Now I'm NOT a professional and I have Aspergers in my family so I know exactly how challenging autism can be for everyone around it.
But I have a good friend who has a boy in school who is a bit of a fidget and a bit naughty and now the school are saying he may have Aspergers.
Of course he may; but I wonder whether a percentage of these boys may just be absolutely dead bored with the primary setting as driven through by successive governments? Classrooms are almost like edulabs where we fine tune kids to perform for Oftsed and there is little excitement and not enough (in my opinion) celebration of difference in development type and speed which doesn't suit all this constant assessment. I don't blame the schools for this and certainly not the teachers. They all seem to be under this terrible Ofsted cosh which has created these weird exam prep factories (2ndary schools) and Lets Make Kids All The Same so we can analyse them on spreadsheets to make us look good (primary schools). In this sort of lab, difference is bad and the drive is towards a kind of homogeneity.
Call me a cynic, but I really wonder whether some of these 'diagnoses' aren't just a way of saying its the child who has the issue not the stultifying environment. Great if you're a good little girl who is in heaven sitting still and listening/writing etc but for an active boy a day at school must be like a prison sentence I sometimes feel.
no offence to anyone intended and for those with Aspergers, I mean no disrespect. I just wonder whether there is any over-diagnosis these days because our education seems to be being dictated by politicians who don't really know anything about the actual process of education on the ground and that they've made the environment deadening for our liveliest boys who could be in a much better place to stimulate them in a way that is appropriate for where they are now, not where we want them to be for our end of year spread sheet for the ofsted judges wielding doom or blessing.
Please or to access all these features
Please
or
to access all these features
AIBU?
Head Teacher wondering if 7 year old might have Aspergers. I am a bit suspicious of seeing the autistic spectrum everywhere.
45 replies
Longstocking2 · 06/02/2016 15:36
OP posts:
Don’t want to miss threads like this?
Weekly
Sign up to our weekly round up and get all the best threads sent straight to your inbox!
Log in to update your newsletter preferences.
You've subscribed!
Please create an account
To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.