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refusal to go to school

RosieF

My boy, 14 with asperger has just gone back to school into year 10, a mainstream school with ASC provision. 

From Easter (year 9) we were starting to get refusals to going to certain lessons, we thought this was because these were not his choosen options for year 10 and he no long saw the point of them - okay that seemed fair enough.  Then he stopped going to learning support - refusal to go into the room and preferred to stand in corridors.  A TAF was opened lots of meetings without any real progress.

He started back at school on Wednesday last week, I struggled a lot to get him to school - always trying to keep his a calm as possible - but he refuses to go to any lessons. I had to collect him yesterday, Monday, when he had left the building as was standing on a shipping container (I don't know how he managed to get up there), and there he stayed until I collected him. 

Today he refused to leave his bedroom and baracaded himself in with his bed. I managed to gain entry - on the promised to only talk - and after some digging we got to the point that he wanted (well more intened) to go to his lessons but he just couldn't go there.

I can only think that it's some sort of anxiety?  Learning support at school have suggested that CAMHS could help and a subsequent referal has been made by our Doctor.

Has anyone go though anything like this? - do you have any suggestions?

Any help welcome.

  • Thank you for pointing that out - it is certainly something that I hadn't considered.  I will talk to him about it and ask the SEN team keep a to look out for him - when we eventually get him back in.

    Fortunately, he doesn't go on social sites on his computer and he doesn't want a phone so it's only at school when he faces other children that I need to watch for the moment.

  • Bullying doesn't necessarily preclude having friends of a sort. But bullying, if you're different can be much subtler.

    At 14 most schoolkids are forming 'associations' around their teenage attitudes, cults and perspectives. Someone on the spectrum, not able to compete in social exchanges, and not able to glean enough understanding from them, cannot expect to merge into these new associations. He will feel left out even if not actually made to feel excluded, although the latter often happens.

    People really start to notice the different kid around 13 or 14. There is pressure from new 'friends' not to hang out with the weird kid, so friends he once thought he had he now hasn't got, not in the way he had them before.

    But more particularly, around this age, there will be kids, irrespective of disability awareness, who will take pleasure in pointing out his difference, and taking advantage, and showing him up in front of others.

    So bullying, in the sense you might have seen in your own schooldays, doesn't adequately describe what happens. Name calling (words REALLY can hurt), internet and phone messaging can often occur, being laughed at in the classroom, being much more alone than ever before. It can make the teaching environment exceedingly distressing whereby to a non-autistic person all that might seem to be happening is a bit of banter.

  • Unfortunately he doesn't see the need to talk; for example: if he hasn't got a time table, he expects the staff to know without any words!

    The school have suggested home tutoring but he will not let school into our home.  We've been given some school work to do whilst he's off - that will be a battle -  I explained that to the learning support and they suggest that he meet a learning support assistant in the local library for an hour or so at a time and gain a relationship with that person - who they will try to arrange to be a man (he just relates better to men), and hopefully bring him back into school in small sessions.  There is also a possibility, hopefully, that he will be able to stay with a 1 to 1 until he's ready to go back to the classroom.

    Unfortunately, his favourite teacher (probably his favourite person in the school) who he's had for the last three years is no longer teaching him - that will most certainly have unsettled him.

    I don't think he being bullied - he usually is quite possitive about break and lunch time - he stands in 'his' place on the school yard and his friends approach him, he seems to like this.  He does have problems with eating in front of anyone who it's family and refuses to eat any lunch at school.  I'm hoping that this may be addressed with him having access to a room alone for 10 mins.

    I've started going to counselling recently I doesn't come very naturally to me but I will stick it out. I am over-emotional and cry too easily!!

  • Hi RosieF,  To be honest with you, mainstream school is a frightening place for people with ASD.  There's all the sensory processing problems, the change from one class to another, having to work in pairs and groups, having to speak infront of a class full of people, eat in a big hall, crowds, aggressive and intimidating people... Then there's the issue of bullying and if you're anything like me (I have Asperger's), you keep this all in because you just don't talk about stuff like that.  In addition, there may be problems with understanding some of the work.  I was a top student, but I struggled to understand instructions- everything needed to be very specific - and that's another stressful thing to worry about.  My son also has Aspergers and the best thing I did was take him out and educate him at home.  

  • Hello, i have the same problem, my sons 11 just sarted high school, He's  been hard work going to school from being 6 to start with it was the wrong school he was in it just didn't work so i eventually managed to move him in year 4 which made things a.ittle better, i have fou d its largely due to anxiety around bullying or anxiety about some work hes been told is coming up  i just have to nag him till he spills whats going on then i phone the school and tell them, i honestly don't know what to do with hi  i have never been offered help on the issue and everytime i phoned his junior school with his problem i always got its stuck hes just going to have to get a grip. I am hoping high schools a little different and more willing to work with him.

  • Hi, have the school mentioned anything else apart from learnibng support/camhs?  I would have thought they'd have more to say than that.  Is bullying and/or sensory issues involved perhaps?