8yr old Daughter fixated with classmate

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Wandering or bolting is a serious problem and when you have a child on an IEP for whom this might be a concern, it is the school's responsibility to supervise that student. There are serious consequences when that responsibility is allowed to lapse.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/21/justice/n ... e-remains/

Ummmm....they SNUCK AWAY because the school was trying to eliminate the one comfortable social outlet the girls have (at least for your daughter). It seems to me that it is then the school's "fault" that they snuck away. If they permitted and encouraged appropriate interactions, they would have no need to sneak away. Not to mention the fact that either girl could apparently leave the school grounds under their lack of supervision, whether or not they are together. And the last comment I have on that issue is to wonder whether or not anyone has ever explicitly explained to them that this is not allowed. I have sometimes been dumbfounded by the implied rules that my daughter, who is otherwise very bright, does not pick up. Most kids seem to understand that when "bell = come in from the playground," it also means that if you don't come in from the playground when the bell rings, you are violating a rule. My daughter, and my son to a degree, would not understand that unless it was stated. I also wonder if they really "snuck away" or if they were intently playing and did not even notice the bell.

I am also still not clear exactly what behaviors they are concerned about other than the fact that your daughter may (or may not) become obsessed with her. And that she tends to be domineering, as does my daughter...not a reason for a special school. There are domineering NT kids out there, too. Would they have to go to a special school?

I realize I am giving no helpful feedback. I just feel appalled on your behalf at the way this is being handled.

I doubt they are really willing to pay for that. You could call their bluff and ask if they are saying that means they are unable to meet your child's needs and will pay for it. If they say, "yes" you can always say you will look to see what is available without committing yourself--even if you don't mean it--just to see if they will really offer this. If they start hemming and hawing then you can remind them it is there job to educate your child and keep her safe. We had a teacher say this (probably at the principal's prompting hoping we would pay for this---The district did not agree... and made no such offer, and the minute I told them I would expect them to pay for any such school the subject dropped. I suspect that would happen in your case, too.

Edited for grammar and typos.

Last edited by ASDMommyASDKid on 14 Feb 2014, 10:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.

ASDMommy's approach seems like a good one. Without committing, it is generally a good idea to look like you are making a good faith effort to consider all options presented by the school. Then if/when you turn them down, it is clear to everyone that it is coming from a knowledgeable and reasoned position and not just because you're a stubborn or lazy parent.

In the US, part of the IDEA law calls for something called LRE (Least Restrictive Environment). This principle states that if a child can be educated in a mainstream classroom with additional supports, then the school must provide those supports. It is ok to put a child in a more restricted environment, like a specialized school, due to the child's need. It is not legal to put a child in a more restricted environment because of financial concerns of the school. For some reason, I'm thinking you (cyberdad) are in the UK, and I'm not sure how the laws may differ there, but if there is a similar principle, it would apply here.

Agree with your feedback

We had a similar problem a couple of years ago with my daughter's meltdowns was disrupting the classroom and we needed to bring in a psychologist at our expense. The upshot of that visit was my daughter was placed on medication which has been beneficial (to some extent) although we would like to take her off the drugs.

I guess there is a precedence for the school to draw upon.

Yes this is the same as in Australia, I think where we parents are a little in the dark is the funding component of this support.

Do you know the other girl's parents, who maybe fueling this separation?

You are sort of working in a black box. You may want this, the girls may want this, the OTHER parents may be raising holy hell to put the lid on the whole thing.

I had an issue, in after school care where I worked. One little Aspie had a fixation on two other boys. The ASD kid was sort of dominant. We got holy hell to keep him away from the other two. The supposed reason there was a lot of drama about hurt feelings and being stalked. I guess the Aspie kid's mom was also calling up for play dates, since the boy thought they were BFF.

The short of it was we could not tell the Aspie parent or kid any of the above other that a bullying charge was raised. That's why I would find out (if you can) where is the other parent's head is at.

In the US, confidentiality trumps everything. Since we were not with the school, but an outsourced business, we couldn't do any of intervention things a school could try. We couldn't tell the mom or the son how bad and ugly it was on our end. We just got the make it happen part.

You make think it's only the school, it could be driven by parents lawyering up, and the school reactioning to that.

It got bad enough where the other families changed their phone numbers, and told the boys NOT to give them out this other boy. It was a horrible year.

I think it should be quite easy to distinguish that situation from this one. There they could reasonably claim there was nothing they could do (or at least knew how to do). Here there is an obvious solution in front of them: the aid. Not to mention in the earlier situation the entire class was disrupted; in here the disruption is likely limited to the two girls.

To me, this is a situation to be supervised and used for the value of its teaching moments. Your daughter is a little more mature than she was last year, I would assume, and it should not be assumed that this situation is going to become a problem like the last.

All that said, it might not hurt to get a professional you feel you can trust to do some observation. It will appease the school and just might provide you ammunition for telling the school that they aren't doing their job. The problem is you can't see exactly what is happening so how can you know for sure what to address and who is right? You need some unbiased information.

It really bothers me that

(a) the other families did not have the courage to tell the mother that the sense of friendship was one-sided, and their boys did not want to have play dates with hers, while perhaps giving specific examples of what she could work with her son on to improve the situation, and

(b) the compassion to work with their boys on setting boundaries and learning to manage the situation so that they could forge some sense of friendship.

Making you build the wall and then changing their own phone numbers is such a cop out. They didn't want the mother to know how their boys felt, which kind of has guilt written all over it, doesn't it? So much grief could be avoided if people got the courage to be honest, and wisdom to do it tactfully.

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This is a good question, I don;t know?



This sounds similar to our situation as the school can't tell me what special needs the other girl has? who are her parents? or what interaction she has with my daughter? (I guessed she has Aspergers because she is far more communicative than my daughter and has other friends), Ironically the class and other teachers were informed that my daughter has autism in case she has a public meltdown and people need to intervene?

I did inquire about my daughter's friend last year and the other parent made contact with us and we did a playdate. Unfortunately the outing established that the boy (who had ADHD) was not compatible with my daughter and the other parent did not make contact with us again.

Yes I see your perspective. Yes it's good to get unbiased advice so I might go ahead with the psychologist,

There is a HUGE back story to all of this.

The Aspie kid should have never been in after care. He had a 1:1 at school. He was a runner, had ADHD, and huge sensory issues. We had over 90 kids in a school cafeteria/gym/out door scape with 5 adults. Not one was a teacher. The supervisor only needs a early childhood education degree, and the rest of the staff only needed day care experience/camp/working with kids. Have a 1:1 disqualifies the student, because the state mandates a special education setting then, which obviously we were not.

The school was under no obligation to tell us this. After care is totally separate. I found out from "Pete's" teacher after he took off running and taking his clothes off during a meltdown.

Mom was on the spectrum. Needed the after school care because Pete was a school of choice student. She drove him. I'm guessing she didn't out right deliberately lie, she was just really "clueless" on a whole host of things.

It boiled down to social class, entitlement and a misplace setting. The school is in a neighborhood of million dollar houses. Those families DO NOT mix with the school of choice kids, which are ironically in the same city, only those homes start at 200K. This mom was an apartment, in the hood rat part of town, which run about $1,300. Feel free to die from eye rolling right here.

Biff and Buff (the two other kids-different families), are whiney, entitlement brats. They have their own Leggo room, and by looking at pictures, is bigger than my living room and kitchen combined. They go on weekend vaycays like Aspen for skiing. Nothing wrong with that.

Biff, Buff and Pete would argue and cry over our pathetic bucket of Leggos. If you have an ASD kid, you can conjure up what happened. Pete was obsessed with Leggos, and the other two screamed they had the right to play with them too. (true)

So everyday was a cluster f**k of Biff and Buff whining, pissing and moaning their parents *IT'S SO UNFAIR, PETE GETS ANYTHING HE WANT* Remember, out of 5 adults there, not one teacher, no one except for me knows anything about ASD, and we were never told, except around May that Pete had any issues.

Biff and Buffs' parents did what any good family pulling in 5 mill/year does. Goes straight to district office and raises hell. District screamed at our head office, and said those kids had to treat each other like plutonium. If Biff and Buff where in the gym, Pete had to be somewhere else. That is their solution for bullying (any disagreement in which parents call the head office or the school district office).

Pete had asked for Biff and Buff's phone numbers. All being nine years old, they did it. I'm sure Biff and Buff's parent's tossed Pete's phone number straight into the trash. Pete's mom called the parents for a play date.

The next day, the parents (both sets) came in claws out. HOW DARE YOU GIVE OUR PHONE NUMBER OUT! (didn't) THAT WOMAN IS WEIRD AND SO IS HER KID. (sigh). What type of low rent business are you running? Well, you're the cheap ones, all your other friends hire unemployed teachers at $16/hour as nannies, Pot Kettle Black. The ASD mom said the other moms very nice, and declined the invite. (speed changing the phone numbers immediately afterwards no doubt)

Well, someone did some digging through the gossip line, and found out Pete had a 1:1.
Both families pulled a total of ten kids out of the program because, "We couldn't be trusted. That child should have never been here. Do you know HOW STRESSFUL it is picking up your child, expecting him to be happy, and his is in near tears every day? (your kid is a whiner of the 1st order, but okay) I shouldn't have to DEAL WITH THIS after a very stressful day at work." I made $8.00/hr to deal with this nonsense. I'm grateful I wasn't the supervisor.

The families hired some student teachers who were paid $20/hrs to pick up their kids and babysit for a few hours each day. Glad someone made out on this deal. I quit that job when school finally ended.

That is why I said about check out the back story.

I can give a much more benign, and common scenario for parents wanting kids to separate. As cyberdad mentioned, the other girl is slightly more social / less academically oriented. Some parents of kids with ASDs think, "my kid needs a friend, so even if this other friend is not ideal, I'll encourage it." Sometimes parents think, "my kid needs to be learning social skills, so wasting his/her time with a child that is socially less skilled is a bad idea." They may try to make it so their child only socializes with neurotypical children, seeing an ASD-ASD friendship as a lodestone that will keep their child from developing socially. This is hard for a parent to take; that a parent of a kid with ASD would be profiling against other kids with ASDs, but it happens. It's also understandable, although depending on the situation, potentially misguided. I'm sure all of the parents here can imagine a child who you would discourage your own child from playing with. It's just hurtful when that child is your own, especially when it is undeserved.

Tawaki's scenario is also a possibility, especially when children have developmental disabilities, parents can be very protective, and the children may not be great reporters of what happened. A simple misundestanding can cause a child to go home and say "so and so hates me," which then leads to a concerned parent calling the school.

But this is all jumping way ahead of the information. It seems like cyberdad has no information about the other girl's parents or their position, so I don't think it's necessary to make any assumptions about that at this point. Given that cyberdad's daughter had a history of becoming obsessed, it seems like the sort of thing that would be more school initiated than parent driven, but it could be either or both. It may be a good idea to get in touch with the other girl's parents in any case, if only to arrange a play-date.

Yes, ideally it would be good to get the background. The problem is nobody is telling me anything! The family of the other girl probably do want their child to "normalise" socially and therefore put her in a mainstream school. From what I can see she is a very friendly and sometimes communicative child but is quite shy. Her behavior is stereotypically Aspie and while she has other friends she is most comfortable with my daughter and especially this year. This morning my daughter asked me (for the umteeth time) if her friend will be allowed to play? apparently some compromise will be made and the two can see each other for short periods but they are not spend too much time. Unfortunately my daughter's philosophy in life is "In for a penny in for pound"... she may get frustrated with this new arrangement.

When my daughter was five, I enrolled her in a special needs ELC to prepare toddlers for school. My daughter was the only ASD kid in a class of Aspies (almost all boys). Two things became apparent. Firstly the parents of the children there did scan the other children making mental notes on where the other kids were on the spectrum in relation to their own precious little bundles. The second thing was that my daughter was effectively the only non-verbal child in the group (she could of course talk to us in short phrases at that age but not to outsiders she did not know).

As the parents began networking at the ELC my wife and I were largely ignored even when we made attempts to smile and say hello. My wife didn't feel comfortable returning so I was left to socialise with the mums and dads after the first session. While I could handle getting the cold shoulder from the other parents I was a little disheartened that none of the kids would play with my daughter. I understood why children do this, if you say hello to another child and that child doesn't acknowledge you then you aren't going to say anything more. This was excacerbated by the parents whom ostracized us as they saw no future in their children and my child.

So in the context of my daughter's fixation on this child I can imagine the other parents would not have put their daughter in mainstream school so that she spends her time with other special needs kids.