Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy "forget the IQ, deal with his behaviour" ???

Thanks again everyone. My son's psychologist actually thinks that the whole losing privileges thing won't work on DS because he is quite oppositional and defiant (but not ODD) and won't really care.

The thing for me is that when DS loses a privilege that he loves, like missing out on his favourite TV show ("Scrapheap Challenge") he has a meltdown. Full on anger, distress, hitting, spitting. Even the threat of missing out on Scrapheap Challenge is enough to get him angry. Tony Attwood for instance says the special interest should not be used as part of a punishment (something like that) and I certainly believe this applies to my son.

If there was an activity at school that he loved, it would be something of a special interest. If he was to lose that, he would flip out and even though he would calm down within 10 minutes, it's such an intense 10 minutes that doesn't end there. We feel the repurcussions for some time to come and due to his memory recall abilities, he remembers the hurts

However there are plenty of times when he does act inappropriately deliberately, even calling my attention to what he is doing (this is when he is disciplined). Another example is hitting a child lightly and then gradually hitting harder to see what the adult will do. If he did something wrong deliberately like this at the school then yes, there should be consequences. But if he was acting on impulse, it's completely wrong IMHO.

hkc75: I literally received "The Out-of-Sync Child" today in the post as well as the follow-up book with activities. I think you're right, my son does the fight response. He has never been one to withdraw from a stressful situation, he will try to gain the upper hand somehow.

IronMom: you raise some points I've been debating myself. Sometimes I wonder why there's such a push by 'the system' to mould my child in to something else. People are tolerant of 'eccentric' adults like my Aspie husband and his Aspie family but eccentricity appears to be a big no-no in children. And there's no way I want my son's eccentricities to be suppressed, they're what make him who he is. Sure, there are big problems with the social skills and he needs help there but I really hate feeling like psychologists and teachers see him as "broken" and in need of boot camp to be made better.

Taminy: thank you for the link!


What to do... on one hand I think let's try it because my son might love it and I feel we should at least give him a chance. There have been a few occassions where we thought he would flip out but was fine so we know there's the possibility he might enjoy school and having friends. The school is also big on building self esteem and he needs that. I get the feeling that any praise my son gets from his parents is "yeah big deal". But if he received encouragement from other kids, it may help. I have seen him play with his 8yo friend and he did really well.

Any more opinions welcome!

Another update! I had a long chat today with a teacher who specialises in G-AS kids (Gifted-Asperger's). She too disagrees with the exclusionary, punitive approach and believes it's the wrong way to deal with Aspie and AD/HD children.

We also discussed the likelihood of my son receiving the intellectual challenges at home-- I said I can not imagine my son getting home from school and then me doing stuff with him to fully satisfy the intellectual needs. The poor child will already be exhausted and I doubt he'll want to do anything more than unwind and relax. Besides, I would *want* to help him relax and de-stress when he gets home.

I also didn't think the classroom was very Aspie-friendly, I felt a bit overwhelmed my all the visual distractions!

The specialist teacher agrees that the social side of things is such an important factor with my son... but there is a good chance he will not have the best experience there because a) the school uses an aversive approach to controlling behaviour; b) his sensory issues are pretty big and c) he will be underchallenged and therefore likely to be disruptive (and chances are he will be punished for that in a way that might provoke more undesireable behaviour).

On the plus side, this teacher said she wants to work with my son in a sort of mentor role. This is great news for us.

Still, there's a huge void where my son's social interactions are concerned. His weekly social skills group isn't going to be anywhere near enough. I have investigated local homeschooling groups to see if anyone else is in a similar situation so the children can get together but no such luck

I think the punitive approach works in the short-term but not in the long term. It has never worked that well with my oldest. I was such a stubborn kid - yeah, you want to take that away from me? Fine, I never wanted it in the first place. It can be a great way to squelch a love for something.

Afterschooling in the early years can be quite easy. I used a curriculum called FIAR. It was basically a list of books and it gave you geography, history, art, music, math, science ideas to bring up with each book. It was great to snuggle up and read a book and discuss these things at the end of the day. By 2nd grade, the homework was piling up, afternoon sporting activities and increased stress at school from lack of challenge required even more downtime in the evenings.

I don't think you need someone in a similar situation, just someone who understands your situation.

I just though I'd share my story to offer another possible alternative. We ended up approaching the school with a compromise. We all agreed that they couldn't meet my DD9's educational needs in the elementary school setting for most subjects, but needed that help with social skills, pragmatics, inferences, you know the drilll. We wrote an IEP for a partial day. She (an Aspie as well) attends PS in the morning for speech therapy, social work, and ELA to work more on pragmatics and inferences. She is way ahead in reading so they make some accomodations within the classroom for that. She homeschools all her other subjects and attends a YMCA homeschool gym and swim program. She participates with Girl Scouts.

Everyone, literally eveyone who has regular contact with her has noticed a significant positive change in her over the last year. This compromise allows her to move ahead in her subject material at her pace, and to pursue her passion in science, while getting the help and support she needs. When I first appoached the school they weren't willing to do anything. We then had all her testing done by the school to back up our independent evaluation and involved an advocate from ARC. The school seemed to suddenly realize what they "could" do once the advocate was involved and have been very accomodating. I give the local principal much credit in our success once he saw the problem and understood it.

I have to run kids today but if you want to talk more PM me.

Thanks

After discussing the situation with the special ed (Aspergers and Giftedness) teachers we know who have been involved with my son, we all agree that the boot camp approach of the school, together with the punitive system is exactly what my son doesn't need. In fact, his former preschool teacher told me her coworkers used the punitive approach with my son and it never worked, just escalated the behaviour. But when she would use her approach (the 'right' thing to do with children like my son), he would comply 99% of the time at the first request without a fuss.

I have also had a couple of great learning opportunities for my son practically fall in my lap so I am very pleased. One is the potential for a special ed friend to work with my son as his tutor and therapist next year. The other is a teacher dealing with 2e kids like my son wanting to work with him in our home. Wow wow wow! Both options will provide a little more social interaction and chance to practise social skills but we are still on the hunt for play and work opportunities with other children.

Soooo does that mean you won't be sending him to that school and will be HSing him?

yep that's right. We're going to be more proactive in providing cooperative work for my son so he gets some social interaction that way (for eg he's very egocentric and dominates play so we'll work on stuff like this and then expose him those situations).

We started his social skills group, he was all over the place and being a bit disruptive at the start. The staff dealt with it well, but to think he would be like this at the school and have them use the punitive approach when there is just so so much sensory stuff going on... nope, can't send him there even if it was great in other areas.

One thing that might help: Quality not quantity. If he's having 4 good hours a week with other kids that's SO MUCH better than 40 bad hours. If he can start getting positive experiences it will go a long way to helping him be open to more and more as the years go on. For that first year I wouldn't push it too hard or stress that it all has to get fixed right this minute. The mentors/teachers are great and if you can get a couple of other one on one things that's good too. If you are going to think about a group class I might look for something that would be helpful with sensory organization. Some common suggestions would be karate, swimming or horseback riding, but it may be better to wait a year.

Once things settle in a bit for him, one thing we've found that works well is to organize small group activities - could be even just one or two other kids. If you will do the planning and get together supplies and/or a teacher if needed, I bet you will have no trouble finding another kid who wants to be involved.

Thanks You are so right about 'quality not quantity'. This is the approach I take with the homeschooling. Because of my son's attention and focus issues, he sometimes disengages after 5 minutes, so I have to make those 5 minutes a really good 5 minutes. That's all it takes for him to learn a new concept and then I take it from there. Thanks for putting it to me that I should apply this to the social side of things.

And can I just say that I've been on the Internet since 1992 and "passthepotatoes" is one of the best usernames I've ever seen

Aw, shucks.

And, FWIW, here success in one on one situations with teachers, and then one on one situations with other kids eventually lead to success in small groups and then bigger groups. It took time, planning and patience but each one of these successful experiences built on the one before. I'm a big believer that for these kids avoidance of negative social experiences is really important.