Quote:
Hard to understand through text sometimes.
That may be the case. As I said before, it is evident that you do love her very much and want the very best for her, and it is evident that you will stop at nothing until she has it. It is just the way you described this meltdown, it sounded like you sent her back to school afterwards, and you did not indicate that you followed up with the principle afterwards and pressed to get things in motion right away, really I just don't understand that, this would not be something I would be "mentioning" on Tuesday, if Tuesday was the earliest I could get a meeting, I would be demanding that it be the focus of the meeting! Also, are you getting school board representation? Since the AS label with my son, I am getting school board representation from their special ed department (in addition to my sons schools special ed department) and their ASD services.
You are right though, sometimes things don't transmit as well over the internet. A more passive tone may be heard, simply because you are trying to be polite to the members on the forum, and know you are not talking to the "school".
As for this being something a young kid on the spectrum would do, I can see it. I have had two incidents I can think of, one an example from my son, one from me at 12 years old.
1.) My son was at school, it was -17 degrees outside. He hears some kids say in the bathroom "whoever goes outside in a tee shirt will be the coolest kid in school"! They then banter back and fourth (my son not included, not even sure if they knew he was in the bathroom) about how "I’m not going to do it... are you going to do it? All laughing and joking. My son takes this very literally, and thinking he will up the status he has in class leaves his coat in his locker and goes out, much to the shock and horror of his teacher! (I get a note home about that one). I have to explain to him after getting the reasoning out, "no, they where not serious, they did not think this person would be the "coolest" person as in popular, they would be the "coldest" as in "cold". It was a play on words!" Now, maybe it was just an out and out joke too, I don't know, but my son accepted this reasoning.
2.) When I was in Gr. 6, my mother used to empty Ukrainian eggs with a syringe. I decided one day at lunch, to pop the tip off, and fill one up with cool aid and go chaise some kids on the playground! I thought it was harmless because the tip was off, the students and teachers where none too impressed!
Now, the thing is, in a grade 1 class, a lot of talk can go around all year about jokes regarding bodily functions. The boys think it is hilarious to talk about farts and poop and peeing, the girls get all grossed out, it gets a huge rise out of them, and hence the popularity of the Captain Underpants books.
I can see this girl, sitting all year listening to these jokes, but unable to really participate just not able to "keep up" with the conversation or participate with appropriate commentary. Maybe though she has a few successes and comes up with a few lines that everyone laughs over. (Possibly lines that she heard from someone else in the class, but they all long forgot the source). Now, they are talking about gross things you can do. So, she thinks, "peeing on the table naked would be pretty gross" and thinking about it, visualising it, visualising the horror of her peers, or thinking they would see it as funny, ("because they are laughing while talking about these gross things as much as they are horrified") she starts to loose perspective of fantasy and reality and does it. Honestly, I am not sure that it is so much different then a 12 year old not wearing his coat out, the thought patterns are not that different, the level of social acceptability however is. Does a 6 year old understand that? I think it is very possible in this case that she did not.
As for her language, I have been through similar things (although not as strongly worded) with my son. I know at some point you have to take things with a grain of salt and often she says some pretty horrible things with no real meaning or context behind it. I had many talks about the "power of words" with my son from about 6-10. Things like saying "I want to blow up that school" had to be explained to him. "Your words are very powerful, if some people hear you say that, they will think you really will do it, and they will get very worried and scared, and they may decide that you need to be put in jail to keep everyone safe, because they don't know that you really would never do that. That is why we can't say things like that, words are very powerful".This is a very difficult concept for most AS kids, because it involves theory of mind, understanding the actions motives and feelings of others. It will take a long time to develop, but needs to be constantly worked on, putting things in a language she can understand. It is pointless to ask "what do you think other people will think when they hear that" You have to give her the complete reasoning, tell her what others will think, tell her what may happen if she continues to say things like that.
Another example is if she says "I want to jump out of my window and kill myself". Is to tell her that words are very powerful, and you would be very very sad if she did that because you love her very much, no one wants to see her get hurt. Tell her that if things are upsetting her she needs to talk to someone so that they can be fixed. I also found it helped to tell my son that if he wanted to kill himself, then I needed to take him to the hospital, because I was not going to let that happen. Usually that caused a very quick recantation. I would have too. I would have brought him to emerg and told them, "My 8 year old wants to kill himself" if he did not recant it, because you just can't play around with that sort of thing, the suicide rate for AS teens and young adults is very high.
Basically, there is a huge difference between "I hate you and don't love you anymore" To which you can respond with "well, that is unfortunate, because I love you very much and will help you clean your room if you ask me nicely". And "I want all the kids at school to die". She needs to be taught, that words are very powerful, and that people will be very scared of her saying things like that, because sometimes bad people have done horrible things.
Anyway; I hope this helps, I really don't intend it to be a lecture, I just want to give you maybe a few other things to consider while planning treatment for her.
21 May 2007, 8:51 am
