Cy has been attending the Vulnerable Pupil group without much incident for a few weeks :)
He missed a couple of days becasue he was upset over something (when he feels upset the emotions confuse him and he just tries to get control back so he feels 'safe'. One of the ways he does this is by staying at home.) We had taken a rescue greyhound out for the day one Sunday and when we got back to the kennels we were locked out so brought her home with us for the night. CY knew she had a home lined up, and that we weren't in a position to keep her but it threw him a little and he missed a couple of days.
Yesterday and today he has refused again :( There seem to be a few things at play. Firstly, the teacher he has bonded with at the group is leaving after Christmas so that will throw him. I just phoned the teacher and she said they'd noticed he's been unhappy the last couple of days, and unco-operative in a way they haven't seen before. She's put it down to the fact that his school have sent work, and the teachers at the unit have been told they have to do a certain amount of maths, English etc with the students in the unit each week. I can see where the directors are coming from but you don't get school refusers/ school phobics and Aspies to do work by making it obvious that it's school work!!! D'oh! CY is not happy about any work from school and has been reluctant to do it, even for Yvonne (his group teacher.) She is going to reformat it so he doesn't know it's from school. He still has to get his head around the fact she's leaving, though.
He also refused to put his hands in the pastry to make mince pies, which the teacher thought was him being awkward but I told her that's an Aspie 'texture' thing - he hates the feels of anything like that on his hands, and he hates washing his hands as well! She said he was reluctant to join in a couple of games as well - again we know him well enough to realise that he never joins in games straight away as his fear of embarrassment means he has to be 100% sure of the rules before he will attempt anything. I asked whether he joined in after ten minutes and she said 'yes' - this is his usual 'adjustment' time to get used to something new.
On the positive side, she said he has produced good work, he's doing GCSE level Maths and he is really tickling them all with his dry sense of humour which he's revealing now he feels comfortable there. CY has also been going in on Mondays as well, at his own request.
Hopefully, he will go back into the pupil group before the Christmas hols (ahh Christmas, another excitement that the rest of us love but Aspies often don't, that could be throwing him as well as he hates surprises/being the focus of attention/possibly having photos taken!). If he refuses up til Christmas he will have built it into a massive thing by New Year and we'll be back where we started.
The teachers are really good but have confessed they need to read up on Asperger's. Might lend them a couple of books. She said they thought he was being rude the other day then realised he was being funny - don't even think they know about the Asperger ''inappropriate'' tendency...!
