Advice Please

Hi. I am new to this website and I hoped someone may be able to share some advice if possible please. My 6 year old son recently has been diagnosed with ASD, he can communicate very well verbally however all other forms of ASD are present both in school and home life. 

His behaviour can be very challenging and I am looking for some advice on the best way to manage this so all of our focus is not solely on him, so the other 2 children are not overlooked. Whilst it is not his fault and we fully support him 100%, I am trying to get a bit ore balance in the family so everyone is ultimately happy!

He also goes to quite a large city primary school which he has never enjoyed and constantly there are issues most days! Now there is formal diagnoses for ASD we hope the school will have the funding for suitable support in class as currently he is 2 + years behind his peers, so we are worried that unless a suitable action plan is in place soon he is going to struggle even further.

I am also writing to see if you think changing his school to a smaller setting would help him and if there are more suitable schools in our area, but I also am reluctant to change schools if we still have similar issues elsewhere.

We just want to do the best for him as I am sure everyone on here feels the same.

I hope someone can share there experiences / knowledge 

Many Thanks

Ben

  • Hi. So sorry for the delayed response, I meant to reply the other day and then got side tracked! Thanks so much for this it really helps! Its really tricky as the school is a good school with good teachers and generally they have been very supportive for our sons needs, but with all of this in place he is not very happy. Our concern is that he will face similar issues at other schools especially regarding social interaction and maintaining friendship groups. I do think he finds the school a bit big and noisy, but I suppose that is only one consideration. We are waiting to see if his support will be much more one on one now that he has a formal diagnosis of ASD.

    Our other children are 4 and 1, it has more of an effect on the 4 year old as he is constantly being attacked often for no reason whatsoever. Thats good advice about asking what changes he would like to see, as like you say it will give a different insiders view on things. 

    Generally our son with ASD is very inflexible and very difficult to manage, no matter what approach we take nothing seems to work. It causes a lot of stress within the family as our attention is often on him  and overshadows our other children's needs. He generally has little respect for us and his siblings which is upsetting as we constantly trying to install good behaviour / respect to people in general. 

    Thanks again for your input, its much appreciated. 

    Ben

  • I have had my children in both large and small schools and each benefited them in different ways. The smaller schools were better academically as teachers were able to spend more time with each pupil and tailor resources / lessons to each child's needs more. Parents can also become more involved in smaller schools and the schools themselves tend to be calmer, quieter places to be.  Large schools, however, do tend to be better funded and more able to provide any extra resources that a child needs such as one-to-one classroom assistance. I would say though that if your son has already spent two years at his school and found it less suited to his needs so far, I'd be reluctant to continue there. 

    I can't comment on the family aspects you asked about as you don't say what ages your other children are or what particular difficulties you are facing at home. If your other two children are older, it may be a good idea to ask for their input on changes they'd like to see as they have a unique 'insiders' view of things.