Difficult Friday

I haven't posted for a few days, but it has been crazy times. This week has been a flurry of activity. Our wonderful Blake once again decided that he was not going to put up with having the principal in his face and decided to jump the fence at school.

It all started off so harmlessly, being a child that has limitless energy he can sometimes decide to be in a silly mood and when I say silly it's an extreme sillyness where you can not talk to him, get his eye contact or even get him to hear you, he becomes so involved in his own little silly world that he is oblivious to anyone around him. Of course this happened in the middle of class time which is totally not convenient for anyone and of course the teachers and principal could not get him to stop so they removed the class and attempted to get him to calm down and stop being so silly. This didn't work for them as he continued on. It is very hard to know what to do in this situation as there really is no key in making him stop, he just needs to get it out of his system, some physical activity can sometimes help but the first hurdle is actually moving him to another space so that he can get it out of his system. On this occasion, no-one at the school was able to succeed in moving him to another area, so the entire class needed to be removed to another area. Of course this built the frustrations of the staff and it meant that the pleading, nagging and verbalisations to Blake continued to a point where he no longer enjoyed being silly because he was being interrupted by staff trying to move him to another area. Blake is a strictly hands off kid, so there is no way that the staff can approach him and forceably remove him and that wouldn't sit well with me anyway. In the proceeding hour, Blake had gone from being extremely silly to extremely angry. He voluntaryily moved himself out of the classroom but it was only because he wanted to get away from the staff. He moved out to the yard and had a staff member follow him out there. If you can imagine a rabbit moving away from a fox and the fox comes closer, commonsense tells you that the rabbit will continue to move away from the fox until the rabbit is out of sight from the fox. Well this is sort of the same situation where Blake didn't want to be anywhere near the staff who in his eyes had been harassing him and annoying him. He can't see that what he was doing was annoying an entire class and several staff members, he can only see his point of view where he set out to do something and he wasn't permitted to do it and was being hounded by staff to conform to what they wanted him to do. With Oppositional Defiance Disorder it is extremely hard for Blake to cope with what others want him to do, every request is met with questions and sometimes a challenge as his mindset is always thinking why should I? Whats in it for me? Why do I need to? The key to getting him to cooperate is timing, allowing his brain to process what is required and allowing his brain to do the "shift change" that you or I can do automatically when needed to. Shift change is the brain's ability to shift from one task to another and also the ability to multi task. Blakes' shift change is not so automatic and can be a slow process that requires extra time.

What followed in this case was that because Blake tried to get away from the staff and he couldn't the staff continued to follow him to where he was and continued to request him to follow their instructions, Blake then jumped the fence and started running out of the school grounds. Blake had reached boiling point and was extremely mad, he just needed some space to calm down that is all he wanted - pure and simple. It's actually not that simple to staff who need to meet with regulations and safety standards but in Blake's eyes it is very simple - I need space, go away, leave me alone!!!

In the end my husband went down to the school after 3 phone calls requesting him to attend the school ASAP - it was unfortunate that at the time, my husband had a client with him and wasn't able to instantly leave the house. Hence 3 phone calls from the school asking when was he going to arrive. By that stage the staff had no idea what to do and were desperate for my husband to come and save the day so to speak. My husband found Blake at a nearby high school where staff from Blake's school and some high school staff had Blake surrounded like an animal that they were trying to trap!!! It was so ridiculous and not appropriate, they were only aggravating Blake and I have to ask my self did they really think that he was going to cooperate with their actions and magically calm down and simply walk to the teachers, I mean could they not see that Blake had reached his absolute limit and needed to calm down, was it too hard for them to let him run it off into the paddock and watch him from a distance. Blake knows what the boundaries are and he knows about keeping safe and he generally will stay within those limits as long as he can get what he needs which is "space and time".

After my husband finding Blake and convincing him to come to him, he spent 2 hours with him, sitting in silence until Blake had calmed sufficiently for him to talk about things and explain what happened. They then went for a long walk and went to the shop and got a cold drink as well as have a talk about what could be done differently next time and what Blake could do in the same situation. They had agreed on some goals and guidelines and went back to the school to discuss these with Blake's carer and principal. We found the principal not as accommodating or willing to commit to anything that was being discussed but also not offering any alternatives. She then proceeded to start lecturing Blake which was not a good option as he was already a bit fragile and his body language told my husband that he was about to be set off again. My husband quickly redirected the conversation and settled him back into class and left the school somewhat content that he didn't have to bring Blake home, although that is what the principal would have liked, we felt it important to have him resettled for the remainder of the school day so that a repeat would not occur simply for the excuse of being able to come home. Blake is a very smart kid and we need to be careful to keep him with good school habits whilst at the same time happy to be supportive to the school and help out when needed. Our priority is Blake's well being. He has additional needs and recognising that and accommodating that is crucial in the school's success of managing Blake. We wait to see what next week brings.