How can I help my five year old

Sorry for the long post. My five year old, almost 6, started school in august. So far we’ve had the odd little instance where he doesn’t want to go into school but he always goes in. At his recent parents evening his teachers seemed really happy with how he was progressing. I mentioned that since he had finished nursery and began school I don’t feel like any support has been put in place to help him. At nursery we had daily chats at hometime with his teacher. Nothing huge, maybe a wee 30 seconds but long enough for us to know if he’d had a good/bad day or anything she wanted to tell us. They had input from the educational psychologist and a local team who helped the nursery to help him with his speech/social mixing and so on. At school there has been nothing. I mentioned this at the parents evening and now we have a meeting set  with the psychologist, his teacher and the head to basically have a proper with each other I think. I don’t know if hat I should ask them to do, or what they should offer. I see people online mentioning ECHP I think, like plans but I have no idea what they are.

my worry is that they say my little guy is doing well he seems to be trying so hard to be like the other kids, to copy what they do/how they act. If he’s happy then I’m happy but after school he is so tired and like a ticking time bomb. It’s like he keeps everything in all day and just becomes so wound up. It’ll either result in shouting or so many tears and he just says he’s so tired. I’m just at a loss how to help him feel comfortable/happy to just be him. I don’t know if this makes sense but any advice would be so very appreciated.

Parents
  • I think you're right to be concerned. The transition from nursery to school will likely have been much harder for him than for non autistic children. It is quite common for autistic children to appear to be coping at school, but exploding the bottled up emotions once they get home.

    It sounds as if he is desperately trying to fit in by observing and copying the other children. That is masking as a survival instinct and and it is exhausting. It is not sustainable in the long term and may well have a detrimental impact upon his mental health if it continues. He may be learning something from observing but I don't necessarily think his teacher should be seeing that as doing well. You are right that he needs to be comfortable to just be himself.

    Is he aware yet that he is autistic? There were some suggestions on here recently about books to explain autism to children and teach them that it is ok to be different. https://community.autism.org.uk/f/parents-and-carers/28722/kids-books-about-autism

    I would suggest that as a minimum there should be a quiet space at school, where he knows he can go to if things become too overwhelming.

Reply
  • I think you're right to be concerned. The transition from nursery to school will likely have been much harder for him than for non autistic children. It is quite common for autistic children to appear to be coping at school, but exploding the bottled up emotions once they get home.

    It sounds as if he is desperately trying to fit in by observing and copying the other children. That is masking as a survival instinct and and it is exhausting. It is not sustainable in the long term and may well have a detrimental impact upon his mental health if it continues. He may be learning something from observing but I don't necessarily think his teacher should be seeing that as doing well. You are right that he needs to be comfortable to just be himself.

    Is he aware yet that he is autistic? There were some suggestions on here recently about books to explain autism to children and teach them that it is ok to be different. https://community.autism.org.uk/f/parents-and-carers/28722/kids-books-about-autism

    I would suggest that as a minimum there should be a quiet space at school, where he knows he can go to if things become too overwhelming.

Children