Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Teasing, no friends, school refusal

I have not been on this forum in ages. We have been stumbling through the ups and downs of life with our two lovely but intense twice exceptional children. Today marked the first outright school refusal of my DS9. We have had many resistant mornings requiring encouraging, coaxing, and firm assertions that he has to go to school. He is having a really tough year. As I have mentioned on here before awhile ago, he is grade accelerated, so he is quiet young for his year, and he is diagnoses with HFA and ADHD. He is currently unmedicated due to cons outweighing pros.

He is being teased, and he does not have any real friends. As far as I know, he does play with kids at lunch and recess most of the time, but when it comes time for him to have a birthday party, he has to think of who to invite, and he does not get any invites. The pain of this is compounded by his younger sister seeming to have a stream of incoming birthday party invites.

So current status from his perspective is that kids at the school do not like him, they tease him, he has a reputation, and no one will ever like him at that school. He has very articulately informed us that he would like to go to a different school next year. He says that school itself is very good, and with different kids it would be a good experience. I am not convinced that a change of school would solve his problems. Ideas that have been going through our mind are, undo the grade acceleration, as he does seem to get on a bit better with the kids in the year below. Send him to the local public school for year 6 next year, and then come back to his current school in year 7 to start secondary when there is an influx of new kids and he might find a like-minded peer, or just work very closely with the school and hope that the mix of students in his year 6 class is better than what he has now. I think there are some kids in his same year who are with a different teacher this year who he might get on with.

In the mean time, for this year, I think we need to meet with his teacher again and see what can be done. We have met a few times this year, and I think the teacher was going to try to foster some positive social relationships for DS. DS sees a psychologist and he has been going to a social skills group, so we are trying stuff on our end. But he feels that nothing is being done on the school end to deal with being teased. It is hard because he tends toward vagueness, which he always has. So it is everyone teasing him all the time. That is hard to work with. He has identified one student in particular who he thinks incites it, but he says everyone follows along.

It breaks my heart, and I don't know what to do. He is still such a little boy, and there he is, in tears, saying he can't go, he can't take it anymore, he just wants people to like him and to have friends.

I really feel for your in this tough situation. What has the school said they are going to do about the teasing? Will they provide notes of what they see? Will they monitor the hallways closely and see what they find?

Does the psychologist have any recommendations for the school? I feel that school refusalis a big problem and the school has to help you in solving it.

Is the teacher supportive of your child, do they model appropriate behavior, or allow teasing (or even encourage it)? Do they talk about your child positively, or point out faults?

In the past, we did have one teacher that (maybe without them realizing it) was encouraging teasing.

Practical advice, do you have other activities, religious groups, etc where your son can look for friends, or a sense of belonging? That is what I would try first.

I want to be very careful not to come across as not believing your DC, but I do feel that it is worth asking the question of how you know that he is actually being teased as much as he thinks he is. (And it may be that it is every bit as much as he perceives.) Often, kids on the spectrum have a hard time accurately reading social interactions (as you know), so it is not uncommon for them to perceive interactions that are within normal limits for positive or neutral middle school social encounters as teasing, or to lack the skills to shut down smaller-scale teasing before it turns into larger-scale teasing. It might be helpful to see if the school can assign a school adjustment counselor, social worker, or psychologist to process some of these social interactions with him in the moment (social autopsies), preferably with input from adult observers, who may be able to take a bigger picture view of the sequence of interactions.

It would be particularly helpful if a skilled observer could sit in discreetly on his class for a few sessions, at various times of day, and in various groupings, to see what actually happens. (It's true that the kids will be exceptionally good at the beginning of the observation, but my experience is that this age group will revert to type within the first 15-20 minutes of the observation, so a 30-60 minute observation will probably be long enough to capture some of their typical behaviors. Preferably, as I mentioned, on several different occasions.) This would help pin down some of the ambiguity of the nature of the teasing he reports, and give staff some places to target for moving the behavior of the other children in a healthier direction, as well as provide feedback to the facilitator of his social skills group on skill-building that would help him navigate social situations more effectively.

Thanks for your responses.

Howdy - We started cubs recently, and my son is really enjoying that. It is a really small group, but luckily he seems to get on well with the other kids. That is definitely a good outlet for him. I emailed the school today to organise another meeting. There is no concrete plan in place at the moment. I knew DS was struggling, but I hadn't realised it had gotten this bad.

aeh, we do wonder exactly what goes on in school. I know DS does have a tendency to overgeneralise, and we are not sure how extensive the teasing actually is. He does tend to be very reserved though when it comes to giving specifics about things that upset him. There have been a few occasions in previous years, one at a previous school where something fairly serious happened and he only mentioned it a little bit once and would never open up about it again. If I had missed that little window, we would not have found out. Your suggestion of having someone in school with him to see what is actually going on and help teach him how to deal with situations sounds like a fantastic idea. We don't want to underestimate a serious problem with peers, but we also don't want to interpret the actual peer issues as bigger than they are. I know it is a real situation for him, but the solution obviously varies depending on what is actually going on.

I know there is one student he has named, and the teacher mentioned at a previous meeting that there was one student who they are aware has been 'policing' other students and they were working with that student to improve behaviour, and my son has mentioned on student in particular he is having trouble with. So I think there are some real issues going on, but how extensive they actually are I do not know. But he feels it acutely, so I guess we do need to figure something out even if a lot of it is teaching him how to reinterpret what is going on around him.

As a parent, it is such an emotive issue, and teasing issue aside, the thought of him wanting and not having friends does break my heart.