Dark Thoughts - are these something to worry about?

Urgh! First day back at school and DS (14) has earnt himself a two day zone placement (isolation from classes and break times) - he was asked to do a poem about his English teacher (who he really doesn’t like) and it was so dark and evil it was scary! Xxxx should die xxx should die a painful death etc Scream SENDCO have asked to talk to him over the weekend oh which I’ve already done and he’s like “it’s just words in my head, I don’t meant it” - having had a lovely calm boy over the Xmas period and now going back to school we don’t know where to go from here. He’s not a bad kid and even
School have said that but he refuses a lot which gets him into trouble. Anyone experienced this?

Parents
  • There is pretty good evidence that dark thoughts and Autism go hand in hand. I know that my own relationship with death is one of abject detachment and a complete lack of empathy. That’s not to say I don’t care and would mean anyone any harm, it just means that I’m very logical about life with I view as being a virus like terminationary disease with death being the inevitable outcome. 

    Therefore what I would suggest is that DS doesn’t like the task or may not like the teacher, so us simply expressing that in the poetry. The problem is more about proportionality in his thoughts than actual true meaning, and it’s somethimg that we see a lot of in society as a whole. Take for instance, and I am not implying anything about DS, teenagers that carry knives because they think it’s cool and will kill someone simply for belonging to a rival group of friends ie a gang. Do those teenagers realise what they are doing? I doubt it, they simply hear music that makes it seem cool, tv shows with violence without the true impact of said violence, video games that feature violence without the cost of it, so imitate it without knowing the effect of their actions. So rather than a negative, this could be seen as a positive with DS that there is work to do surrounding empathy, impact of his words on others (and visa versa), and a fuller range of language to express thoughts about not liking things. 

    So I applaud you for being concerned, please use the information positively thoug and try to persuade the school the same.

    Andew

Reply
  • There is pretty good evidence that dark thoughts and Autism go hand in hand. I know that my own relationship with death is one of abject detachment and a complete lack of empathy. That’s not to say I don’t care and would mean anyone any harm, it just means that I’m very logical about life with I view as being a virus like terminationary disease with death being the inevitable outcome. 

    Therefore what I would suggest is that DS doesn’t like the task or may not like the teacher, so us simply expressing that in the poetry. The problem is more about proportionality in his thoughts than actual true meaning, and it’s somethimg that we see a lot of in society as a whole. Take for instance, and I am not implying anything about DS, teenagers that carry knives because they think it’s cool and will kill someone simply for belonging to a rival group of friends ie a gang. Do those teenagers realise what they are doing? I doubt it, they simply hear music that makes it seem cool, tv shows with violence without the true impact of said violence, video games that feature violence without the cost of it, so imitate it without knowing the effect of their actions. So rather than a negative, this could be seen as a positive with DS that there is work to do surrounding empathy, impact of his words on others (and visa versa), and a fuller range of language to express thoughts about not liking things. 

    So I applaud you for being concerned, please use the information positively thoug and try to persuade the school the same.

    Andew

Children
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