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Student displays challenging and difficult behaviour + Update

NAS80219

Hello everyone, we are asking for help on behalf of the staff team and parents of a student. 

This student is displaying some behaviour which is getting difficult to manage. The biggest issue is that she trusts very little staff, 5 max, therefore becomes unsettled when she doesn't have these staff. She is becoming controlling around this and is getting angry, sarcastic, and argumentative when she doesn't have the staff she trusts or can just tolerate. She is starting to make threats saying that after half term, if she doesn't get good staff and if her timetable isn't sorted out then we are going to have some serious issues. She says we don't care about what staff we give her and that we are setting her up to fail. We are giving her new staff and she agreed to this so she can hopefully build trust with these but it's not going well. 

She is becoming verbally aggressive towards staff and the past couple of days she has become disruptive ripping off display boards and ripping them into tiny pieces and chucking it on the floor and refuses to clean up and says it's our fault for not giving her good staff. She locked herself into the sensory room today and blocked the door with a chair so it couldn't be opened and put a mat up at the window so we couldn't see in which she knows isn't allowed. She was swearing and kept referring to the trust issues and staff and the timetable. She has stopped opening up to us and will now just scream when things go wrong. We are losing trust and it's hard to gain back. 

She is also blaming us for her actions. She will do something wrong and will say that maybe we should give her good staff then this wouldn't happen or that she wants to trust staff but how can she when we don't give her good staff. She knows we don't like it when she struggles so keeps saying that why give me rubbish staff if you know I'm going to struggle so obviously you don't care. Or it's, you know I've going to jump the fence or run off if I don't have good staff and that we'll have problems. Today she made the comment of, Well I'm sorry that I got upset and trashed the room because you gave me crap staff, in the most sarcastic way possible and gave us the worst look she has ever given us. She is starting to become very challenging.  She is very rude and has a lot of attitude towards all staff now and we are getting worried where things are heading.

So if anyone has any ideas, please let us know. Thank you

UPDATE: Another tricky day today. She didn't like either staff again today and went to our local shopping centre and walked round then sat on a sofa there and refused to leave because she didn't want those staff members to take her home. She than ran away from staff and is a fast runner so we did lose sight of her therefore parents were called, and police were searching for her aswell as security in the shopping centre were keeping an eye out. After 2 hours we had sight of her and she was happy, dancing, skipping, singing whilst walking round the town. We gave her space and kept as much distance as we could and she was fine.

Parents

  • I think they first people for you to talk to would be the handful of staff she has a good relationship with. They must have some thoughts as to why they’ve been able establish a much better relationship  with her than the rest of staff?

    have you consulted them and if so what did they say?

  • in reply to Peter

    They all have a good sense of humour and can all have a laugh. They know exactly how to deal and recognise when she is silently struggling and has managed to form a great bond and trust due to this. But overtime she has stopped talking about her problems with these staff and anytime they offer to check in with her she just declines the offer keeping it bottled up. She feels more comfortable with these staff but we can see how the trust is slowly going with these aswell. 

  • in reply to NAS80219

    Hmm sounds like PTSD not that I’m in anyway qualified to make that assessment. But I have noticed that people with PTSD will become very chummy with you but then reach a blocking point where they can’t open up anymore because that would mean sharing their trauma with you.

    is there any history or traumatic experiences? Disruption in the family? A recent divorce maybe?  Any possibility that she’s being bullied?

    tbh even just swapping teachers regularly is not ideal for autistic kids though. It will create a degree of stress.

Reply
  • in reply to NAS80219

    Hmm sounds like PTSD not that I’m in anyway qualified to make that assessment. But I have noticed that people with PTSD will become very chummy with you but then reach a blocking point where they can’t open up anymore because that would mean sharing their trauma with you.

    is there any history or traumatic experiences? Disruption in the family? A recent divorce maybe?  Any possibility that she’s being bullied?

    tbh even just swapping teachers regularly is not ideal for autistic kids though. It will create a degree of stress.

Children
  • in reply to NAS80219

    I see. So it seems to me what she needs is proof someone cares about her enough to break the rules. You know that scene (https://youtu.be/5Boh9IOZO7E) in good will hunting where the psychologist has to explain to the professor why a genius would rather hang out with thugs than academics? Because any one of them would break the law for him, to keep him safe.

    Rules and authority figures didn’t keep her safe. In fact they nearly took her family away.

    Maybe she needs a hard core, doesn’t play by the rules, kind of teacher. Sadly I’m not convinced they exist outside of fiction (see GTO for a really good example of what I mean https://youtu.be/lq7E7TQ6fw4)

    I’m only half being facetious when I say that. In all seriousness sometimes you need someone outside the system to address these things. The answer isn’t always a teacher or councillor. Sometimes it’s a peer, a friend, preferably an autistic one who is quite a bit more emotionally stable than she is. A big brother/ sister sort of thing.

  • in reply to Peter

    The parents do believe there is a chance she has PTSD. We spoke to the parents again and they believe the reaction she had yesterday was also because of the trauma because she showed the same signs as a time in the past. She locked herself in the sensory room, turned of all lights, put a chair infront of the door so no one could come in, blocked all windows so no one could see in. We heard her crying and wanted to comfort her but she refused all help, everything that would be worked in the past didn't. We even got staff she likes and feels safe with but that didn't work either. We thought this was because she didn't want staff which part of it was but parents say she didn't feel safe and was scared and had no control over the situation she was in. She apparently used to lock herself in the home bathroom and wouldn't let anyone in because she was scared she would get hurt but their is no signs of abuse or neglect in the family in the past or now. 

    She has definitely been through traumatic times with schools, home, and this all has impacted her mental health and how she sees the world and people. She was nearly taken away from her family and put into care so I guess the trust issues also come into play with that because she nearly lost her family. She doesn't open up to her family either so now we fear she is struggling even more because everything is bottled up. We have told her multiple times she can talk to the school counsellor who comes in whenever they need to but she doesn't want to.