Originally Posted by Mk13
DeeDee, you must be a psychic or someone who can see into the future?

Only insofar as my DS with AS is 10...

Originally Posted by Mk13
There was an incident at the school today and I only found out about it from the school bus company and not even the school! About 20 minutes before the bus was supposed to come to bring DS home I got a phone call from the bus company letting me know that the teacher/s had to carry DS onto the bus kicking and screaming and the driver wanted to give me heads up about it so I wouldn't be surprised when he came home all agitated and that the school would probably call me with the details of what happened.

I'd want a phone call about that, from the teacher, right after it happened. Is this the special needs preschool (or is that the other kid)? Is it typical for him that being angry makes him break out?

This kind of rule-based meltdown is totally characteristic of preschool/early elementary kids on the spectrum. How often does this happen with your DS? If more often than rarely, handling it has to be written into the IEP, for his safety and to help the teachers do the right thing.

Originally Posted by Mk13
letting HIM do the job. ... seemingly unimportant thing except when you have a kid on the spectrum who is a stickler to the rules, especially when it is a school rule.

Part of his social skills training will have to be learning that jobs like that are guidelines, not rules; that if you're wronged, you can speak nicely to the person who you feel wronged you (sometimes), but you can't flip out at them; often you have to swallow hard and go with the flow; things like that.

Originally Posted by Mk13
I have done my share of carrying him into his room to calm down but I do make sure I explain to him WHY it is being done and usually I can reason with him over things so I can avoid these situations. He does calm down when he understands what is going on.

You will not be able to mandate that the school handle things as you would at home; the relationship is different. However, you can create, either within the IEP or as a behavior plan, a list of strategies that help your DS.

Originally Posted by Mk13
Plus if this is the way they handle issues like these, there is NO way I would let my younger one who also qualifies for the program in. He can't really verbalize what's happening during the day and the slightest things upset him. No way would I let anyone handle him in this way!

I don't think you can generalize that this is always the way they handle things. (It sounds less like a policy and more like "oh no, the bus is here" and a snap decision on someone's part.)

But you should give the teacher a call, and discuss what she saw, and what she did. Then you can make a plan with her for what happens the next time his social rigidity gets in his way to the point of meltdown: best strategy for calming him down fast, what to do if he doesn't calm down fast, etc.

Originally Posted by Mk13
when the kids are very particular about certain things, very literal, etc. ... what do you have in your kids' IEPs as to how to deal with these situations?

First of all: we had a home ABA program in which flexibility was the #1 goal. That enabled all other progress.

The Present Levels in the IEP should describe his current skills. That is, how often he is inflexible, what it looks like, what he is thinking. It should include calming and redirection strategies that work for your DS, and goals for teaching him to be flexible in the classroom (written so that data can be taken on them). This usually requires 1:1 teaching that is then generalized to other settings.

HTH,
DeeDee