Our son.
Our son had been to two schools he hated. Staff had found him very hard to manage. He did well with 1-1 support but couldn’t comply with the demands of a mainstream classroom aged 7. I was waiting each day for a phone call home because he frequently hit teachers.
The situation got untenable. We asked what he wanted, listened to him and took him out of school and started educating him at home. He was angry and frequently hurt us or his siblings. He could be very sweet and affectionate, and also very shouty and had frequent meltdowns. The transition from house to car to go out, could take an hour.
A friend suggested the Son Rise Programme®. My husband Ross wanted to look at their online videos together: he sensed it could be life changing.
Life changing was what we needed at that point. It was.
One of the self-soothing, exclusive ‘isms’ that my son did was to suck the ends of his long hair. Son Rise teachers recommended joining our son in his repetitive ism, to show him that we loved him without judgment (I’d done plenty judging and it hadn’t affected the hair sucking one bit!). We started curiously joining him in his exclusive behaviours, seeing them as his way of looking after himself. When Ross joined our boy (by sucking his collar, as his hair is short), he shot Ross a look of ‘ah, you see me!’.
Following our weekend Son Rise® training in London, we committed to 15 minutes per day playing 1-1 with our lad, doing what he was motivated by, putting down any agenda of our own. We joined like crazy, read to him, played games, listened to him talking about fishing, his passion. We gave low energy to behaviours we didn’t want to encourage. We celebrated him hugely when he gave eye contact, shared, asked us about ourselves, or showed kindness.
Over the next year we did more Son Rise® training in London and Massachusetts, US. We extended our programme to 3-4 hours a day and recruited and trained volunteers to help us offer our kiddo more. We focused on helping him socially: academics could wait. He’d taught himself to read as soon as he’d left school: we knew there were no barriers to this boy learning! We built his programme up to 6 hour days, like a school day. We trained a dozen + volunteers, from the community, and psychology and education students from Bath University.
We didn’t have a planned outcome. We watched to see what our son was motivated by, what he wanted for himself. We rearranged our life to make it easier for our family: fewer transitions for our son, less supermarket trips and birthday parties, more predictability. The point was to give him control rather than imposing it on him, we’d seen that didn’t end well!
My husband convinced the Local Education Authority to give us some funding towards running our programme. That was quite a coup, and meant we could work less to give our son more of our time.
After 5 years, our boy was 12 and wanted to learn more (he’d taught himself a lot from books). He was thinking about starting school, as he could now see the point of learning from others. We found tutors for him, to help catch up where he had gaps in Maths, Science and English. Visited local schools to find out what support they gave kids with special educational needs. We chose one he liked and he started with one lesson and built up to full days. They worked closely with us, were flexible and supportive and he was full time after a term and a half.
He’s a teenager now. He sometimes grumbles about school, but he manages it successfully, has a group of friends and is part of a card playing group. He’s in the scouts, has been on camps and run money making stalls with his siblings and neighbours! He’s keen on flying power kites, playing Minecraft, coding, swimming and has a cracking sense of humour.
It may sound like a lot of work. It was, and it felt totally worth it because we were empowered to do what worked for our boy. This was dramatically different from trying to work within the system when it wasn’t working for him. Either way, we would have been putting our energy into helping him. The way we found felt constructive and bold.
I now use my experience working with other mums and dads. It’s an honour to help parents who want a bold, heart-expanding way to help their autistic children. Not only do their children start finding the social world easier; they, the parents also grow: in compassion, skills and ability to take challenges in their stride.