I had a meeting this morning with Connor's team of people at school about his continuing behavior plan. This is what to do when Connor behaves in different ways, so that everyone can stay consistent and he can figure out the correct way to behave that much sooner.
Everything seems to be running along pretty well now, much better than before the Christmas break - of course part of that could just have been his trying to deal with Christmas break! In any case, his only real hurdle right now is when he gets counted off the swings.
Connor gets both recess times, even though he's a 5th grader, and the rest of his grade only gets 2nd recess. We have both recesses for Connor because he really needs the physical time to reset himself mentally. I still believe that's true for ALL kids, but I'm not in charge of how they run the schools here.
The older kids leave Connor be on the swings, because they get that he really likes swinging (and they don't so much anymore) and so the issue happens at the first recess with the 1-3rd graders. When the swings are all full, you can stand in front of someone swinging, and count to 100. When you get to 100, the swinger has to give up the swing for the counter.
Connor has been getting very irritated, even to the point of pushing someone, when he's getting counted down. He yells "shut up" and "stupid" at the kid who is counting.
So we talked about doing social stories and comic strips to help him do a better job of behaving correctly after being counted down. He's supposed to say, "Okay" or "Your turn" and go and do something else OR he can count down someone else.
My take was that someone should be prepping him already before the recess that he WILL be counted down and he MUST share the swing. Even though this happens a lot, an issue with autism is the kids don't just pick up these patterns. It blindsides & angers him every time someone starts to count him down. So if he gets prepped that it WILL be happening, he can already start to mentally prepare for it.
Hopefully we'll get him to the point where he can just jump off, hand off the swing, and go do something else without all the anger & frustration.
But still, overall, he's doing really well.
:)
Art mystery possibly solved?
2 days ago
3 comments:
Sounds like a great interaction exercise for both Connor and the other kids.
I'm thinking, rain permitting, we might go to the swings and model the behavior this weekend.
sounds like a plan, although he may be more willing to give up the swing for a family member plus if there aren't that many kids around he might not be as unwilling to give up the swing knowing he will be able to get on rather quickly again.
Of course this would be different if you are practicing at a busy park!
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