More Challenges At School

Alex is still having behaviour problems at school and is now raising the stakes with aggression, as well as self-injury and tantruming.  The teacher has shared that some students are not coming to school due to his behaviour and another is refusing to enter the classroom.  From the hinting, I am getting the impression that they are working up to insisting that Alex stay home.  Or rather, wanting me to volunteer to do it as they are not permitted to refuse Alex access to school.

Dave and I have talked about it as an option.  Allowing the school to continue to push Alex into deteriorating behaviour isn't a win for anyone.  The longer this goes on, the harder it will be to come back from.

But there are other factors to consider.  First and foremost, if we agree, we are setting dangerous precedents both for Alex and the school.  For Alex, he will learn that he can escape an unpreferred situation simply by behaving badly for a persistent period.  For the school, rather than work out any future problems, they will be more inclined to ask us to pull him out again.

Other factor, we can't have Alex simply sitting around doing nothing (or more likely, finding ways to get into trouble).  We would have to set up a homeschooling situation, which means that one of us would need to stop working.  I already know that I have no talents in that area (I only tend to frustrate Alex and myself rather than actually make any progress) and I somehow doubt that losing Dave's salary would be an option.

This has really been a horrible year for him and I'm alternating between being furious and being ready to cry.  At the start of the year, he was doing well enough that there was talk of integrating him with regular classes in the near future.  And now, less than 10 months later, his behaviour is bad enough that they're hinting he needs to leave the autism class.

What's even more frustrating is that we're not seeing similar behaviour issues at home.  There's an upswing in verbal protest and the head-banging has reappeared after almost two years of extinction, but we're not getting the kind of thing they are describing at school.  Which means something is happening at school to either trigger or encourage his behaviour.  I'm not seeing it in the descriptions of what happens, but it's there.  And until we can find it, things are going to continue to get worse.