Published on 12, July, 2020
We are awaiting an assessment, and forms from the school and myself have been forwarded to the appropriate service.
In the meantime, the school want to meet to discuss my daughters needs, and how they might help support her. The thing is, I don’t think there’s anything she particularly needs. As mentioned here, she is the perfect pupil! Her problems start when she gets home.
Do you have any ideas for us? My daughter is 14 and between us we cannot come up with anything solid. She already does what’s best for herself, for example, chooses to sit alone in class so she can concentrate...
I guess if staff knew of her possible situation, they might not think her lack of eye contact, or ‘questioning’ look on her face is down to a bad attitude! She’s unlikely to respond to someone talking at her, if they haven’t called her name. How does she know they are talking to her if she isn’t looking at them?..
Definitely get the "recognising lack of eye contact as normal/not forcing eye contact" and "using her name to get attention" things in the plan- that's a good start!
Some of the reasons her problems are apparent when she's at home might be due to things she is experiencing at school, maybe things that she isn't even consciously aware of herself. We often mask our autistic traits in public (a survival tactic in a world that's not built for us) and let all the pent up stress go at home- very common, especially with us girls who tend to be such masters of disguise!
I suppose another good thing to start with might be to have it written down in her IEP (individual education plan) that when she does those things that are "best for herself" that is to go unchallenged by the teacher (e.g. going to sit by herself when there is a seating plan that puts her elsewhere in the classroom). She might be fine now but with a particularly inflexible teacher I can see that situation blowing up. Having it in there would nip that in the bud.
Is she ever disturbed by extraneous noises or other stimuli that the school could try to minimise (e.g. is it hard for her to concentrate when a fan is on, or she is sitting in bright light)?
Does she ever feel she needs a break from the classroom? Might she have a card or a note on her IEP that lets her take that break- perhaps under the guise of going to the toilet if she is self-conscious about appearing different from other pupils- as and when she needs it?
How is her friendship situation? Do other pupils ever pick on her? Might she need some help to socialise? She's reaching the age at which social politics suddenly get very hard to navigate- how is she finding that? What might school be able to do to help?
I hope these might be good starting points.
Thank you for your response. I did broach the subject with my daughter again last night, and she stated she didn’t need special treatment. She said no one would challenge her sitting by herself, and that nothing at school agitates her...noises etc
Her friendship situation has been good for the last 4 or 5 months. She’s never been bullied, but like most children, she has had the odd occasion where someone might have been a bit mean and she didn’t retaliate, but not during high school.
She gains new friends all the time, but inevitably it falls apart. I always feel my daughter has said or done something inadvertently, and hasn’t come across as wanting or needing the friendship, so the friend moves on. There’s never any bad blood, but my daughter is clueless as to what went wrong.
Most of the time she’s questioning what people said and is unsure of the context it was said in. She’s in a constant state of confusion with understanding expressions, and tones of voice, and things like sarcasm. I say constant, it’s more like 70% of the time. I have always given her advice on communication and social things instinctively, even before I suspected she might have an ASD
On a side note, she has been very volatile lately. I’m assuming it’s because things have been stirred up by the SENCO teacher requesting we meet to discuss support. She’s had 2 meltdowns since, which have had her hitting herself which is awful to see. I do wonder if she has ADHD at times, but wouldn’t this rear it's head at school?