Remember one key thing: the power lies with the parents. There are two magic words to use with schools that are trying to get by on the cheap and not provide services. They are lawsuit and media. You can bring an advocate to the staffing, just let the school know in advance.

Consider sound reducing earplugs. She will still be able to hear but maybe not as much. She can put them in when things get too loud and out to hear the teacher or just wear one.

She may also be better off in a small group (self contained) special education class. Inclusion is not for everyone and regular education teachers are not equipped to deal with students who have serious special needs. If not, she may need to retreat to a quiet special education class to do some of her work or have a cubicle or secluded area with sound deadening surfaces to go to when she gets stressed out or so she can concentrate better.

It may also be possible to reduce her sensitivities through gradual exposure. She really needs an OT to deal with this. Meanwhile, if she has tactile sensitivity, cut the labels out of her clothes, buy them a little big and let her wear sandals and no socks. When she starts having periods she will probably be more comfortable with tampons instead of pads.

I have known two teachers who modified room environments to great good effects. One put in curtains, rugs and soft lighting. He was a high school math teacher who had also worked with special needs students, one good enough to be special ed, and had fibromyalgia and migraine. He found the modifications helped both him and his students.

The other one was a long time special ed mild disabilities teacher secondary , good with ADHD and high functioning autistics. She painted her room a mustard color and also added soft lighting. I think at one point she had rugs also.

On the child who won’t do work at school, expain the difference between school work and homework. Print his homework on pink paper and tell him the pink work is the only work that can go home. The rest has to be done at school. I doubt if you are going to get much cooperation from the parents because they want him to shine even if they are the ones polishing him. Time outs won’t work unless he has to do his work before he gets out of time out. Outsiders consider that abusive.

On the kicker, first stop it now before he is big enough to seriously hurt someone. A coworker had a 14 year old autistic boy who only wanted to work on the computer and then only doing what he wanted to do. He pinched his male teacher to bruising but the system would not do anything effective about him, even told the teacher he had to go into “time out” with the boy. (Middle class system. Parents have resources to sue.) So this year, he kicked a female teacher so badly she was hospitalized and had to have surgery and may not be able to go back to work.

First, stay out of the way of those feet and fists as much as possible. He is being reinforced by your reaction to his assaults. Wear pads if needed. He is choosing violent behavior . It is not out of his control. Try overcorrection where he has to keep his hands by his side and his feet flat on the floor for designated periods in an “open” time out setting so he can be held in position if necessary. Then, whatever he was supposed to be doing when he hit and kicked he has to do, even if that means doing it hand-over-hand. (Or force him to do something else he hates as a negative consequence) Someone has to be alpha teacher with violent behavior. Try to get a large male paraprofesional (or a big woman) who can block the assaults to work with him. He may need to wear protection. I once cured an autistic pincher by making him work while I was wearing football pads and gloves on my arms. (He was about the size of an 8 year old.) When he found out he could no longer pinch me he let out one angry scream and stopped. He only tried one more time. This is a child who needs to be in a self contained class. He should not be in inclusion for two reasons. One is that he likes attention. The other is that he is a danger to himself and others. If you don’t get that violent behavior under control now, you never will because he will be too big. The consequence will be restraints in an institution or, if he is high functioning, juvenile prison. Effective discipline will save his life,and must happen even it means intimidating him.

With the non verbal child observe what happens in gym. Get baseline data. Something may be happening there that he cannot handle It may be that he does not need to be in a large gym class and should be in APE. You can also reward him for going to gym, but with non verbal kids who are low functioning they are probably going to need to be primary reinforcers (desirable food). With higher functioning students other things they like should work. PE is often used as a dumping ground for handicapped students, a place to give them a “quota” of regular classes. If they cannot participate at similar skill level to the other students, are mistreated, or the PE teacher rejects or criticizes them they hate regular PE.

5 year old with OCD: Prepare her for change. Practice for things like fire drills. Warn her in advance if there is going to be a different schedule and create a social story about how she should act. Ask the parent to talk about an upcoming change at home. Reward her for accepting increments of change. Develop a schedule gap that will be experienced every day in which he does not know what to expect but is supposed to go along with. It could start with 5 minutes and work up to 30. Put them after a period of physical activity at first so her stress level will be low and make them very pleasant. Later, insert the gap in unexpected times of the day and less pleasant, more normal variations that everyone has in order to generalize the new behavior. She has to be taught to accept change even if she is never comfortable with it. If she does not she will never be able to function in society.

The one who hits herself. This has to stop immediately as she could blind herself, cause brain damage and/or have to wear a helmet. Make sure there is no physical reason for the hitting that can be corrected such as earaches, erupting molars,constipation, or a sinus infection. Take data to determine when it happens most frequently and try to limit those situations if possible. (But don’t let her run things by her behavior.) Find out if she has a syndrome such as Cornelia de Lang, a very high pain threshhold caused by nervous system dysfunction, or Prader-Willi.(Syndrome based self abuse is harder to extinguish and prone to returning. You need to know what you are working with)

Put her on a DRI, direct reinforcement of incompatible behavior. Reinforce her for another, incompatible behavior such as operating a switch toy or adapted fan (lots of self abusers love fans), keeping her hands on the table, squeezing a tension ball or putting her hands on textured objects. This sounds like a low functioning child so you may have to use primary reinforcers until the appropriate actions become rewarding. Also, many kids with disabilites are hot natured, but wanting to protect them, multitudes of parents overdress them. See if reducing the amount of clothing she wears helps.

You can also substitute a more appropriate, non injurious form of self stimulation as a reward for periods of not hitting, such as rocking in a rocking chair or let her rock (in a rocking chair, not just rocking her body or you will have another socially unacceptable behavior to deal with, one often accompanied by zoning out, masturbation, and drooling.) Physical activity should be used prior to stressful situations if the hitting is a stress reaction. When it is under consistent control, the medication should be reduced slowly. She is not going to learn much if she is sedated.