DC kept in a separate group from the rest of the reception class?

[Whattodow]

DS has just turned 4 and started reception last week. He has speech delay which we’re working on, we’ve just started paying for private sessions after having little to no progress through NHS SALT. Other than the speech delay, behaviourally the only ‘issue’ I would say he has is he won’t sit still for long periods unless it’s to do something he’s truly engaged with. He doesn’t throw tantrums at all, has been toilet trained for over a year, has never been violent and sleeps through the night. The speech delay, in my opinion, is the primary concern but as I say, it doesn’t affect his overall behaviour.

He has a ‘My Support Plan’ at school and I had a meeting with the SENCO lead this week to discuss this. She explained that he is in a smaller intervention group most of the time because she believes he would ‘become overwhelmed’ if he were in the main classroom. I didn’t challenge it at the time stupidly because she had thrown a lot of information my way and I was trying to take it all in but in hindsight, I don’t really understand how or why she has come to this conclusion. He was in a private nursery full time for 2 years before starting school with a whole range of children and never became ‘overwhelmed’. As I say, he has never thrown a tantrum and he very rarely even cries, he’s one of the most laid back children I have met and just tends to get on with things.

I’m going to request he spends more time with the main class but I want to make sure I am right in doing so. I understand why the intervention group may help him because it means more 1:1 I believe which could help his speech and overall development but I also think there could be some benefit from spending time with the other children who do talk and who do behave in a more standard way. I’m going to sound bloody awful here but I’m concerned that in being placed almost solely with the SEN children who also don’t talk and who, from what I’ve seen when I collect him because he is in a separate classroom with the other SEN children, seem to have quite severe SEN- still in nappies for example, don’t respond to their names, stim a lot etc, this may actually hinder his development. I think if he spends more time around NT children, he may begin to model his behaviour on theirs which is what started to happen at nursery before the summer break when we noticed he was saying more words and had more patience during activities.

I truly don’t wish to cause any offence so I will have to word it in a way that doesn’t sound terrible. If DS does have SEN, he would be ‘higher functioning’ imo because the only challenging behaviour we really have from him is, as I say, times when he wants to run around rather than sit and pay attention to something. I know the SENCO lead is the expert and I am just his parent so I wanted to double check I am right in requesting this for him? He is also kept separate from the main school at playtime and plays in a smaller enclosed space with the SEN children so he has very little interaction with the wider group which I just don’t personally agree with. He happily played alongside the other children at nursery and was never ‘overwhelmed’ at all.

You clearly have zero experience of SEN

Just from my own experience, my ASD 3 year old has benefitted from having some screen time. Its gets painted as the devil from a childhood speech and development perspective, but this advice is aimed at typically developing children who are analytic language processors. The UK has a lot of catching up to do IMO in terms of how different people learn and implementing this into educational settings. At the moment it’s a one fits all system, but it’s now bursting at the seams because of more identified SEN children. In my son’s case, he’s a visual learner, hyperlexic and a gestalt language processor. This is why he sometimes learns things from screen time rather than from imitating people in real life, as a neurotypical child might do.

One of my siblings had speech delay saying nothing until a full sentence around age 3-4.
They became a GP.

Just because a child has SEN, it doesn't automatically follow that they will need screen time to support their regulation, or that screen time will be any less negative for them than it is for young children without SEN.

There absolutely are children for whom screen time is a lifeline. There are also children who are given screen time, either at home or at school, as a means of making them easier to manage. I do not mean children who would otherwise be so dysregulated that they would harm themselves or others; just children who would whine and complain until they are handed the device they like. I have seen both scenarios.

He is 4 years old. Not able to sit still for a long time is NOT an "issue"!

Attention skills aren’t just about being able to sit still. They are about being able to attend to things other people have chosen for you and not just things you have chosen, being able to independently shift attention between tasks, being able to ignore minor distractions, and being able to attend to a group as well as 1:1. Share attention also comes into it.

Issues with these skills, which it sounds like OPs little boy may well have, will significantly impact the ability to learn in a busy classroom.

There's actually a lot of emerging research on gestalt language processors and allowing them to use media to form gestalts.

This is different from ALPs which are almost always allistic children.

My own sons SALT has actually tasked his school with watching the media he watches to understand his echolalia and gestalts.

He went from being completely non-verbal to using echolalia to form gestalts when we started allowing screen time.

He will also rewind a short clip hundreds of times and practice the pronunciation of words and the emotion behind the sentence. This is not something he can do in real life speaking to someone. He has definitely learnt much of his speech from media and he wouldn't have learnt it without.

I'm afraid our neurodivergent children aren't represented very well in past research, so I am glad that there's upcoming evidence based therapies from our SALT team and a rollout of training to meet their learning style better.

He's not necessarily SEN. It's speech delay, which may turn out to be Virtual Autism.

Just turn the bloody Nintendo switch off, just in case, yeah?

I find the term virtual autism really fucking offence, it's not a dx it's just made up bullshit

I am aware of all that. But from information given I dont think the school is working on that basis when the first reference to mum appearscto be he cant sit still as opposed to a more detailed account of wider attention skills as you have just give . That was my point, probably not clearly expressed!

Ask for a meeting to discuss it all with his Teachers & SEN coordinator. Explain your concerns & maybe suggest he goes to the main class a few hours each day to see how he gets on & the rest of the time in the small SEN group. It may be they've put him in the smaller group so they can assess him & see if he'd cope in main class. Communication with his school is the key here. You all need to be communicating thoughts & concerns for it to be agreeable what's best for your little one.

Speech delay won’t improve with child in large groups they need to be in small groups, with targeted help, school wouldn’t put them in Sen group unless they needed to be.