I'm not sure how many of you out there know that I am a mother to a child with Autism. My 8 yr old son has Autism and recently has been experiencing some behavioural issues at his daycamp. It is a repeat of things that were going on with him last year at the beginning of the school year. He gets defiant when it comes to activities that do not include water (swimming, sprinkler park, etc) and he has been hitting his camp leaders on the arm. Mark has had a teacher's aide with him at school and at previous camps in summers past has had a support worker. This is the 1st year that he doesn't have a support worker with him at camp. He goes to the facility for his afterschool program and when I registered him for camp this summer, I specified that he would need a support worker with him. Needless to say, he didn't get one. There are 3 other children at this camp with Autism and in need of support and yet only 1 child is getting the support she needs, leaving Mark & the other 2 without.
In the past week, Mark has displayed behaviours that are not very becoming of a boy his age. He is getting aggressive with his group's leader, not listening to instructions and constantly running away from them. He displayed this behaviour last fall at school & was segregated to the Learning Centre until after the Christmas break. Now, he is repeating this behaviour and was sent home yesterday & today from camp. I talked to the camp's director and was given a "choice" I could let Mark have the support worker for a week straight in the month of August & not have him attend camp for the rest of the month OR he can continue with camp without the use of the support worker to assist him.
I put him in the camp because he wanted to go, he knew everyone at the Centre where it was being held and it gave him the opportunity to go places & see things he normally wouldn't get to do. I also work during the day, as does his father, so we can't spend the summer with him. Daycamp provided an answer for Mark this summer. But he is not enjoying himself, he is constantly being shuffled around to different groups when he gets out of hand, or being in "time out" for having actions that he can't control. He is stressing & doesn't know how to cope with whatever is bothering him.
Now, I have a decision to make.
2 comments:
I really hear where you're coming from with this. My brother has Autism. My dad was his full time carer but he recently left and it turns out he had a child with another woman for years.
My brother is REALLY aggressive. He is too dangerous to be in the room with. Doorways in my mother's house are covered with the kinds of iron gates people normally put in their gardens, otherwise he'd have the doors down and would wreck everything.
I've moved out but I'm staying here at the moment as I have some appointments at a nearby hospital. My brother was well-behaved (as his version of well-behaved goes) all week because he wanted the carers from a local organisation to take him swimming today.
They've just come around and told him that they're not taking him. I got out of bed as I heard the upstairs hallway being wrecked, and a shower gel bottle flew in from above my gate and smacked down right where I had been.
The laundry basket lid is in here, and while I was just stood in the doorway, he threw a mug full of something towards me and it shattered as it hit the bars. There are shards everywhere.
At the end of the day, these people wanted to work with Autistic children, and this is the billionth time they've cancelled something he was looking forward to, and we've got to put up with the aftermath. It's ridiculous.
xoxo
man! our family has had experience with autism, specifically aspergers. So I feel the frustration. Plus at work there is an autistic gentleman.
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