Hi everyone, hope you are all well. We would like your opinion on something, if its alright.
One of our students, displays challenging behaviour in times of overwhelm and distress. She struggles to communicate with staff when she is feeling like this, therefore we are always checking in with her asking how she feels and what she needs using her Pecs book. She is amazing with this.
The problem we have is sometimes she doesn't understand or know why she is struggling/feeling unsettled, so we always make sure she can offload everything with her preferred staff. Sometimes there are no obvious triggers so we really struggle to find out what is going on.
When she does get overwhelm, at school or offiste, she will either run away from staff or completely shutdown. At times of distress she is not safe therefore 99% of the time needs to be held/restrained for her own safety. During these incidents she can become physically aggressive and will scream and try and run into the road. She will also hurt herself. As soon as she is safe we will give her a hug, which calms her down, and grab her weighted blanket. She will lie on the floor, can't speak so she will squeeze our hands to communicate, and is very shaky, and during these incidents she says she cannot hear, feel or see anything until she's in a calmer state.
How can we help her better than we already are? Her parents says she is not like this at home so it's only school.
I would just like to say that last Thursday, she communicated with staff that she is struggling and wants to run and doesn't feel like she can stay safe therefore we helped and she let us keep her safe by linking arms. She is a quick athletic runner and will do anything to escape, we've had her jump over fences, walls, run next to a dual carriageway. She knows the local area well. Most staff and students aren't local therefore we can get lost trying to find her.
