What's Going On?

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DS's school thinks he is hitting and kicking people at recess, and saying all kinds of inappropriate things including but not limited to insults. When I ask him about it he claims it was someone else, and that the kids who reported it are mistaken. He also claims kids make up things about him for no reason. Knowing DS's issues, I don't know what to believe.
It's possible that:
1. He's telling the truth.
2. He's lying.
3. He's being honest but is mistaken.
4. A combination of the above.

The school seems to be looking to me for explanations. I wasn't there, and have no idea what to tell them. I can tell them about his behavior at home, but that's about it. Someone also told me that we need to "hurry up" with his evaluation. It is the school that's doing the evaluation - they are essentially complaining about themselves to me. What am I expected to do about all of this?

If you have the means, could you arrange for someone you hire (such as a speech therapist who provides social skills classes) to go observe him during recess, and write a report to be submitted to the eval team?

If not, you could try requesting in writing that a Functional Behavioral Analysis be performed by the school psychologist for the recess time.

The complaining issue I would refer back to themselves and say something like, "I know. It is aggravating me, too. Maybe you should speak to x (person in charge of eval schedule and coordination) to get his eval expedited.

As to what is going on there is no telling without someone to observe, which of course will change the behavior. Bullying is possible, as bullies are usually good at not getting caught. Your son might be reacting to that.

tell them to get future incidents on video
having it on video would be beneficial on many levels and will show its really happening

Break down everything that happened. EVERYTHING. You may find that he misread what happened, or forgot to mention things that happened right before. That was usually the case when my son was young. If a child bumped into him by mistake? They shoved him. And so on. You have to go through it slowly, step by step, asking him detailed questions, and letting him describe it in his own words. The communication gaps make asking a simple "did you do this?" impossible.

It can also be helpful to try and observe from a distance. In preschool, that was how I discovered other kids were really provoking my son, knowing how he would instinctively react.

Once you have a precise and exact story, then you decide what your next step is.

I don't know how it works in other systems, but our experience with this in elementary school was that the school sent us a packet and we were to contact the developmental neurologist, make an appointment (and there was a fairly long wait, six or seven weeks) and take him in, with the packet for evaluation.

No one told us what we were supposed to do and we were not really psychologically ready to hear that he needed the evaluation when they first told us--so we sort of ignored the packet when it came. [edited to add] We thought they would call us when they had an appointment set up, but it turned out that was our job.

I have no doubt that you have your stuff more together than we did (I think almost everyone does) but is it possible that there is some element like this where you might need to initiate some next step? We only found out because of an idle comment I made passing the principal in the hall--she realized what was going on and gave me explicit instructions on what to do next. Everyone thought someone else had done this.

In any case, good luck dealing with this and don't let any of it get you down. All these moments will pass and he will be OK when he comes through.

I have a feeling this is not something they'd do, at least not right now. They'd have to have someone follow him around the playground videotaping, and even then they might not catch anything because all the kids (DS included) would see the camera.



We talk this way with DS, but sometimes we still can't get a grasp on what's happening. Sometimes he lies if he thinks he's going to be in trouble, even when it turns out that he didn't do anything wrong. He also has trouble putting things in chronological order, and trouble with people's names, and sometimes he says he's just too confused to remember what happened. He sometimes also includes details that have nothing to do with the subject of the conversation. Often at the end of a twenty to thirty minute discussion, we are still not sure exactly what happened.

For me it sounds like he is bullied, overreacting or a combination of both.
I also was like this. Other children were having fun of me and provoked me knowing how I am going to react and when I blowed up they were calling a teacher and telling him it is all my fault and they did nothing.

Unfortunately I have no idea what to suggest you. My parents were trying to force teachers to take a closer look of whats going on and try to protect me when something like that happen but they didn't give a damn.
It finally stopped when I was 13 year old, learned how to hold my emotions down and effectively protect myself without getting into much trouble. Maybe you should send your kid to some self defense classes like karate? You know, one of those that teach how to fight but also show how to keep emotions on leash.

It is not surprising that your son would think it was everyone else's fault even if he did something. I know from my own daughter, she always knows when people are doing wrong to her, but she doesn't realize that she was the one who provoked them in the first place. Even if I totally see her doing something to someone else, she will only see the part when they got back at her, not what she did to instigate the incident.

Or he could be having people bug him for the fun of watching him react - I know kids love provoking my daughter because she gets to mad easily, they find it very entertaining usually.

As for breaking things down, I can't even imagine trying to do this with my daughter - once an incident is over, it's over and she doesn't want to rehash anything. Talking too much about something that upset her would just make her really anxious, stressed and eventually she would have a melt down.

Could you go to school and spy on him? Find out when his recess is and go there at those times and watch him through a pair of binoculars.