Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi all,
Looking for some advice really.
my son started school three days ago and has been hit by the same child every day. I'm told the other child is autistic or is on the scale. The teacher has told my son to raise his arms to protect his face while they (as in my son and teacher) teach the child not to do it.
the bit that concerns me, is the other boy is only hitting my son. He is bright and socially confident, but as far as the teacher is concerned my son has done nothing to provoke the hit. I only know second hand from a friend who has an autistic child, that close proximity and noisy environments can cause the hitting, I just don't understand why it is only my son. Is it normal for an autistit child to pick one person to lash out at?
I'm trying to process and think of how to deal with this. My son is popular and confident and has been at nursery part time for years. He has never dealt with this before.
My thought are ranging from hit him back then he'll hit some one else (nursery trained him well so he wouldn't do that, and hey, I know its not the best thing, but joking aside, if he does stand up for himself and shout, push etc, would that stop it?) to speaking to the other boys parents, to writing to the head.
dont want to create a storm Or upset the other child or his parents, but I can't accept my son getting walloped for months on end. Can young autistic children be taught early not to hit? Is there anything i can teach my son that will help? Should the school not have extra resources to deal with children with difficulties?
any thoughts would be appreciated.
thanks
I would imagine what's going on here is that your son is somehow provoking this other child, but doesn't realise he is. It's probably not the least bit intentional. Some autistics just are very easily provoked, often by highly peculiar stimuli. Maybe your son and this child have engaged in interactions which the autistic child finds highly frustrating, and lashing out is the only thing he can think to do.
I'm only one autistic and so what I'm about to say may not apply here at all, but when I was very little I used to attack my sister out of extreme frustration, but I really didn't want to. I remember being in tears trying to explain how badly I wanted to stop, but I didn't know what else to do, and I didn't think I could stop. It felt like I was being possessed by a demon that was making me attack her.
I can't remember what my mum actually did about this. Perhaps nothing, maybe it was purely my will to be a good girl that helped me to stop. But these days I couldn't be much less aggressive; the way I choose to live my life is to expel anger and embrace love. And I couldn't ask for a better relationship with my sister.