Shutting down

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My son is 6 years old and was diagnosed with Aspergers. He is currently in a mainstream classroom for most of the school day but, does go to an Autism support classroom for transitions. For example first thing in the morning he spends 10 minutes in the Autism support classroom then goes to his mainstream classroom, 15 minutes after lunch and recess he goes to the Autism support classroom then to his mainstream class etc...

He is having problems in his mainstream classroom. He seems to shut down once a day. He doesn't want to do his work, or talk. He just shuts down completely. We were told that the other children in the classroom like to tattle on him (when he isn't doing his work) and pick on him and he never defends himself so we think this is why this is happening. He just shuts down completely. Then he is sent to the Autism support classroom and he will do his work there with no problem. I was in his mainstream classroom one morning and my son and I were sitting together and some children came up to us and asked me (right in front of my son) "Why does he talk weird?". My son didn't say a word and I was speechless. It hurt so much to hear that. It makes me wonder if my son feels like he is different than the other students. I am sure he does even at his young age.

He never talks about other children in his mainstream class. I ask him and he never tells me. He does talk about the children in the Autism support classroom.

How can I go about helping him to make friends? He has no problem talking with adults or teenagers or much younger children, it's just with his peers that he has problems with.

If those bastards wanted to know why your son talks differently, they should have asked him to his face.

Roadless, when those children talk like that, don't ever think of them as having the right to decide what is wierd and what isn't. They don't have the capacity, not even a fraction of the capacity, and even if someone is wierd, they don't have the right to mistreat him.

The teacher needs to be responsible - it really isn't the other children's fault especially considering how many adults act weird about things like this and they KNOW about it. That is why I do not think that mainstreaming or inclusion is all it is made out to be unless real efforts are made to include the child. Dumping him in a mainstream classroom and not letting the other kids know the reasons why his behavior is different it really is only natural for them to wonder and be quite blunt about it I'm sure. That however doesn't make your son unaware of it and I'm sure he feels very different. I can remember being made fun of when I was little by some of the kids. Your son most likely is shutting down because he can not handle everything and it is not failure in any way if he prefers and does better in the AI room. Continued shutting down however is not good and could cause further withdrawl so this is something they need to address. Some parents have the teacher or parent make a presentation to the class about autism and some report that the kids respond more positively once they know what is going on.

To do that and walk up to you the parent and say that is not a good sign. School can be a harsh time for any kid let alone a kid with an ASD.

School is a very difficult place, and if you have an AS kid, it can really leave mental scars which will affect them badly

My daughter is eight y/o and faces similar things. I'm working on getting her to defend herself and things do get a little better.

When children act bad in front of me, I confront them. For instance, some weeks ago my daughter dressed herself up for a special day. She wore a chinese red satin dress and sticks in her hair. One girl (who is annoying to her very often) came up to her, made a face like she saw something dirt and said with a loud, unfriendly voice: What are you wearing??? And she looked at my daughter's dress like it was dirty. I saw how my daughter was hurt and I said with a loud and teasing voice to the girl (she was wearing some sort of knitted cape): Hey G, what in the world are you carrying around your shoulders??? Girl, whát is thát? The girl looked at me, insecure, and I said to her: Not nice isn't it? Wouldn't you rather want me to say how lovely that cape looks on you? Then the girl smiled and said yes. I said: You weren't nice to N (= my daughter), so I wasn't nice to you. But I smiled when I said it. Just a couple of minutes later the girl did it again and pulled my daughter's hair and said unfriendly: What do you have in your hair. Like it was something really stupid. Then I pulled her hair (she had lots of small clean dreads) and I said: What the matter with your hair??? She smiled, a little shy. And I said: It isn't nice when someone pulls your hair, isn't it? No, she said. I said: Why did you pull my daughter's hair then? She didn't know. So I said: Anyhow, now you know it's not nice.

So this is how my daughter copes with this girl now. She gives vack what she gets and it works for now.

how aware is the teacher of what's going on ?....immediate action should be taken so that your child feels safe & doesn't feel the need to shut down in class. if this is not seen as a problem by the educators at the school, then *that* is a serious problem.

starling is right. These kids are just replaying what they know. They learn this stuff from their parents and then just barf right back at school. I got bullied by a girl who was behaving the way her mother told her.

You say you were told about the teasing/tattling and the shutdowns, but you didn't say how the school staff is viewing this. Are they faulting your child or the other kids?
Another question is, is your child interested in other children in the first place? Or is there a difference between now and before school?
My son had a dramatic change within a month and it was triggered by the school staff. There might be some snotty kids in there too but from what I saw, the kids were very friendly and accepting. It was the aide and other staff that was intolerant to Pop's special needs.

Starling is also right about replaying the snotty behavior. I wouldn't touch the child but mirror the ridiculous statements.

No - I think group dynamics is seriously underestimated when it comes to bullying. That is why the person being bullied really feels intimidated because others often do not interfere so that becomes part of condoning - in effect if no one helps you or speaks up for you the "whole" group seems accepting of this further isolating the person. I think also why remediating the bully alone is not that effective because if you do not inform kids how the group dynamics work than they are likely to keep repeating it. If the teacher does not assume the position of leader in the class than the kids being social will seek one out which is likely to be a bossy/bullying type. Six year olds need to be TAUGHT not allowed to run the classroom.

I agree about NOT touching another kid. However, some of them are not at all impressed when their behavior is mirrored if they have the approval of the group to fall back on. And it may actually reinforce that this is how you deal with people you don't like.

I don't see how NT group dynamics contradict what I say about kids doing what their parents teach them. Parents teach bullying and cowing. I've talked about bullying before, I think the silent kids DO condone the bully.
We don't know for sure if this boy is actually being group bullied or if it's just ignorant, curious kids that have too much free time.
Mirroring for kids seems effective to me because a lot of times they just say whatever and don't think about how cruel or ridiculous it sounds. I do it to my son because it just floors him and he gets very upset. Of course, I always add at the end of the echo that, "you don't like it either, do you? Well, it hurt my feelings".

How does anyone know that kids learn this behavior from their parents? Maybe a number of years ago before there was daycare for infants and preschool and lots of media and radio exposure for kids they were innocent and learned only from their parents. Some kids may learn bad behavior from their parents, others from their siblings, friends, classmates, teachers or things they have seen on TV. It starts on a slippery slope when you automatically start blaming parents - which were a favorite choice for Bettelheim and other psychoanalysts for a variety of conditions. Some kids just have that kind of attitude and need to be taught otherwise.

Also - that works for your son because he is not intentionally trying to wrong another person. If it is just little kid behavior than that is different from MEAN bullying kid behavior. Those kids are unlikely to be moved by being shown they are not being nice.

Well, we're talking about 6 year olds.
Bullying and group think are all learned, social behavior, so if it's good behavior, thank the parents. If it's bad behavior, blame the parents. Shuffling them off to daycare is not a proper excuse and saying, "Spongebob made me say it!" is no better. Parents are the primary moral teachers of kids 6 and under, not Ronald McDonald or Dora the Explorer.
I wouldn't make the leap and say this is Bettleheim. Like I said, we're talking about learned social behavior, not any developmental disorder or "psychic injury".

I mirrored the girl merely to show my daughter how she could act against her unfriendly behaviour.

I was shocked when I learnt about kids behaviour in school when my daughter went to school. I wondered how it could be possible that my daughter was in a class with only unfriendly, bossy and/ or lying children. I thought about it and got to know some of the children in the meanwhile and saw that they weren't bad all the time. And I learnt that their parents thought it was all pretty normal 'bad' behaviour (stealing, being bossy, not able to share, lying and so on). Typical for children, according to the parents. I decided that it couldn't statistically be that my daughter was in a class (in a school even) where all children and their parents would be bad. This was the first indication for me that we actually were a different kind of people. Not nescesarily better people, but different indeed.

My child had a good time in daycare. At the place where she went were only nice and patient people working and they managed the groups with patience and respect. The children didn't seem annoying to my child. Or maybe my child wasn't paying attention to them. She had a couple of friends and I think she was happy there. Her problems started at elementary school (4 y/o), where groups were bigger with only one teacher. She started wetting her pants again, got nightmares every night, and started drawing and coloring like she was two years old again.

Two years later when my daughter was six y/o she once said that she rather not wanted this life anymore. In fact, she said it several times. I was totally shocked. I thought such a remark would not be appropriate for a six year old girl. I didn't understand what was going on. I knew she was a clever kid and that she was far ahead of her pears with many things. Het teacher though said she had troubles learning and also said that she couldn't do maths very well. I knew that was wrong, because maths were games for her at home and she knew math strategies up til about three classes higher than hers. My daughter thought she was stupid.

So I had her tested for intelligence. Maybe I was wrong or else I would be able to 'proove' I was right. And she turned out to have a high IQ, but a slow (compared to the PIQ and VIQ) processing speed. But the teacher and her school didn't show any interest in this report! Some months later, she turned out to be very ahead of others although the school still tought her only things she knew long time. It did her good to have on paper that she wasn't stupid.

To end a long story: it all hasn't been good at all for my daughter's ideas about her self. She thought she was stupid, had a useless life, being ugly and fat (the most skinny boney girl in class told her all the time that my daughter was fat, which wasn't true but compared to the skinny girl everybody would look fat) and so on. We changed schools because I wanted to get her away from the people who were neglecting her needs so very much. She went to another school (Montessori) and in the learning field things go better now. But the bullying has become worse with getting older. It goes up and down actually. I don't think it wil ever stop. This year is the first year that I wondered who we would really want to ask to come to my daughter's birthday party in january. My daughter is almost nine y/o now. I decided to get in touch with some friends she had in daycare and that worked out.

Besides al this my daughter suffers from anxiety. Last summer she went to see a psychiatrist and she signed her up for a therapy that should leanrn her how to cope with anxiety.

The bullying continues. Even children that were friends before seem to treat my daughter as a waste bin: if they need someone to do the impopular part in a game they call my daughter, who is happy they want to play with her. This is what happened lately. I told my daughter to only play with children if she felt it was an equal play. She said that she wouldn't be able to play with anybody then! That shocked me. But the last two weeks she hasn't been everybody's waste bin and now (she says) they seem to come after her to talk to her and so on.

It hurts me to see how my daughter was accepting the fact that she'd do all the things the others don't want to do, in order to be allowed to play with them. I truly hope she won't do that anymore. What if she becomes older and sexually active?

Anyway Roadless, I hope your boy doesn't want friends so much that he's willing to do things he doesn't like. I tell my daughter to do what she likes and look around to see what other children do what she likes and try to connect to them. Maybe you can invite children you son likes for a nice visit some place so that your son has a chance to get to know the other child and the other child gets to know your son?

For me, with ASD, the bullying ESCALATED when I got into middle school. it ws terrible. I'm a woman and, as a girl, I was the smallest, skinniest one in class, but boys beat me up and I hid the bruises from my parents. The teachers didnt' know because the kids did it when they weren't around. I felt like the teachers didn't like me anyways. They seemed to want to join the "popular" crowd! I didn't want to be popular (saw the hypocrisy and meanness). I just wanted to be left alone. I have had scars from all that and have been very proactive about preventing my son from bullying. I keep an eye on my son's treatment. I agree that inclusion can be horrible for ASD kids. My son is in special ed for two of his classes. He is 13. He is allowed to work up to his ability level, but he is also with accepting peers and has made lots of friends. They all have differing problems so it's not a "one size fits all class." When he is mainstreamed, there is a 3-1 aide that goes with him. Since he's so high functioning most of the k ids assume the aide is for one non-verbal child who is in class with him. He isn't perceived as different, but eyes are always watching him. Even at recess, they make sure he's participating with the other kids and that nobody is picking on him. Unlike me, who tried to fake illness so I didn't have to go to school, my son loves school. I think throwing an ASD kid into inclusion with no aide is like throwing a baby into a swimming pool to teach him to swim, only I also feel the baby has a better chance of learning to swim!