My only child (son age 12) who has learning difficulties & epilepsy is in his 1st year at high school. He's at a mainstream school but in learning support classes. He doesn't make friends at all easily and his teacher tells me that he's on his own most of the time.
Because of this, and his little eccentricities like not talking to anyone at all, he's getting picked on at school e.g. other groups of pupils pushing him around and tripping him up on purpose. As he's rather clumsy anyway he falls flat on his face when he's tripped up, giving the others a cheap laugh.
I got the ok from his consultant and tried to get him to go to martial arts classes but will only go if he's placed opposite me which turned out to be impossible as the Children classes were separate. He's overwhelmed when he's in a situation where there are strangers - eg Children parties where he doesn't know everyone he'll hide under a table.
When he gets teased/bullied he gets aggressive with ME and not directly at the Children who've done things.
He struggles to talk about his feelings and instead punches/kicks me or digs his nails into me as he's so frustrated. He's almost the same weight and height as me & I'm worried.
I have to hide the kitchen knives from him as he's already threatened someone and he's very impulsive. He also head-bangs and slaps himself in the face and on his head. How can I deal with this?
I love him & would do anything for him but hate myself for sometimes wishing I had a "normal" child.

are the school doing nothing about him being bullied? if they have a special needs class then surely they should be protecting the more vunerable children, would you son be better off in a special needs school or apart from the bullying is he coping? i had a lot of problems with matt and violence even now if mark does something wrong or tells him he cant do a certain thing he will come over and hit me.
i look at it as he knows deep down that no matter how much he attacks me i will always love him (though it takes me a while sometimes to want to love him) it has got better as he has got older and his understanding has improved but sometimes i wish he would attack the person who is to blame, when he was younger and he got hit by another child he would let them hit him 3 times then he would give one swing and knock em flat on their butt and they stayed away after that hehe.
can you get your doctor or social worker to refer you to cahms? i dont know if you can self refer? they can help deal with the behaviour and perhaps you could look into respite as its surprising how more able you can cope with the bad times when you have a couple of days where u know u r not going to be attacked.
i know its not a nice life feeling like that, wondering what mood he is going to come home with and if a slight thing like their fave prog has changed the time is going to set off a mood (thank goodness for virgin + lol) all i can say is once you get some help and he gets a bit older he should calm down. remember he is having hormonal tweenager moods like most 12yr olds but he doesnt understand the feelings so as usual with most boys they blame mum
sending hugs
corinne

Thanks Corinne. I think hormones must be partly to blame aswell, because things have escalated in the last few months.
What is CAHMS?

it stands for child and adolescent mental health services (had to look that up lol) they have a behavioural team who can help with ways to work with him to control his behaviour and temper, if it has been getting worse last few months then i would definitely mention this as he will be having the same urges as other lads his age (i was shocked the first time matt had "me time" lol) he will just struggle to understand it i think thats why they say teenagers are monsters hehe i think we forget as we get older how hard it was for us i certainly cant remember but it does explain some of my brothers little quirks (he called his teeth grover and would bite me and he doesnt have special needs hehe) so it must be even harder when they dont have full understanding because their brains arent caught up with their hormones.
corinne

Oh my god - I don't even want to think about "happy alone time"!!!
I do have comic style books about growing up which I go through with Nathan when things crop up.
We do have an appointment with a child psych. on 1st July. I tried to go private to speed things up but no-one does this. I think they'll probably refer us to the CAMHS. He definitely needs help to control his angry outbursts.
In the past 2 months he's stabbed & slashed 2 new sofas, threatened someone with a knife, smashed a neighbour's window on purpose and written in marker pen on my office carpet at work when I wasn't looking. It sounds like he's attention seeking but if anything I probably give him too much attention and probably spoil him. He's still trying to justify what he's done by saying he was annoyed - oh, that's ok then!!!!
Had a good chat with my husband tonight and we're going to set some ground rules which Nathan needs to stick to. I don't want him ending up in a young offender's prison.
Thanks for your help, I felt as if no-one understood how I felt before finding this forum.