discipline in school

Hello Shonagh

We have a reward chart at home at the moment for my 4-year-old with ASD to encourage him to sleep in his own bed (he's had a thing recently for wanting to sleep with me or his nanna). He has really loved it, after earning 20 stickers for sleeping in his own bed he was given a TV in his bedroom to watch his DVDs on (something he had been asking for and we already had the TV aside for him for an appropriate time). He is now working towards getting a pet. So the reward doesn't always have to be immediate.

More generally, if he behaves well at school (no hitting, smacking, biting or refusing tasks) we take him out on Sunday. Only simple places like the park, local car boot sale, garden centre, country park with duck pond, McDonalds, or out for lunch at the local pub restaurant - free/cheap places. This is a bit shorter term and does work.

My son's school has a house point system and weekly merit awards for individuals (which my son has achieved before now and was really proud of himself). However he is also given heaps of praise and stickers for good work done on a day-to-day basis, and we also have a home to school book so we get to hear about all the good things he does and praise him too. These are very simple rewards that other children probably wouldn't notice too much - my son gets 1:1 support so his key worker does the individual rewards and it's not so visible to his peers. If the school is doing this sort of thing as well, the other system probably won't affect your child so much: if it isn't, then maybe it's something you could suggest.

Speaking as a teacher now, I once taught an 8-9 year old boy with ASD, and what worked for him was having "free time" at the end of the day as a reward for participating and doing tasks I set him. He had a clock chart where for every task done a little block of time was added, and he could get up to about 45 mins' free time instead of assembly and handwriting. This only worked because he too had 1:1 support for supervising the free time. He loved D&T so spent most of his free time making amazing models with school resources: he once made us a fantastic cardboard skeleton when we were doing the topic "moving and growing" in Science. A weekly reward would have been meaningless: it was the fact that he could look forward to something nice at the end of each day that made it work for him; however this of course does tip the balance in terms of the other children seeing that separate system in action. I will say though that those other children were not put out by it, completely understood that the system matched his needs, and were interested in the things he made during that time. Never caused a problem in my class.

Good luck getting things sorted out.

Hello Shonagh

We have a reward chart at home at the moment for my 4-year-old with ASD to encourage him to sleep in his own bed (he's had a thing recently for wanting to sleep with me or his nanna). He has really loved it, after earning 20 stickers for sleeping in his own bed he was given a TV in his bedroom to watch his DVDs on (something he had been asking for and we already had the TV aside for him for an appropriate time). He is now working towards getting a pet. So the reward doesn't always have to be immediate.

More generally, if he behaves well at school (no hitting, smacking, biting or refusing tasks) we take him out on Sunday. Only simple places like the park, local car boot sale, garden centre, country park with duck pond, McDonalds, or out for lunch at the local pub restaurant - free/cheap places. This is a bit shorter term and does work.

My son's school has a house point system and weekly merit awards for individuals (which my son has achieved before now and was really proud of himself). However he is also given heaps of praise and stickers for good work done on a day-to-day basis, and we also have a home to school book so we get to hear about all the good things he does and praise him too. These are very simple rewards that other children probably wouldn't notice too much - my son gets 1:1 support so his key worker does the individual rewards and it's not so visible to his peers. If the school is doing this sort of thing as well, the other system probably won't affect your child so much: if it isn't, then maybe it's something you could suggest.

Speaking as a teacher now, I once taught an 8-9 year old boy with ASD, and what worked for him was having "free time" at the end of the day as a reward for participating and doing tasks I set him. He had a clock chart where for every task done a little block of time was added, and he could get up to about 45 mins' free time instead of assembly and handwriting. This only worked because he too had 1:1 support for supervising the free time. He loved D&T so spent most of his free time making amazing models with school resources: he once made us a fantastic cardboard skeleton when we were doing the topic "moving and growing" in Science. A weekly reward would have been meaningless: it was the fact that he could look forward to something nice at the end of each day that made it work for him; however this of course does tip the balance in terms of the other children seeing that separate system in action. I will say though that those other children were not put out by it, completely understood that the system matched his needs, and were interested in the things he made during that time. Never caused a problem in my class.

Good luck getting things sorted out.