Trouble being w/delays coming home from school

Post Reply New Topic

My son is doing better behaviorally than last. (yey!) Now we have an new issue. He gets really upset (meltdown level upset) when he is delayed in coming home. He melts down if his teacher has to talk to me for a few minutes (literally a few minutes) or he has a doctor appointment etc. Home really is 0.0.0 for him, and after a long day of school he really needs to come home.

He is OK about different routes home as long as he thinks they are faster. So the issue does appear to be "being late for home" as opposed to general inflexibility. He does not have a specific program he wants to watch or anything. He just wants/needs to be at home and decompress before homework.

The teacher is as good as can be expected about making his day as stress free as possible, so I don't think there is much play there. The thing is sometimes he gets upset about stuff and now she cannot even talk to me about it after school. It has gotten worse, not better, as he anticipates it taking "forever" if she says more than one sentence. Then it spirals into "What if I have to stay at school all night" etc. I tried social stories, but he just needs to be home.

She isn't flagging me after school, now, and aside from occasional doctor appointments it is a non issue, but it seems like something I should try harder to help him with.

Any suggestions?

It sounds like an inflexibility problem. Unfortunately I cannot help you with that because my daughter's therapist works those issues. But she has recommended us to include as many variations in her routines as possible (food, times for eating, sleeping, etc.,), to help her be more flexible. If the problem is that he needs to decompress before star doing homework, you can still give him the same amount of time he usually gets after school (and tell him you will) no matter if you arrive home late. Dont doing homework one day will not kill him. You can also carry some toys so he can play while out, if that is what he is missing. What my cherishes about her "decompressing" time is playing with her toys.

Do you ever do anything fun straight after school, other than going home? I'm thinking of a trip to the library or a playpark or swimming (just for example). Would he ever voluntarily do any of these things, just to get him used to not always going straight home?

I actually have the opposite problem with my daughter. We pass two playparks on the way home and getting her out of them can be a challenge, but she's improving too.

He does not like leaving the house, really at all. On weekends we will do errands, and he is used to that, but he does not like it. He does not meltdown because he is used to it, but he cannot stand too many stops, and hates being out too long.

Sometimes we have fun outings on weekends and even though they are fun (for him) and he likes when we are there, he does not want to go. We usually have to bribe him, even though it is fun (amusement parks etc.) Yes, I have to bribe my son to go to amusement parks!

During the summers I make him do certain things (library and park) so he does not become a complete hermit, but I usually have to bribe him for most of those things, too. Again, even though he likes it when he is there.

He really loves being home.

During the school week I do not make him do this, because I know school is stressful enough (esp. last year) and he wants to be home. He also has homework etc. He used to be OK with the occasional doctor appointment, though. I am careful to schedule these when I can on Fridays (no HW) but he melted down anyway this last time.

Maybe it was a mistake to not include some after school activity, from a flexibility perspective, but I really feel he NEEDS the time. Most of what he likes is non-portable (desktop computer.) So some of this is special interest related as well as flexibility related. I have occasionally asked him if he wanted to stop at the park, but he always says no. There is no place he would want to be more than home. he is not at all social, has no desire for friends, so I can't use that, either.

I knew someone who would say to her son something like "I am only going to talk five minutes. She would then set the timer on her phone for her son for five minutes, and tell her son "let me know when the five minutes is up." She would then try very hard to take only as long as the timer was set for or shorter. She enjoyed talking and would often talk longer than she had said she would so five minutes would become an hour. At the same time, her son became more and more demanding, interrupting, being annoying, whining, pulling on her shirt to "let's go," and complaining if she even tried to talk for 2 minutes. This helped her to set a time limit on herself and for her son to learn some patience in waiting while having some control about when he could start asking to go.

I also agree with the previous posts about having some fun activities/places after school, having a bag of after school toys - especially soothing and fidget toys to have while waiting or in the car, having some break between after school and homework, etc.

Do not worry. It will get better with time. Just be persistent. Our kids take a LOG TIME to overcome some things. He will eventually get that going out can be fun, and will become less stressful as he gets use to it. You can remind him the good time he had the last time. For some reason they tend to remember only the bad things. You need to help him remember the good things.

By the way, a good alternative for the computer can be an iPad. You can always try to get a used one.

My daughter loves being home, too. But I force her going out. I tell her "she has to" go to the park and I do not take a no for an answer. I tell her it is good for her because she needs to exercise (which is true), but I also do it so she can have interaction with other people. She never wants to go, but usually she ends up talking to other kids or playing with other kids.

Our son does the same thing, not really just school though- it's everywhere.

Our therapist said that we need to think of it like this- we see the map of life and places as a city, with different routes to get from one place to another. We can change, adapt, and do different things to get someplace, whether it is a trip, homework, task, etc... Our son sees life like train tracks- he sees one route. If he gets off that route, he gets upset. Sometimes really upset, sometimes not so much, but it does bother him.

We have talked a lot about stuff like this, and he said that even if he is made aware that we are going to stop at Home Depot on the way home when he was planning on going straight home- that helps. Yesterday he said "are we going to the pool? It's ok if we are, I just have to know..." It impressed me that he asked, and he was fine. Even though he was actively playing on Club Penguin at the time and that usually eliminates his interest of doing anything else.

I think the hardest thing for me to get was that I may find something really cool, or think that an 8 year old boy may find it incredibly cool- and he really doesn't like it, or doesn't care. I've learned to temper my thoughts to what he may actually like to do instead of what I think he would like to do.

I do agree- it is getting better with time. But, I do still get that queasy stomach when I tell him that we need to stop at xxxxxxxxx on the way home, and there is that few seconds of silence when he is processing it and waiting to see if he says "ok" or if he starts melting.

I agree with the poster before me, that you should tell about such activities before. Because then the activities doesnt interfere with "the plan", but they become "the plan".

If i know two weeks ahead, that i will go to the park, then going to the park is the plan. If i dont know that i will be going to the park, theres naturally another plan i already have and going to the park smashes that plan to shatters beside of i am forced to create a whole new park plan in a few seconds.

The poster before really described it in a good way with the one way train on which all the day activities are listed and create "the day plan".

Maybe when he gets older, he can manage to make a "Blocks Plan" how i call it. You gather activities linked together to complete blocks and with that blocks you create the day plan. If somethings interrupts i dont have to smash the whole "day plan building", built by the different blocks, but if i get the time, i can see to where take a block away, fit it in at another place and so on instead of smashing the whole plan and creating a new one, which costs lots of energies.

As long as i got my time for that block shifting it is ok. For example, my mom always got me time limits: "I forgot to buy butter at the supermarket. Could you please bring me one? It has to be done until 18:00 because then the market is closing. " That gave me time to shift my blocks to a new plan and to fit in a good place for the new block "buying butter" into my "day plan building".

Instead of that, my father frustrated me often with his kind of doing things just when he thinks about it without any planning. He also did not understand my need for planning. He always got into my room "Blablabla, this and that now." and smashed my whole day plan in 10 Seconds withput any time for me to safe my blocks or anything. -.-

These chaotics often say "Gnagnagna...but in life you also cannot plan everythin ... gnagnagna..." I am now 33 years old and at 98% of my time i can plan my days and because of that i am able to enjoy the time and have the energy to survive the 2% disturbances without Meltdown or Overload. And half of the disturbances i endure are also not "life given" but produced by chaotics without planning and could be avoided. (What i mean: A car accident is something i cannot predict. But "I just remembered that i wanted to repair this and that and you said that you could borrow me your tools, so i´ll be around in half an hour to collect them." really is not necessary. If whatever needs to be repaired, wasnt important enough to think of it a week before, than it ist also not important enough to ruin my day.

I always give him plenty of notice , which I repeat as it gets closer, if it something like a flu shot that I schedule (When he is sick and I have to take him to the doctor, but that is usually OK, because he hates being sick and wants to go so he can feel better (and it is less time away from home than school is.)

The day he flipped out about the flu shot, I told him 2 weeks in advance, one week in advance and then daily reminders and multiple times in the morning. Somehow he was hoping we could go home first and come back, but the appointment was made for right after school, (which I told him) and getting him back out would have been a nightmare anyway. I guess, next time I could make a visual schedule for that day, and see if that helps.

If it is talking to the teacher after school for a few minutes, I can't give notice, but I have visual social stories with pictures that I make, that let him know that we could be detained for a few minutes after school. This has not helped.

It is never because I want to jibber jabber with someone. There is no one I talk to at the school, for fun. I do not use my cell phone at the school. I am not very social and I don't have anything in common with the parents.

I do not take him on errands or anything, after school.

The only issues are flu shot appointments(I know this one is not often) and if the teacher wants to talk to me, or hypothetically if he forgets something he needs from school (and I know this, like if it is his coat) and we need to retrieve it from his classroom.

He is upset literally because it means extra time away from home than he has gotten accustomed to. Aside from the $$$ even a used iPod would cost, I don't think I want to go down that path. He is on the computer too much as is and it crowds out other things. I really do not want to reinforce this by making him think he could theoretically be on the computer all day.

I would try testing making him going to the park after school some days but here is why I think it might be a bad idea: He won't want to go, and I will have to bribe him. I am having massive issues with him doing homework, and being in a good enough mood for school. That means that I could only do this on Fridays, which means that would become a new rigidity and would not help with being flexible other days, assuming he would even accept it. Also he might not want to be detained at school from that new schedule.

As I am running this through my head, I am confusing myself. On the one hand we are told to keep them on a predictable schedule to keep them calm, but on the other hand we are supposed to scaffold it away so we don't reinforce the rigidities. He never seems calm enough to do this, especially during the school year.

Everyone is else, so i can tell you only from my opinion: Until 14 years, as long as i lived at home, with my dad, always having different working times, disturbances, ... i was totally lost in school in life and even had tried to kill myself. I even had to make a class a second time, because i couldnt follow the lessons in school. With 14 we had some testing to help us decide which further school would be best suitable for us or which jobs would be fitting for our interests and so one. It ended up with me doing the test excellent, i had to repeat a more difficult test because noone could understand how i could do this IQ and other test so easily and be that totally bad in school and other situations at the same time. When i was told, that i should visit a higher schoolform i did not want to, because i wanted to start working as soon as possible to afford my own room somewhere, where i hoped nobody could disturb and terrorize me all day. It ended with me going to a higher school form, but visiting a (normal) boarding school. And i loved it. 5 Years long i stood up at 6:15, from 6:45-7:15 there was "pre School exercising", then I went to breakfast, where i got myself two breads with the same spread, one of them i ate before school, one of them at 9:40 and so on, and so on.

The school was way more demanding, then the school in which i had to repeat a class, and still i managed it and most important for me: I was way more happy and not always depressed and stressed. Which caused earlier before, that i just did not want to be around with anyone, having no energy for interaction and so on. In the boarding school i did not mutate to a party girl, but i liked to be around in smaller groups sometimes in the evening after learning or going to the cinema with a group of classmates once a month and so on.

So from my opinion i personally cannot agree with the posters, telling you to work on his "inflexibility" because to endure these "flexibility actions" affords a lot of ressources. If your son hasnt got any ressources left after school anyway, i dont see the point in forcing him to waste that last ressources too, specially when there´s still homework to be done. If someone has too work 16 hours until he is at the end with his ressources, nobody would be wondering that this guy just wants to go home to relax, instead of visiting friends, parties or entertainement parks or such things, specially when you know that the guy has a lot of other work waiting for him at home. Visiting a party or friends, when you are tired to the ass, just makes no fun.

But i agree with the point, that he shouldn´t do the comupter thing all day. I also love my PC-Games and they are my Special Interest but even i have to admit, that if you are sitting too long around, not moving, its having a bad influence on your mood. The circulation of the body needs to be stimulated a few times a day, or else important metabolic processes cannot work as good as they should, influencing your mood an stress level in the end. Are there any other possibilities than parks, where you could go? Parks do not help me relax: Too many people, too much talking, Children screaming, dogs barfing, radios....

I always loved to go walkin around in nearby forests, because most of the time there is nobody around. Libraries are also cool . ^^

With the fact, that your son knew when the flew shot should happen, i am really stumped. For me it would have been terrible if i knew the flew shot should happen, and then it would be delayed. Does your son maybe have a "quiet safe spot" in or around school, where he really feels safe and happy and able to relax, so that he could rest there 10-15 minutes until you take him to appointments?

We have/had this issue too. It is very awkward when I need to take a few minutes to talk to the teacher or something comes up that has to be done directly after school. My sons still hate it, and will always hate it. By the end of the school day they are completely spent, home is their refuge and they need to get there fast. So we avoid planning anything right after school if there is any way it can be avoided, and I communicate through emails and phone calls with the teachers whenever possible or drop my boys off at home and return to the school on my own when that's an option. When it is unavoidable, I do try to stick with a set time frame, such as 15 minutes. Still, it doesn't always work. We had a teacher a couple of years ago who was very chatty, and simple conversations would run interminably long with small talk, which was very hard on my boys and we had many meltdowns. We have slowly worked on politeness in these situations -acceptable ways to let people know you need to be done with a conversation, acceptable things to do when you are stuck waiting etc, but it was never easy and the best solution was simply to choose other times for these teacher talks.

My sons are older now, and have grown greatly in understanding. Now they get that I am trying to extricate myself from the conversation because I respect the fact that they need to go home, and that I won't keep them waiting too long. They also know that I try my best to keep their schedules clear after school. Heck, I don't even talk to them before 5:30pm other than a perfunctory "How was your day?" which gets a polite but monosyllabic response as per our agreement. That is their time to unwind. So now that they are old enough to see evidence of me trying to respect their needs, they are better at not panicking (which is what the meltdowns and rudeness were) when something tests their limits. But they simply could not have done this when they were younger, the understanding wasn't there, so neither was the trust, and their sensory exhaustion after a day at school was that much more profound too.

For us trying to train them in flexibility wouldn't have worked for this issue, they just didn't have it in them to do any better than meltdowns and raw impatience at that time. Requiring them to go to parks or other things after school would have just exacerbated their anxiety and exhaustion, and feelings that mom didn't recognize or didn't care about their needs.

My daughter moves amazingly quickly when I pick her up from school, compared to how slowly she moves getting ready to go just about anywhere. Yes, a big part of the reason is that she needs to get home, where she is comfortable. But she will also accept going on certain errands (the slightly more pleasant ones, i.e. going to get an ice cream cone or to pick up a sibling) after school, even more easily than she will on weekends when she is settled at home. Weekend trips or errands have to be "booked" days in advance, and she still gets to near-meltdown level if something changes.

I think the need to get away from a conversation or delay at school also has to do with embarrassment and impatience. There are few things my daughter hates more than standing around waiting. It's worse when people are talking about her, and I can hardly blame her. It seems like she doesn't want me to talk to her when I pick her up or even to be seen with me, and when she goes stiff and walks with her arms straight at her sides I know she is feeling crowded. The hallways at school are disturbingly busy. I have also realized that she doesn't want other kids at school to stare at her. She is old enough now to go and wait in the car or outside the school, use her smartphone, read a book etc. I find that helps a lot.

It's easy for me to empathize, though. I feel trapped when someone wants to make small talk when I just want to go home. Often it's the NT talker who isn,t picking up on our social cues and noticing that we're not into talking right now. ;-P

Hope that you can relate to some of these things.

J.

I understand the overwhelming need to be home. I am like this also. I get to a point where the day has FINALLY ended and I now I just have to go STRAIGHT HOME. I also hate leaving the house in general.

However, I understand that you need to talk with his teacher at times about events during the day, it is important.

I like the idea a previous poster mentioned about the 5min timer.

Also, what is his special interest? Does he read about it? Or play with it? Can you have something to do with his special interest with you. You can put the 5min timer on, and let him indulge in his special interest while he waits.

I always feel more calm about waiting for something unexpected if I have a book in my bag that I am currently reading about my special interest.

This made me remember something. When I was in my 20's I volunteered at a school for kids with autism. They were moderately-severely affected. There was one boy who I really liked a lot. He was very sweet and eager to please. He was in his early teens and larger than I am, but was still like a little boy in so many ways. He always liked to hold my hand and it seemed like he was always smiling. He was nonverbal.

One day he was going to be late to the bus and it was my job to get him out to the bus that day. As we were going out the door, he tried to pull me in the other direction. I did not understand what he was doing and thought maybe he didn't realize it was time for the bus, so I tried to explain it to him. He kept pulling to go in the other direction. I kept telling him the bus was in the other direction. He kept trying to pull me. I kept trying to guide him to go toward the bus.

His bus eventually left without him and he had a huge meltdown, complete with hitting himself in the head. I felt horrible because I didn't understand what just happened. When his mom came to pick him up, she explained that there was a pole in the school yard that he had to touch before getting on the bus. If I would have allowed him to touch it, he would have gone straight to the bus without issue. He would have probably even run if I would have told him we needed to run.

...for things like the shot, have you ever tried letting him get home for a moment and then leaving? I don't know if it would work, but if it would, it might make somethings a lot easier because you could plan time in to the day to stop briefly at home.

OK, it is officially a problem of him wanting to maximize his time at home.

We planned a fun time for him over the weekend, which he got plenty of notice of and we got buy in for. Every few minutes (even though you could see he was having fun) he would ask what time it was. He knew in advance what time we were leaving, and was wanting to figure out how much time was left, each time. (He is good at math, and would calculate time left, each time.)

So the problem is an amplification of wanting to be home. He has always had these hermit-like qualities. Frankly I have them too, though not nearly as severely, so I understand why he wants to stay at home. So on the one hand I get it, but on the other, I am not sure how much to indulge it. I don't know if we should plan more outings, to try to moderate this, or if I should let him stay home more often since he has a need for it, or keep things about the same. We are mostly homebodies (surprise, surprise) other than largely predictable weekend errands (which he tolerates, but obvs does not like) and outings of one sort or another, maybe every couple of months at that. The rest is school (which he wants to get home from ASAP) and very occasional random things, like flu shots.

The teacher is going to communicate with me by email, now, due to his fussy fits at school when we are delayed (a couple minutes max, anyway--as I am not a yammerer IRL(despite my long posts)and the teacher has things to do, after class)