hi im new to site

Hi Jean

My youngest son was diagnosed with Aspergers when he was 7 and is now almost 14 and in mainstream high school, although the school does have a Learning Support Unit attached who do monitor him, but he does not have any specific classroom assistance. 

Like yourself, I was very concerned about the move from Primary to High School as I didnt think Tom would cope with the constant change of teacher and classroom and the larger volume of pupils.  It has proved more difficult for him, particularly the differing teaching styles, disciplinary styles and also the differing levels of autism awareness among the teaching staff that he comes into contact with.  There have been a couple of serious incidents that have been quite stressful, but academically he is doing very well and maintaining high achievement levels in all subjects.

As a parent, you know your child best.  Having said that I keep a very close eye on Tom where school is concerned and keep in regular contact with his Pastoral Care Teacher and the Head of the Learning Support Unit.  If I come across anything on the web or in the press that I think could help them understand better I e-mail it to them and highlight the issues which are particular to Tom.

 You also touched briefly on food .... a major issue with Tom as well.  He has an extremely limited diet and always has had.  He lives mostly on cereal and yoghurts.  He does not eat fruit, veg, eggs, fish, red meat, rice and a whole host of other things.  He will occasionally eat chicken or a plain cheese pizza, but that is the extent of his diet.  Having said that he is a tall, strong, healthy child with no major medical issues.  He did have childhood asthma but this seems to have tailed off to a very odd spell of breathlessness which he can control without inhalers.  He does have the common bowel problems, but this could also be down to diet.

Well, after all that welcome to the group and I am sure some of the others will also pop in and offer their insight and assistance.

Josie

Hi Jean

 Oh I know what you mean about chocolate.  I only listed what I call his decent food.  He also eats endless amounts of rubbish, chocolate usually the same thing obsessively;  right now it is the white Kinder Surprise bars, been through months of Wispas, Cadbury's caramel bars, he can also quite happily eat a whole 2 litre tub of triple chocolate ice cream to himself and still want more.  Chocolate muffins are another of his favourites along with triple chocolate doughnuts.  He also loves cheese but it has to be cut into little dice sized cubes and done to perfection so he does this himself.  I dont know where he puts it all!  He is also very fond of MacDonalds Chicken Mayo with Cheese (but no pickle stuff) although that is a weekly treat with his respite group.  Just now he is into the little probiotic drinks but instead of the one a day that is recommended he can go through half a dozen of them which I am sure cant possibly do anything to stabilise his bowel problems so I think they will have to stop finding their way into my shopping trolley.

 I have given up trying to get him to eat healthy food;  like they say - you have to pick your battles and in the grand scheme of things, this isnt top of the list just now as he is perfectly healthy at the moment.  He did tell me the other day that he likes apricots because someone let him taste one in school, so I suppose that's a start.

Josie