just about any situation - at least I'm not smart enough to have figured them out - but for me, one I've heard a lot definitely is.
"All behavior is communication." often continuing with "especially because our kids struggle with every other way of communicating."
Starting school may be a very hard adjustment on everyone, but you've really zeroed in on some important things that may indicate there's more happening here. I know this is easier said than done when things are burning down around you all, but keep writing these kinds of notes down. Eventually either you all or somebody else will start figuring out more about the patterns.
My heart goes out to you all. It's in similar situations here that I feel the most helpless. And that's one of the hardest feelings a parent can have.
Hang in there.
This morning I decided to do a google search to see how hard it would be to find my blog using only some of the words. And about 5 links before my blog came yours, I clicked on yours because of the reference to little bug only to be ironically surprised.
My blog is called Come Here Little Bug. I referenced it after my daughter whom I often refer to as little bug, thus always saying "come here little bug". So okay whatever we shared the little bug thing, imagine how much more surprised I was to find that you have a son with ASD. My daughter also has ASD and developmental delays. When you said your son covered his ears, it automatically made me think of my daughter. While I blog about the my little bug, I don't really reference autism much, but always excited to find another blog that I can relate too.
I hope that your son warms up to school, all you can do is try and take it one step at a time if need be. My little bug is 7 now, so school is well underway for us. If you ask her any day at any given time she always if she wants to go to school she always gives a firm "NO" but she gets private transportation to school and she gets on the van without hesitation and at the end of the day, most days she gets an outstanding report. If your son gets to school and finds out it isn't so bad, he may just enjoy it. I know when she first started school I was a nervous wreck and was really concerned about her going from a partial day of school to a full day and they agreed that if it seemed to be a problem they would call...but she did just fine.
I'm not sure to what degree your son has autism. As you know the spectrum is pretty wide spread. Considering my daughter is on the spectrum she is a pretty out going child. When it was time for her to start elementary school, I knew she wouldn't be in a mainstream class so we first looked at a PDD class. It was so drab that when I left there I wanted to cry and I told the administrator that if my daughter had to be in that classroom I'd rather homeschool. We agreed to look at a life skills class. I was a little hesitant with that idea because I had been told oh the only thing they will learn to do is tie their shoes and brush their teeth. Well yes, the do learn to do those things, they learn personal care...but they do not shy away from academics either and my daughter has greatly thrived in the happy interactive environment.
If it isn't a problem you may want to consider letting your son take a toy of his own that he enjoys at home that way he has something familiar. Even when I'm not sure if she understands or not when I tuck her into bed at night I try to explain to her what tomorrow will hold. Like the obvious, get up, get dressed, eat breakfast and that the bus will come and the bus will go to school and she will learn new things and have fun and have recess and have lunch and then she will come home to see mommy. I've said it enough times that now she repeats it all back to me, she finds it amusing.
Anyway, I'm sure you didn't need a big long run down of my account, I was just tickled to find your blog.
Take Care.
No suggestions here, either. But I will say that the school front for us has ended up being less scary now that it's underway than it was back when we were anticipating it. We are moms to a 23 weeker who may or may not be on the spectrum (she is kind of borderline...has a lot of spectrumy/sensory behavioral stuff, a massive speech delay, developmental delays, communication delays, etc etc etc). She also exhibited a lot of behavioral stuff in anticipation of preschool back in July (she couldn't verbalize her fears but acted them out a lot). It turns out that, even though she's still having social/communication issues, that she really does enjoy preschool. It hasn't been a seamless or problem-free process (we have had a lot of difficulties with services and aides not showing up and such) but she is learning a lot and thriving and making some real developmental gains.
Anyway, I hope things turn out better than you or the Little Bug anticipate right now. And I'm glad I found your blog--it's interesting and insightful.
Thank you guys for your support. Its nice to be reminded that you aren't the first on this path.
Nick and I have had it our goal to have daily notes for these sorts of situations so that at the end of the week we can go back through and figure this out.
Again, thank you all!
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