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!
