Published on 12, July, 2020
Sorry for the long post - but just need to give some background.
My son was diagnosed ASD just before lockdown (March 2020) in Y7. From Y6 he was being absent from class and this built up during Y7. Since returning after lockdown the situation is worse. He was on a reduced timetable - mornings only - and seemed fine with that. However, now, in Y9, he's rarely in school. He has anxiety and has had OCD - mainly intrusive thoughts - since Y5. This has got worse and used to lead to regular meltdowns. Now this seems to have changed a bit and he says that he mainly feels stressed and restless. He's currently with the Tavistock Autism department and has therapy for anxiety once a week but this is very long term (which is great) but we don't see his attitude to school changing much.
In class he says he feels stressed and overwhelmed. He told me this morning that 50% of that stress is due to him feeling that he doesn't know what's going on because of what he's missed. He's very bright (we think this is one reason he was able to get away with masking in primary school - they didn't worry about him because he was always able to get reasonable scores in tests).
He's very much a perfectionist and finds it difficult to just sit in class and try to get used to the discussions etc. He will obsess about not understanding every small detail and therefore come to the conclusion that if he doesn't understand everything he's going to do really badly. So, it's a vicious circle.
He has an EHCP for 25 hours but the support can only work if he's in school.
So now I'm thinking should we pay him for being in school? He's very motivated by money. It sounds terrible I know but at the moment we're getting worried as he's missed so much school. His GCSE course starts next year and if his approach continues like this he will miss out on that. We don't feel that he must be academic or needs to go to university etc but we want him to have options and we feel these are being narrowed - just that he doesn't have the foresight to know that. And what 14 year old really listens to their parents? He wants to be an architect and we've explained that this will mean studying and university but all that he can think about is not going to school right now because it's too stressful.
Any advice and suggestions are much appreciated. Thanks.
If he's not in school, he'll miss more class, and fall more behind, and he'll have more anxiety, which makes him miss out more of school. But if he wants to become an architect, he needs to stay in school and learn the subjects he needs to succeed.
The only thing he can do, is start from wherever he is at, and add to his knowledge. That's all anyone can do. I think everyone in school is trying to play catch-up right now, and most students don't know what the heck is going on in class either.
Thanks for the advice. That's the rational conversation we had - or i had with him this morning. However, if this was only about being rational from a NT perspective we wouldn't have half the problems we do. His ASD makes him aware only of the here and now. He can't consider tomorrow, let alone a couple of years time.
I know that you might be desperate to get him to stay in school, so you're willing to motivate and bribe him with money, but I don't think that's a good thing for him.
If he's not motivated by anything else except money, and you give him money all the time, he might just get used to it, and who knows, if you stop giving him money one day, he might get mad at you and things can turn sour. You can't just expect that he'll find any other motivation in life, if you keep dangling money in front of him as a motivator.
If you're willing to spend the money, spend it on getting him a tutor, someone who provides him with additional assistance for his education.
Maybe even therapy would be good for him, so he can learn where his anxiety, fears, and need to be perfect are coming from.
I learned very early that my parents didn't have much money, and I'm glad that they never gave me any money or an allowance, because it taught me to be motivated in other ways.
I hope your son can enjoy his experience in school, and do well in the future.
Thanks - I really appreciate your kind words and the time you've taken to respond. Yes things in some schools have changed but I'm on a few forums for ASD, SEN type stuff and there are terrible things going on still. I think a lot of it is down to stressed teachers who have so much pressure on them they have no time to step back and think or even learn about what's going on. School management is more concerned with training teachers how to get through OFSTED inspections than increasing their understanding of autism.
Anyway, I could rant for hours....!
Thanks again for your help - good luck to you!
His interests sound like my own. I did go to post secondary for 3D animation, so if he's the creative type who likes to draw and use computers, that's probably another option for him. There's graphic design too for creating typography and logos and things like that, photography, sculpting, there's a lot of creative types of jobs out there.
I think in school, I had a lot of anxiety and an unsupportive family, but in terms of interest, I learned that if you make any subject a sort of game for yourself, then you'll have fun playing that game for hours. But that's trying to make something engaging for yourself, because teachers might not make things interesting for you.
I always found it weird that I (and other kids at the time) knew all the original 151 pokemon, but no one could remember 118 elements of the periodic table.
I think that it's great that the school is accommodating your son's needs because of his anxiety, and they give him time to draw, that's really nice of the school. When I was a very small child, I had a teacher who got very angry at me because they thought that I wasn't paying attention in class, so they grabbed the drawing that I was working on, and threw it into the garbage can. I would say that the teacher overreacted and it's unprofessional, but there was no support systems in place for me. But it's nice to know that things are different for your son, that the school even allows him to be in a separate room and allows time to draw.
Maybe you can find someone who's in the creative industry to talk to your son. Like if they do comic books, animation, manga, something like that.
It's very selfless of you to say that you don't need the resource as much as others. I know from experience though that not attending to what seems a relatively small issue can cause problems further along the line. You are as important as your clients and if you were unable to work due to ill health then it would be worse because then they wouldn't benefit from having you at your best.
As far as the screens go....we've tried talking about coding, learning about software, computing etc but no interest. He's very visual and I can see he would be good at anything related to design but at the moment anything we discuss is automatically dismissed. It's not like we don't get what he's into. We're both interested in art, design, music and movies. Possible ODD and/or PDA aside, he is very definitely a teenager who suffers from parent-induced cringe!
I think the video game design sounds like a good thing that he might eventually get into. Did your brother need GCSEs for this?
Thank you so much for continuing this.....I fully understand why people might not want to...everyone has their own stuff to take care of....! And I do go on......
His school have been great - the SENDCO is really proactive and very understanding, which is brilliant because I hear horror stories of schools threatening parents and children who don't attend regularly.
Since the end of lockdown he's been on a reduced timetable - he was going in only until break and that got increased to up to lunch and then into the afternoon (recently gone back down to up to lunchtime). This is just getting him into school. When he's at school he's out of about 50% of the lessons. When he needs to leave class due to feeling overhwelmed they allow him to go to a calming room where he draws (he used to be an avid reader but says he can't read anymore as he feels too stressed and anxious) and then he goes back into class when he feels ready.
The school are much better at allowing this now - they used to pressure him and now they just let him be. When he is in class he says most of the time he just sits there and tries to join in but he rarely does the class work as he feels unable to. He says he feels extra stressed at the moment because he doesn't know what's going on because he's been out of class so much - a vicious circle.
He can't even consider the idea of doing homework. Just the thought gets him panicky.
As far as studying what he wants goes....he says he dislikes everything about school. There's no subject he wants to study. And that's the issue really. If he was really focused on something apart from Anime / Manga / cute animals and chatting online there might be something to latch onto in terms of education.
We know his education doesn't have to happen now - his EHCP guarantees him an education till 25. it's just sad for us and for him that he can't enjoy his teenage years at a school which is trying hard to help and where he has friends. I think he sees the next few years there as a prison sentence.
I suppose if he is too overwhelmed by the pressure placed on him, it might end up pushing him into a corner, and he might spend his life in his room on screens due to not being able to handle all the pressure placed on him (or even the pressure he places on himself). Although, there are many people making a living by using their computers now.
I don't think everyone finds their thing yet, and even if they are adults, they might not even know what their thing is yet either.
Is it possible to work something out with his school, so he can take things slowly and at his own pace, and he has enough time to absorb the material, and study whatever he would like to study in greater detail?
I have had CBT on the NHS and it was awful. I periodically access therapy via work and it's hit and miss as the therapist changes each time, but I currently have clinical supervision in my role due to the traumatic nature of the type of support I provide, and that is with a counsellor. I take advantage of this by discussing my autism, but it is only once a month and I would benefit from more time. Nevertheless, it is more than what my clients get to access and they've been through far worse than what I have. There are very long waiting lists for NHS therapeutic services, even for those with huge need. I wouldn't feel right using a resource when I'm in quite a good place despite my challenges with autism.
Is your son not interested in something involving the screens he spends so much time looking at? My younger brother is 17 and not diagnosed but very clearly autistic, and he is now studying video game design.