School lateness punishments, neurodiversity and the law

I’d love to see the statistics on this because my 53 year old sister who has only just been diagnosed with ADHD, has incredibly poor mental health. Thankfully, with the right strategies and treatment she is on the mend.

Nope

It's just that those not diagnosed tend to have been recorded as bipolar or other mental illness

Also, there was a lot of alternate routes for those not managing school
Lots of kids ended up leaving early and getting work which isn't an option now

The key thing to look for is consistency, if they aren’t always getting overloaded in crowds, then they are trying it on. If your child can’t walk in a corridor with other kids, but can be in a stadium with 5,000 other people…then they certainly don’t have a sensory issue, they have a compliance issue.

This is 100% false. I’ve had this conversation twice in the last couple of weeks, once with my autistic daughter and once with an autistic colleague. They both hate crowds. I’ve seen it first hand with my daughter. She visibly shakes, becomes very disregulated, you can see she struggles to deal with it. She really struggled in loud classes, unable to focus on the task and had to work really hard not to melt down. However she has always loved concerts and shows. When I asked her how she is able to deal with it, she says it is because of the ability to focus on the performance. She has something else there to look at and listen to, and she can shut out her surroundings. She doesn’t like the bit before and after where she has to navigate the crowds, but she times it so she avoids the worst of it. My colleague said exactly the same thing.

My daughter is getting much better at dealing with the issues at school, helped massively by the fact she is now in senior school so classes are smaller, but she still can’t bear to be around the dinner hall or in a crowded corridor. She has to avoid both of those anyway because of her mobility issues.

Who says they are?

Rates of mental health problems are much higher among these young people than the people before them who masked/put up with it and got on with life

Which suggests current approaches are making it worse

Also GPs absolutely do not do adhd or autism diagnoses and don’t even read the subsequent reports.

My daughter is late to classes. She doesn’t disrupt anyone, she just gets on with it. Nobody complains about it.

Yes isn’t it. Care to link. Some really ignorant journalists need to be doing a little more research as to what the body who employs doctors is saying and has discovered having done extensive research with experts in the field.

Most wouldn't at secondary school because they'd have the piss ripped out of them so masked instead or just wouldn't attend. Hello MH problems in later life.

Oh the ignorance and arrogance!!!!

So because you don’t remember and weren’t in the heads of children with autism and adhd it didn’t happen.

Are you as dismissive of more visable disabilities?

Strange for an article like it to be in Pulse.

I honestly do not remember anyone doing this at my secondary in the late 90s/early noughties. It was a mid-large school, 1600 kids, 8 classes of 30 in most years & a couple of hundred in 6th form.

The corridors were busy but kids were far more resilient, if you were jostled you shoved back. If you were late you got merit points docked. There were no lockers you just had to carry all the books you needed every day.

I cannot remember a single pupil getting "overwhelm" or having meltdowns. There were kids who were very quiet, kids who were quirky, kids who hated school. Generally we did not spend much/any time focussing on our feelings & adults certainly didn't pay them any mind.

She needs to find coping mechanisms for it with support from you to ensure she isn’t late. It’s not a reasonable adjustment to permit persistent disruptive lateness, which can be addressed. It wouldn’t be acceptable in a job so now is the time to sort it.

Nice use of quotation marks there to show what you actually think of those reasons.

The OP has suggested Loops that will help reduce the noise that her DD struggled to filter out. The school sneered and said they would confiscate them if she tried them. So where do you go from there?

Absolute rubbish. The NHS isn’t saying this at all.Quite the reverse.

www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/report-of-the-independent-adhd-taskforce-part-1/

Or pay about 3 grand.

We were especially lucky (not) as the problems came to a head in early 2020.

Ear defenders don't block out all noise. You can still hear.

I don't know what kind of presentations you go to but I find they're usually quiet with only the presenter or one person at a time speaking. If it's so loud everyone needs ear defenders I think you have bigger worries tbh.

Surely people with sensory issues just wouldn't choose a line of work that involves noisy meetings.

I'd also be worried about how professionals behaved if a business meeting was so overwhelming for anyone.

Yes. And I can't help but wonder how damaging to their self-esteem, confidence and sense of who they are and how they feel they are seen by others is affected. It is so damaging and I think has a life long effect (negatively).

Apples, meet oranges. 🙄

For a start, I'm not disbelieved when I say certain things are a struggle for me and I need reasonable adjustments.

I also have a shared label that I can use to connect with other people with similar struggles.

And I have access to medication.

No one used to need ear defenders while I was at school. They just got on with stuff. So what has changed?

Because just because something is 'the old way' doesn't mean it was the best way. Because we have moved on with our understanding. Because we are becoming better educated at recognising that just 'getting on with stuff' at school can be hugely damaging and affects those people forced and punished and excluded into doing it throughout the rest of their lives. Because making allowances and accommodating differences may be slow and inconvenient to your good self, but it is worth it so that more children than just those who can manage easily can be educated, as is their right.

We need to ensure everyone (including parents) has more resilience

That includes you.

It’s also not a problem because it really isn’t a problem. So little understanding here. Ear defenders do not stop you hearing the teacher. They stop you getting overwhelmed by all the other sounds. They are used because some brains are wired such that the internal sound perception dial is turned up to 11 - dim background sounds are distracting and noisy places are deafening. It’s a sensory processing disorder - they literally take in auditory information in a non-typical way.

But people wearing ear defenders can hear the teacher just fine. And if 28 neurotypical kids want for some reason to go to the trouble of wearing ear defenders they don’t need they would also hear the teacher just fine. So even the unlikely hypothetical where everyone chooses to wear ear defenders is still literally not a problem.

For people saying it’s not right to put responsibility to help onto another child. That is correct, however some children, such as those appointed as prefects, or having a nature where they like to please teachers and be made to feel grown up by being asked to do extra things…actually LIKE a task like this.

That doesn’t mean it’s a responsibility to get the other child to class on time. What is means is that for a couple of weeks they act as a buddy system, then report back to a teach on whether it has helped or not. The child feels they have been very grown up, been useful, and enjoyed the praise from the teacher.

It should never be made into a long-term arrangement, however in the short-term it could act as reset for the child who is struggling and build confidence, removing the problem (lateness), and get the child then doing on their own after having some temporary support. Even if that does not happen, the feedback from the other child may give the teacher a better understanding of the problem and the severity of it.

It does seem that the school are being very short-sighted in term of punishing for being late when in this instance it is them leading to school-refusal. It seems it is setting the child into a pattern of a downward spiral. As far a impact on the rest of the class is concerned, I would be asking whether your child is making a lot of noise when entering late and make clear that your child is not expecting a teacher to restart the lesson for them, and that your child is aware that they will just have to jump straight into whatever is happening in class without disrupting anyone else. If you are unable to get the child in due to school refusal or they are late arriving, email the school on every occasion that your child is specially stating the reason for their anxiety over going to school in the morning is the punishments for being late for class, and reiterate (just copy and paste the same email every time), that you believe that if your child could have some leniency such as leaving classes 1min early to have the transition time without the very busy corridors, it would solve all of these issues. Sometimes with schools, you have to just repeat yourself until they give in and
try something. I think given this suggestion has no cost to the school and no impact on other students, it’s not an unreasonable request to try it.

As an aside, has your child ever been in situations such as a football stadium, concert or busy airport lounge? If the child struggles with sensory overload/high anxiety in these situations, that’s an indicator that the issue being experienced at school is part of a wider problem, possibly agoraphobia, social anxiety etc.

If the child isn’t struggling in these types of situations, or even enjoys them…then the issue isn’t about overload and something that is happening at school…could be fears around bullying, could even be that your child doesn’t want to do the schoolwork and is just creating these issues to get their own way and actually wants to be thrown out of class and give you reason why they can’t go into school. The key thing to look for is consistency, if they aren’t always getting overloaded in crowds, then they are trying it on. If your child can’t walk in a corridor with other kids, but can be in a stadium with 5,000 other people…then they certainly don’t have a sensory issue, they have a compliance issue.

It's not a problem because it would never happen because 30 children won't all need ear defenders. It's like saying if you allow a wheelchair user into school all the pupils will want to be wheelchair users -
It would never happen

But equally if you have one child using a wheelchair in a class that doesn't mean the new child to join the school who paraplegic must be faking because we already have met our quota for wheelchair users