First time on forum. having a VERY bad day

Hi to anyone reading this, this is the first time ive used a forum so not sure how this all works, I NEVER ask for help , not entirely sure why, just feel ive failed if I have to ask for help I suppose, but today, if nothing else, I just need to verbalise (write!)about this horrible day. I have a son who is 12 and has 'symptoms consistent with Aspergers Syndrome" ( that's as official as they will be in my area!) today he has been excluded from school because he, in the words of the school, violently assaulted another boy, by shoving him so hard that he fell and ended up with a cut and bruised head. we have been worried about this happening for so long, he is a lovely boy, very intelligent academically but not emotionally,  and has always had a problem with his temper if something doesn't go right or someone says something mean, today this boy at school accused him of cheating when he was keeping score in a school cricket match, my son protested his innocence but the boy kept on, and encouraged other boys to join in the accusation, and this was too much for my son. the school he goes to is a mainstream state school that has a specialist Aspergers/autism unit and my son has a full statement with full time TA's, we had a big struggle to find somewhere for his secondary education because of the lack of provision and have ended up having to send him to a school in a neighbouring education authority . We did visit special schools but there were none to cater for higher functioning children. This exclusion today is exactly the reason we didn't want mainstream school for him, because we feel he needs to be somwhere that can help with his lack of emotional maturity which causes his outbursts when he can't cope with something. He has come so far, I used to be at his primary school almost daily apologising for him hitting or pushing someone but this has got less and less over the years and apart from a couple of incidents where he has become upset in class, this is the first incident since he started at secondary school last September. so worried now, this is now on his school record and I don't know what we'll do if it happens again and he gets expelled. He is very depressed about the whole thing and was crying on the way home saying how unfair it is that he was born like this and that just cut me up and I just feel ive failed him. Run out of steam now and getting a bit upset so going to stop there. Any advice gratefully received! 

Parents
  • I did not say that people with autism/aspergers cant play sport, I said that team sports like cricket are hardly easy environments, and that he was likely to have poor coordination.

    I accept coordination isn't always an issue and some people on the spectrum can do team sports. But it is usually reported as a difficult area.

    What puzzles me is that dubz's son is doing cricket, but only as the scorer. Now it might be that everyone gets a turn as the scorer, and it was just dubz's son's turn on this occasion. What would worry me uis if he has been placed as scorer because he cannot play and no-one picks him for their team - which is a common ASD situation.

    Secondly where were the teachers?  Dubz' son was verbally attacked by the boy he is accused of assaulting and by the rest of the class and the teachers only intervened with dubz' son when he hit out.

    It sounds to me like he was being set up to fail.

    As to my use of caps, dubz was having a VERY bad day.

Reply
  • I did not say that people with autism/aspergers cant play sport, I said that team sports like cricket are hardly easy environments, and that he was likely to have poor coordination.

    I accept coordination isn't always an issue and some people on the spectrum can do team sports. But it is usually reported as a difficult area.

    What puzzles me is that dubz's son is doing cricket, but only as the scorer. Now it might be that everyone gets a turn as the scorer, and it was just dubz's son's turn on this occasion. What would worry me uis if he has been placed as scorer because he cannot play and no-one picks him for their team - which is a common ASD situation.

    Secondly where were the teachers?  Dubz' son was verbally attacked by the boy he is accused of assaulting and by the rest of the class and the teachers only intervened with dubz' son when he hit out.

    It sounds to me like he was being set up to fail.

    As to my use of caps, dubz was having a VERY bad day.

Children
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