Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional new here, need advice

Hi everyone,

I have a 7 year old son who is both gifted and has aspergers. I have working with his school since he entered kindergarten, trying to make his school experience productive. In september he started out in first grade, and quickly moved up to third grade for math and science. Meanwhile, he was so bored in first grade that his behavior was out of control. He would get so frustrated that he ended up being physical to teachers. Anyhow after endless unsuccessful behavior plans, they moved him totally up to third grade because he exhibited no negative behaviors in the third grade class.
That however has changed. He is now exhibiting more behaviors, including a refusal to do writing, flopping on the floor when he doesn't want to do something, and just general rigidity when asked to do something he doesn't want to do.
The school is now discussing moving him (AGAIN) to an EDBD class that only has 4 students in it,(although they say he will be allowed to join the regular class for math and science.
From my research, it seems like all the behaviors are common for an aspie kid. They went so far as to say he is the most academically gifted child the school has ever seen, but his lack of creativity and refusal to do writing have now potentially jeopardized his ability to receive any gifted services. Not sure what to do. His IEP meeting is coming up and I am at a loss...please help!

Does your state have an association for kids with AS, or a more general one for kids with AS, ADHD and LDs? The local folks may know more about your state educational guidelines and possible schools.

Logically it seems that they might want to keep him in 3rd for everything except the subjects where he is having trouble - I think that the general idea is too keep kids in the 'least restrictive environment' possible.

Good idea to look at his site:
Wrightslaw Special Education Law and Advocacy
Mar 15, 2011 ... Wrightslaw is the leading website about special education law and advocacy, with thousands of articles, cases, and free resources about ...
Topics from A-Z - Section 504 - Behavior & Discipline - Caselaw
wrightslaw.org/

For working on his behavior, my favorite book is 'Transforming the Difficult Child Workbook' by Howard Glasser and Lisa Bravo.

I wonder if your son is getting bored with 3rd and actually needs a bump up to 4th?

Flexibility is key, and what works for one part of the year may not work for the 2nd half.

Do you have a professional guide (psychologist or ?) helping you locally? Seems like that would be a good idea if you can find someone you click with.

Keep us up to date - it's scary stuff!
Grinity

Thanks for the reply. That book is not one I am familar with, but will be soon . As far as a professional guide, I think you are right, and I need to find a behavioral psychologist or someone. We currently see a counselor who helps us intermittently when specific issues arise, like the trouble in first grade or potty training when he was younger.

As far as the behavior goes, what I think happened is every morning the kids get a paper with 10 questions or problems on it called "morning work", grammar, math whatever. Two weeks ago, he got one wrong. He was so mortified, he said, "mom, i am so embarrassed, don't even look at it" In spite of all my assurances that it was a great paper, and the teacher saying the same thing, now I think he is so afraid of getting something wrong, that he simply is refusing to do it. The response from the classroom aide is to stand over him and repeatedly redirecting him, something which I think is stupid.
I am frustrated because he doesn't handle change well and I simply refuse to allow them to move him again. When I ask them why he acting this way (he doesn't at home), they say he has a need to control things. Okay, why? Is he anxious? Should I seek a medication eval,something I so don't want to do.

Is the school responsible for bringing in another professional to help if they admit they don't how to manage him?

AAARRRGH!

Thanks, so much

Interesting that this doesn't happen at home. What would happen of he made a mistake at home? I used to intentionally not do things that upset my kid ....mostly without even realizing it.

I think the book will help but getting a Professional who is expert in AS,gets gifted kids, and can interface with the school sounds ideal.

Love and more love
Grinity

Hi Tamlynne,

You wrote:

Yes, these are classic AS symptoms, and it's probably not the first time the school has seen them. It does sound as though they don't have the expertise to deal with what they're seeing; in your shoes I'd seek good outside help.

This is probably a minority position here, but in our family's experience (DS8 gifted with AS) the AS is more important in the early grades than the giftedness. Not that they shouldn't address both, but you need to get him social skills ASAP so he can function at school.

We found that other kids in grades K-1-2 needed to learn reading, writing, spelling, basic science; ours HAD all that but needed to learn social behavior in the classroom. We considered it an alternative curriculum. He didn't really stall in his learning in the academic subjects (because he kept reading widely), but we focused on remediating the AS, and we're not sorry we did that.


An emotionally/behaviorally disturbed classroom is NOT a place for a child with AS. This placement is likely to make everything worse.

ASAP, request in writing a functional behavior analysis. (The Wrightslaw book From Emotions to Advocacy has template letters.) This means they have to take data on his behavior to see the function of the behavior (what he gets from doing it). The data helps you see the patterns; often a bad behavior in school functions to allow the child to escape work he doesn't want to do.

We have had the best success with our DS using both meds to address anxiety and behavior therapy (ABA). The ABA helped us address compliance with instructions and also lots of other areas where DS was weak; it made a huge difference.

Whatever help you get from the school, it is unlikely to be enough to teach your DS enough social skills to be successful; we found that therapy outside school was important. Our therapy team also negotiates with the school on our behalf about things like placement, and trains the teachers. And they write the behavior plan, which means it's done by experts and can actually work.

There are a lot of parents at OASIS who have good advice to offer on remediating AS. The forum is at http://www.aspergersyndrome.org/Forums.aspx .

HTH, best wishes,
DeeDee

Kids with AS are typically very anxious and refusing to do things they are unsure of (or don't like for any reason) is typical. He needs to learn to do things he doesn't want to do; it's an essential skill for eventually holding down a job. He also needs to learn to cope with change, because it happens all the time.

Our DS falls into perfectionism far too easily; it can become totally disabling. AS kids are also often unsure of what consequences a mistake might have, and they can overreact to mistakes because they don't have the social understanding of likely and unlikely consequences.

A gradeskipped AS kid could potentially feel that even more-- what if they pull him from the 3rd grade class because he made a mistake? he can't tell if this is likely-- and then of course it could become self-fulfilling because he's freaking out and they pull him out.

You can start working on tolerating change and uncertainty at home. Make small changes that stretch his ability to cope, one at a time, and encourage him to hang in there. (Drive a different route to a familiar place, or change what brand of bread you buy-- depending on the kid these can be easy or hard.) This strategy is detailed in the book Parenting Your Asperger Child by Sohn and Grayson-- I think they call it "deliberate sabotage" and it's very effective in the long run.

A bright kid can learn the skills of flexibility, compliance, understanding the social hierarchy at school, all these things-- but it still takes surprisingly much work for them, and for a kid with AS, it all needs to be spelled out for them and practiced by rote until it's mastered, one skill at a time.

DeeDee

Thanks everyone for your feedback, I already feel so much less anxious, just talking with people who know what we are going through .
Grinity- thanks, we are still looking for the best fit for a therapist, hopefully soon
master of none- thanks, the last FBA we had simply said he had a need for control, not what was fueling the need

DeeDee- The only reason they grade skipped him was with his IQ he was so bored and the boredom made the behavior much, much worse. I do think he needed the time in 1st and 2nd to work on his emotional development and social skills, but he simply refused to participate in either the 1st or 2nd grade curriculum and just acted out. The move to third was to get him to engage with the academics at all.

I am currently trying to decide if a low dose anxiety med might be the answer. My pediatrician is reluctant to go there yet, but i have a meeting with his therapist in a few days. I believe a lot of his behavior is generated by anxiety and I need to be more aggressive about getting him more help.
I have emailed Cathy Grayson and she is going to send me a workbook that goes with her book so help implement some of those strategies. Ironically I just started working through the wrightslaw book you spoke of (i put it down to read this
I have seen improvements at home, now just need to figure out what do with school. Thanks for all your support, will keep everyone posted.

Tamlynne, one more thing-- I wouldn't let the regular pediatrician prescribe meds of this kind. See if you can find a developmental pedatrician or a psychiatrist who specializes in AS. The dosing can be tricky; you want someone who's done this hundreds of times before and seen other kids like yours.

Best,
DeeDee

Thanks Tamlynne - we want to hear how things are going every once in a while!
Good luck building your team!
Grinity

I just saw this on another list:

Okay, a couple of thoughts, and apologies for only just seeing this.

First, EDBD self-contained is not, from the sound of things, his Least Restrictive Environment, and therefore a violation of his right to a free and appropriate education (also known as FAPE in special ed circles). Schools will try to sucker you in with the lower teacher student ratio, but there's a reason there's a lower ratio-- classroom management. With the Aspergian penchant for mimicry, you do NOT want him in there. They will, essentially, be creating an emotionally disturbed kid-- a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will. It will make them feel like they've been right, but you'll end up with a kid who has far more issues and behaviors than he started with.

In general, I would agree with the idea of learning social skills as a "second curriculum" in younger grades. (The academics I can, and do, supplement.) That doesn't man that school is the only place a child can be "socialized", but that wherever you choose to do it, the social skills are sort of time-limited, to a much greater degree than reading or earth science or multiplication (and make it much easier to learn that stuff in any setting, group or individual). FWIW, I am not a big fan of grade skipping, because the issue I have with my own kids is that they learn differently, not that they're a static two years ahead of their age-mates. Eventually, they end up bored again, and pretty soon you have a 12yo sophomore. Which is okay, I guess, but adulthood hasn't been that unparalleled a thrill that I think my kid needs four or six extra years of it before he's strictly ready. However, I stress that is my opinion about my kid, and yours is a completely different child.

As far as fact that he's afraid to make a mistake...yeah. It's definitely possible to go through life/young adulthood so terrified to be lousy at anything that it severely limits...well, everything. (Which explains being my age and not knowing how to ride a bike, but I digress...) The concept he needs right now, which I freely admit is stolen from a twenty-year-old basketball t-shirt, is "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take". The other piece is that, as a seven-year-old third grader, he's under a lot of pressure to perform. Telling him he's wonderful, smart, and can do it paradoxically can make matters worse, because if he doesn't believe it in his own little heart of hearts (and he may not, because there's the proof in that 90% that OMG, HE CAN FAIL!) now he's stuck with making sure no one knows he's perpetrated this hoax and when they do it will be the end of life as he knows it: "Old Testament� real wrath-of-God type stuff! Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!"

Seriously. Catastrophizing and movie quotes. It's totally how he's thinking, if he's a typical kid with Asperger's.

The other concept he probably needs, and will grasp because he is bright, is that if you refuse to do schoolwork and generally make life difficult for your teachers, they will be motivated to make life even more difficult for him (anything from losing recess to inappropriately dumping him in EDBD). Because they are grownups and therefore in power, they will nearly always win that game, and the rare occasions that they don't will probably cost him. Learning to let the bigger guy win is a tough lesson, but will see him in good stead not only throughout school but as an adult. (There are, of course, age appropriate ways of phrasing all this.)

The following is purely my opinion, and worth the pixels which were killed to post it:

What he needs is to figure out it's okay to fail. To be incredibly bad at something and do it anyway. Probably the easiest way would be to find something you both completely suck at and do it together, making a big deal at having fun with it and laughing at yourself. It's a totally foreign concept, so it may take awhile.

After you do that, he needs something to build him back up again, so he can see that he hasn't suddenly, irreversibly become a screw-up (because if he embraces that identity, let me tell you, nobody can screw up like a gifted kid). A completely "yay me" experience. And then lather, rinse, repeat.

But what I hear from the OP is that the child simply 'can't' tolerate the K-2 setting. I don't claim to understand AS, but I wonder how one can make a child be in a setting that doesn't appear 'to the child' to have anything to offer.

I'm also hearing that 3rd is good maybe 75% of the time or more, and lots of agreement that EDBD room is not the answer.

hummm
Grinity

I'm thinking that, were it impossible to learn social skills when severely underplaced academically, few gifted children over the age of forty would have ever developed social skills. Not sure I agree that it necessarily increases anxiety, either, though I would agree that it certainly can.


At this point, the child in question is placed, and any commentary (at least on my part) is intended to be purely academic and tangential. I certainly am not advocating moving him back with agemates, as that would play all sorts of creepy mindgames with the self-image of a child whose official labels would indicate a tendency to catastrophize, and do it amazingly well. (I suppose I should issue a disclaimer here that four of my four children are gifted, one has Asperger's, and in general our family looks like the poster children for the Geek Theory-- so anything I say should probably be taken through the filter of my own experiential bias.)

But back to social skills and SS groups: the biggest issue I've seen in a school setting is that the more formally they exist, the more likely the school is to justify their existence by adding to them any kid who acts inappropriately in class. So in many schools, they end up being sort of a holding spot for the EDBD classroom waiting list, with the attendant problems of the EDBD classes. What's worked fairly well, IME, is a "lunch bunch" of (nice, well-behaved) neurotypical peers who provide rather more functional role models, combined with social stories and roleplay in a more structured setting. In the early grades a reasonably skilled counselor can finesse the "we're here to teach Albert how to pass for typical" aspect, though that gets tougher in upper grades, as the kids get more savvy.


Agree completely on the "touchy feely writing" comment, btw. One of the FCAT practice prompts this year was "My favorite childhood toy", which caused no end of amusement with the middle-schoolers in this house. (My daughter with Asperger's is actually a pretty good writer, but we missed the boat when we didn't think to name her "Wednesday Addams", and her teacher got a surprise crash course in typically Aspergian dark, dry wit.)


As for the district dropping the ball...sadly, I haven't come across too many parents of 2E kids who can't say that.

Re: behavior log--

The caveat I would add to this suggestion is that it can come back to bite everybody involved if the person keeping the log has moderate-to-poor documentation skills of their own. My daughter's second grade teacher (one year of teaching under his belt, and full of the Wisdom of The Universe-- just ask him) was convinced my daughter didn't understand math because she was drawing instead of making eye contact with him while he taught. (Because...um...kids on the sutism spectrum are really good at that eye contact thing, donchaknow.) The behavior log he kept, at the behest of the IEP team, has followed her since, even with a couple of years of homeschooling in the interim. Every year, I have to point to her straight As and explain that she has no problem with math, she has a problem with making eye contact with teachers who don't comprehend Aspergian boundaries.

Tamlynne,

We ended up homeschooling my gifted/AS son, now 14, in part so that he could work on social skills and academics separately, and in appropriate settings. An emotionally disturbed class is not the appropriate setting for either of those tasks for your son, it seems to me. It does sound like these meltdowns are being triggered specifically by anxiety over missing a question on the "morning work", from what you say, and it further sounds like the aide who is supposed to be helping is NOT improving the situation.

Functional behavioral analysis from a good, qualified, professional might be helpful here, and should absolutely be tried before the school tries to initiate a change in placement triggered by behavior related to his disability, which this most certainly is.

From my own experiences with my own son, who may be significantly different than yours, I don't think that "This is a great paper!" would be very reassuring to him in these circumstances. He knows that he made a mistake, and he is upset over it. Even though a 90% is still a "good" grade from your perspective, he doesn't have the same perspective you do, and it still emphasizes that the "goodness" comes from having right answers. For you to praise the work with the mistake anyway may be confusing and may make him wonder if he is really capable (since he is being praised for getting something wrong), or wonder why you are "lying" to him, both of which could increase his anxiety over this. No blame here, for sure - just a perspective that you might not have considered. I know that it took me a long time to even begin to get a grasp on how my son saw the world and figure out why he reacted to some things the way he did.

My son was only in school (K) for one year, but I still had to work fairly long and hard to get him past the idea that it was okay and not the absolute end of the world to miss answers on a "test" of any variety. In his mind, the point of the test was to be able to get all the answers right, and missing one was no different than missing a hundred. The intensity of the emotion associated with something like this can really be incredible - my son will still occasionally bring up things that he got "wrong" 9 or 10 years ago and complain that the question was worded badly or that the picture should have been larger so that he could see it better or that more than one of the choices was correct or...or...or...

Missing a question is no longer the trauma for him that it was when he was younger (it now just elicits a request for immediate explanation), though he still has some anxiety and perfectionism. It took a while, and quite a bit of explicit discussion of the topic for him to get the idea that the point of tests, quizzes, and other evaluations was at least two-fold: first, to identify areas where you hadn't mastered everything yet and could still learn things, so the teacher would know what to teach you and what you could skip over, and second, to let the teacher know where he or she needed to improve their teaching of topics that had already been covered. Maybe talking about the idea of work as feedback for the teacher might help him reduce some of his anxiety and make him more willing to do the work. Of course, it would be helpful if the school didn't make a big deal over grades, and if he really was allowed to skip over things he knew already - I don't know how realistic that is.

I would definitely insist that he not be discriminated against in provision of gifted services on the basis of his disability, and that the AS-driven behaviors be recognized as such, and dealt with appropriately using a plan developed after functional behavioral analysis and included in his IEP. The plan should include instruction for his teacher(s) and aide(s) on how to minimize triggering and reinforcing these behaviors, and should include explicit instruction for your son on alternative coping skills for dealing with stressful situations, including things like self-talk, deep breathing, requesting to go to a quiet place (which should be granted), squeezing a squishy ball (if he finds that calming),etc.

Feel free to PM me if you want to.

Best of luck on your journey.

Lovely - I think that you expressed the perspective of a lot of our HG and beyond gifted kids, AS or not. I think this sharing will be very valuable to many of us here.
Thank You,
Grinity

The idea that school is intrinsically rewarding because learning is super-fun doesn't work for all kids. People with unremediated AS are less able than most to feign interest or grasp the fun in something outside their limited range of interests, so a classroom feels to them like a chore in any case.

For my DS, in the early elementary years it was blah blah blah blah MATH SCIENCE blah blah, where blah was completely intolerable. In kindergarten/first grade, where it's so much literacy, there was no joy in mudville. Yes, he was genuinely bored because of his academic gifts, but other kids who could read in kindergarten were not literally fleeing, and he was. Once he learned to be more flexible and enjoy more things, and be less anxious about the demands of school, it all made more sense to him, and he liked it better. At that point, the acceleration made more sense and had a chance to succeed.

If a child doesn't have the social skills to comply with instructions or the executive function skills to manage his own stuff, he won't likely function well in ANY school setting regardless of his academic gifts. The academic piece is important, but it's only one piece of what goes on at school.

I'm not arguing against the third grade placement in this poster's case-- I have never seen her kid in action and have no basis to argue for a particular placement. (Except the ED placement, on which I concur with eldertree.) But I would just suggest that until the social skills, anxiety, executive function, and other deficits of AS are addressed, school is likely to feel rotten to him, and he's not likely to be successful there (in the broadest sense of what is required at school).

Best,
DeeDee

Hi everyone,
Just a quick update. He has an appointment with a psychiatrist who specializes in kids with AS tomorrow and will begin cognitive behavior therapy in two weeks to deal with his perfectionism, as well as his difficulties with frustration.
Grinity, I bought the book you recommended and his school aba person is interested in trying to adapt the credit system to both the school and home environment, so I will keep you posted.
His IEP meeting is next week, so hopefully we will have some new feedback before then as his current therapist is going to see him in school in action to try to determine what is going on. I am still on the fence about whether he should move to 4th in the fall or stay in 3rd for the social piece. Not sure yet. He is also scheduled to have a full reeval of everything in april, so we will see if anything else has changed. Oh, and he is starting therapy for pragmatics as well..
Hopefully everything will come together soon..I just want him to have the skills he needs to use his brain as much as he wants to.

All of your advice has been invaluable and much appreciated! Thanks so much,
Tam

Hi everyone,
Just a quick update..Grinity I developed a behavior plan based on the book you suggested and it has been working beautifully! So well i fact that when I went to his team meeting, I suggested a similar one for school and they agreed ! I had prepared for the IEP meeting following the wrights law book emotions to advocacy and the gave me everything I asked for. Yay! He will remain where he is with a one to one aide with ABA training and in the fall will go to a regular fourth grade class with a one to one, with the hope of phasing the aide out eventually.
He was evaluated by a doc and it was determined he doesn't need medicine. With the new behavior plan in place, his negative behaviors at school have decreased by 90%!!! Thanks so much, without your support and encouragement, we wouldn't be on the right track! You all have a made a tremendous difference!

Great to hear!

Awesome!Awesome!Awesome! That is such great news! I love that they are moving him to 4th full time and that the school followed your lead on the behavior plan. I love that our son is being acknowledged for his greatness - yes!!!!

90% decrease! Yippee!
Grinity

Hi Tamlynne,

You are living our life, except for the fact that our school will not allow for grade skipping or advanced academics, so my seven-year-old Asperger son with an IQ of 154 has to stay in first grade doing 2 + 2 = 4 worksheets. They supposedly differentiate in the classroom, but the teacher's efforts are weak at best. When DS acts out from boredom or frustration, he is punished and punished and punished. Your school sounds much better than ours. We are going through hell.

Advocating with Aspies is very challenging and complex, I've been there. I hope you find something that will work for your DS.