I hope you don't mind me posting here. DS has no diagnosis.
First things first. We are not in the UK, we are in Switzerland. DS (4.11) started kindergarten in August. He is being brought up trilingual. English (main language and his best at the moment) and French at home and Swiss German when he sees the IL's and now at KG.
He was in a crèche one afternoon a week from the age of 10 months, which turned out to be a disaster. He was supposed to be in the Geman group but they fired his key worker (without informing us) and basically the staff spoke Spanish amongst themselves and broken French to the children . We removed him for that and other reasons. The crèche was shortly after shut down.
Then at 18 months he moved to a start run bilingual crèche where he was in a German speaking group. In August last year things started to go downhill and he became very unhappy. Coincided with all his friends moving on to KG and him now being one of the oldest of the group. (There were, 2, the others then much younger) and him being expected to do more things for himself. We removed him in January. On their advice we went to the doctor with a report detailing how he has difficulties following instructions, interacting with other children etc
Paediatrician referred him and he was assessed by a neurologist and a psychologist. Neurologist found nothing. Psychologist insisted on interviewing him in gErman, which is by far his worst language, at the time spoke only in single words etc. Conclusion was that his cognitive abilities are zero, boarderline ASD (but not worth pushing for a diagnosis) and they advised we kept him out of kindergarten for a year and entered him a year late and I kept taking him to playgroups.
We then spoke to the paediatrician again who said this was nonsense. He is clearly intelligent, but is very much a baby. That we should send him to KG and review after 6months. Basically we had no faith in what the psychologist said after she insisted on continuing in German when we said we couldn't be sure he understood enough and refused to even try in French (second language) which she must speak to be employed here (bilingual town). He loves being with other children and we couldn't see the benefit of letting him have an extra year with children on average two years younger than himself and missing out on a year of KG.
So... He loves KG and is always asking to go. But they are flagging up differences. He has problems fitting in. They put this down to him not understanding any Germanfor the first half term but are now realising this isn't true. We had a meeting at which they suggested how we could help him. Let him meet with other children. Let him have access to pen/paper at home. Let him join a club/sporting activity. Do some craft with him. Basically everything I have spent the past four years doing with him. They clearly didn't believe I'd tried to do anything with him since he was born. Genuinely shocked he was in a crèche for so long, that he went to playgroups, swimming club, gym etc. He is not allowed to go to KG on the day they have gym because they don't think he can get changed and wont follow instructions if it's not something he wants to do.
They do some games during the morning e.g. Jumping into a spinning hoop, rolling over on the ground which he doesn't manage to do (and the other kids laugh at him - they do get told off) and gets upset and is refusing to take part now.
They want to refer him for psycho-motor something.
It feels like they are blaming everything on my crap parenting. Yesterday we got to KG exactly on time. We live next door to the school so takes two minutes to get there. I allow 15 minutes to get coat/bag/shoes on and get out of the door. Yesterday he had a crazy tantrum about his jumper. So it delayed us. Then walking there his leg was broken... (Turned out he had been told off for climbing on something in the morning) . Teacher said he needs more structure. We have the same routine every KG day and what we had seems optimal. He detests getting ready to go out anywhere, and if he is ready too early then he gets upset also.
I have no idea what I am asking to be honest. And I know this is long. Sorry. What do I need to be aware of when I speak to the school? I'm a bit worried they are going tell us he isn't welcome there...
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12 replies
SubmergedInSnow · 05/11/2014 06:50
OP posts:
zzzzz ·
05/11/2014 09:41
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Pyrrhagena ·
10/11/2014 08:52
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