Published on 12, July, 2020
Done with school now. You have to be in my situation to fully understand but I will try my best to explain.
My daughter came home in tears today and very upset, emotional and overwhelmed. She had a good start to the morning but since 11am she has struggled so much and things just got worse throughout the day. She was told that her staff for her next lesson, starting at 11, had to go home early so she had a choice of 2 staff that she could have instead. She made the choice and she wasn't happy when the staff got there because it wasn't the usual person, she then started to get annoyed and wanted space so she was left alone but she did kick her staff. When she calmed herself down, other staff walked in crowding her when she wanted to be left alone. She then went for one of them, hitting her on the back of the head. She was then held but broke free and was left alone again. What was the point in coming in the room in the first place?
Then she has been unsettled ever since, no surprise there. Her next lesson, there was no work to do, so she was bored but didn't do anything wrong and did well. Then she ate her lunch. After lunch, her usual staff, who has been off for training for 2 weeks now, still isn't in, so another change of staff, she didn't want to do her lessons because of this and tried getting rid of her teacher. She then got all worked up because they wouldn't leave her alone. They have a rule, if she wants space, staff need to be able to see her. They could see her but they still didn't leave her be. They started talking and she then exploded for the rest of the day, an hour and a bit. She attacked staff, and was really badly behaved. But that's because she was overwhelmed and needed space to calm down. She asked for this so many times and they finally let her be when she exploded and attacked someone. Then she calmed down and came home..
I have had a phone call from school saying she is excluded for the rest of the week and that on Monday staff will come round for a chat, then Tuesday she should hopefully be back in. Now we have always been supportive and understanding and she knows she excluded because of her behavior and she understands she can't go round hurting people and get away with it but if they left her, this wouldn't have happened. I know my daughter well. They should have listened to her and let her be to chill out. But now she's very unhappy because they've messed up her brain even more because now she has a change in routine, she has to come to work with me. She doesn't want to go back to school for many reasons she's told me. She wants me to cancel the plans for the weekend because of reasons she said and because her brain is messed up. Those are her words I've had to try out into a sentence. I'm sorry for always bothering you but I don't know what to do. I'm on my daughter's side this time, we all are. I'm just losing my patience with school. She only started properly in September but started going since April/May time.
I don't think the school trusts her, because she's attacked them, but if she requests to be left alone, because she's trying to cope with her distress, and if they don't accomodate her needs and keep interfering by walking into the room or trying to randomly talk to her when she doesn't want to be talked to, then she's not going to be happy about that, and she's going to react, she's going to explode, and everything goes downhill.
She might have some mood irregularities which makes her frustrated easily, but she's trying to be good about it and cope with it, by using her words and telling them that she needs space. but they don't understand this. They are probably used to approaching someone in distress to try to talk to them, but that's not how you handle an autistic shutdown situation. She needs space to calm down.
When she is angry, she didn't just run up and attack people right away, she requested to be left alone, she tried to walk away from the situation and calm down, and I think that's a mature thing to do. However, they kept bothering her and being intrusive, and that just made her angrier. So what did they think would happen if they kept poking the bear?
I mean, if she was actually left alone, how would she injure anybody? There would be no one around her to injure. But their injuries suggest that they didn't leave her alone and made contact with her.
That is exactly true. She has always struggled communicating and could never calm her self down and used to hurt teachers because they would follow her round previous schools. This school, they usually leave her alone because she would lock them out but this time, they wouldn't let her and what you said, they wouldn't listen and leave her alone. So me and her father are blaming the school for this because they escalated a situation they could easily manage.
They tell her not to lock the doors but she does it because otherwise they will come in and won't leave her alone. She only lets everyone else in so she's not disrupting lessons, but if her staff come in, she will kick them so they get out. Why won't they leave her alone.
Possibly more than just Autism. Maybe, even, PTSD.