First time posting, long time frustrated. I've gone round and round with the IEP process, diagnosis, etc with my now 19 y/o son. He has APD and hearing loss. He made it through and graduated last year! 8 years ago I gained custody of my 3 nephews. They are now 15, 13 & 11. My question today is regards to me 13 y/o with an ASD dx. He's highly intelligent and has a wealth of knowledge naturally from his love of reading. In elementary school we struggled with learning what his triggers were, helping him to regulate and of course teacher selection. 6th grade middle school had a few bumps with social situations. He wants everyone to follow the rules and when they don't it angers him. I get it, we told him we understand. We had to explain to him that sometimes it's not a rule necessarily but more of a standard. Foul language , bad manners,etc. He was fighting for justice for everything and it did end up in a physical pushing match that was not an even playing field. The school handled it appropriately but it was a tough lesson to learn. On the flip side that altercation in 6th changed his whole demeanour at school. Now into 7th grade, his coping mechanism for anything difficult in class and over all for "surviving middle school" is to not to talk to anyone, and retreat if needed. The retreat is where our problem lies. Grades started out well, then social issues began. He is not a 'popular' kid so he becomes a target for bullies. We've talked about how to handle them. For the most part he's done well, I don't think the school has. Call home, talk to the dean, but nothing that made a difference enough to make them stop. The bullying has been verbally teasing. I call it poking the bear to see if they can provoke him to respond. His safe place has been playing on the school provided Chromebook. Playing games, reading anything he can on NASA, searching Google Earth. Anything to remove himself from his situation. In doing that he is not doing classwork. The bullying has stopped because he was removed from the class not the bully. Not happy about that decision but we just went with it. Grades are still falling. We talked and talked. Not really knowing what to do, we rewarded good grades, took privileges for bad grades. At home we ground from screen time (TV and video games) if we see that he's been playing games or on the internet instead of doing school work. We asked the school to block everything except what's needed for classes. He found a way to get around their internet guards. I finally made the decision to ask his Chromebook to be removed all together. He is only to use the teachers extra Chromebook for assignments as needed. That's kinda working but there are teachers that aren't following through and being consistent. Grades were climbing, less zeros... We had discussed the possibility of getting better internet at home. That hasn't happened and now the zero's are starting again. Are you able to do the work given to you? Yes. Is it too hard? No. Why aren't you doing your work? I don't know. No real answer, just didn't feel like it. How do I get to the bottom of this for him? What are we missing? There has been no consequence or reward that made enough of a difference to encourage consistency. We have an IEP meeting next week 2/27 and I'd love to come to the table with some ideas because I don't feel the school will. We are in Florida. Any ideas, hints or suggestions are appreciated.

Posted by GailB at 2024-02-22 18:47:06 UTC