Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi,
my son is 15 and doing GCSEs next year; he got a late ASD diagnosis last year (a result of not being picked up at school despite our flagging things up and Camhs being totally oversubscribed which I'm sure is familiar to everyone). He masks a lot of the time and as he has very high targets at school he's fallen through the net. Over the past 2 years he has fallen significantly behind and he has stopped engaging with school. He does attend, though he's late every day and has a lot of sick days. He's just about to start end of year exams, and has done no work at all. I've started the process with the SENCO to get him an EHCP, but this will be too late to implement much before exams and the school have been helpful about putting some help in place in the meantime, but this is only just starting. He's getting some learning support to help him with planning and revision which is his main problem. I think he is presenting his best face at school, but in practice not doing any of the things he's being encouraged to do. He is extremely demand avoidant at home and if we even say the word 'school' or 'homework' he accuses us of berating him. He's finally got some support from CAMHS after a 2 year wait as his moods have been very erratic.
I feel like I"m spending most of my time trying to access support for him, but when it's offered he doesn't engage with it and he has basically given up.
I know much of this is due to anxiety and processing problems but I am tearing my hair out; he's very bright and we're anticipating him not being able to take his GCSEs. Does any one have any experience of this, or ideas about how to get him to engage with his school work without too much conflict, which is what seems to happen every time we try to talk about it. I know he can resit his GCSEs but I really worry about it, as he's very well developed and will be completely out of step with the other kids in his class. He's in a mainstream school.
I know what should be happening: supporting him with organisation, telling him we love him, which we do, and not making too big a deal out of exams (we try) but none of this works as he won't accept our help at all. As anticipated, an exam period has led to real volatility and then conflict at home as he's ground to a halt.
Should we just accept that the he can't do and let him fail? this feels very hard to do.
TBH sounds like he has burnt out, it's actually not that easy to be stuck in an academic setting most days a year for nearly 3/4 of your life so far at that age for even a neurotypical kid. I had to just tank a lot of my secondary school GSCEs and go back and retake them as a mature student later on but that burn out lasted the better part of a decade, I was made to feel such a failure after my secondary school GCSEs it actually brought me down into a state of depression which just prolonged my retaking them longer.
As an adult autistic person finally in university I realized that those GSCEs are just an opportunity to get them done early, but not the end of the world if they aren't. Failing GCSEs in the rampaging hormone monster years isn't the barrier to later academic success I used to think it was.
In fact I would suggest you do everything to avoid long term damaging effects of depression now while he is still young and his mind is still in the formative years, because trauma in the formative years is a lot harder to overcome later the longer it goes on unchecked. Get him back to being mentally healthy now so he is able to go back to academia later if he needs to, it sounds like the EHCP and such are all a bit too little too late at this stage anyway.
Thank you for this, it's really valuable to hear your personal experience. I've been thinking about burn out a lot and your advice to focus on his mental health is what I think we need to listen to as well as our relationship with him.
It sounds like you've done really well to get back to education when the time was right for you; the whole system is terrible for people who aren't neurotypical - and for quite a lot who are as you say - it makes for stressed out kids and stressed out parents. Accepting that our son may not make it through exams isn't easy as he's really bright, but probably the best thing we can do for him at this stage as it's not the most important thing as you rightly say.
Thanks again.