Talking to school about DS starting and when? Help, please!

[Italiangreyhound]

Hi, well, a bit of a roller coaster here! Friday I was asking about pre-school and am now considering deferring ds's place in big school.

Please engage with me by message if you want more details about me but really I want to pick your brains experienced adopters, please.

I found a fab leaflet this leaflet called 'Let's learn together, from adoption UK. It is huge and helpful (from what I can see) BUT not really something I can take to the head or the future teacher!

So I need to ask...

1. What kind of things did you say when talking to school about your child starting (if they joined your family by adoption)?

2. Did you have any conversations about deferring a place or about starting mornings only etc?

3. How did you get the message across succinctly that children who joined the family by adoption will have different needs etc?

4. Was there a (smaller/briefer/less imposing) leaflet you gave to school?

No offence at all to non-adopters or newbie's like me, please do chip in your two-peneth (as I have done on MILLIONS of occasions).

If you are an experienced adopter I would especially like to hear your experiences about how things went and how it worked out.

So far have emailed head (twice) about pre-school and got no email back, just verbal message passed on . Spoke to pre-school teacher and now feel it is too early (DS only been with us about a month).

So I now need to stop being on the train tracks and just plodding along with what everyone else does (what I would have done with non-adopted DD) and start to think about ds and what he needs!!

Thanks for reading, I know it is long!

And it's all about ME and my son (love saying that) and not a reflection on anyone else who did anything else differently! Thanks

So if lots of professional people think I have a good case to hold my son back, why does the school still think my little boy needs to be in school?

Italian, are they pushing for him to start reception now in Sept 2014, rather than deferring and starting in January 15 or April 15? -> You have the legal right to do this, you do not need their support.
Or are they pushing for him to start reception in this academic year, or entering Y1 in Sept 2015, rather than allowing him to start reception in Sept 2015? -> This you can only do with their approval, which will be hard to get.

So if the first of those, why do they think he should be starting school in Sept 2014, rather than deferring to January or April? Because they don't understand about adoption. What they DO know, is that every year there will be a few parents who are worried that their LOs are too young, too immature, to start school; and every year, school has convinced most of them to give it a try anyway; and every year, things have turned out fine (from the school's perspective). So for that reason, they think they know better than the worried parents do.
What they also know, is that historically some of the differences in achievements between autumn-born and summer-born children, could be explained in that autumn-born children attended more terms of school; as summer-born children started later, but finished school at the same time. So they think you would be disadvantaging your DS by holding him back from school. But this depends on the assumption that your DS would actually profit, educationally, from being in school now.
Overall, school probably has a somewhat inflated sense of their own effectiveness. They think that they, and only they, can provide children with the education they need; and that they can do so despite whatever special circumstances there may be.
So they are honestly thinking of your DS' best interests, but come to the issue with some false assumptions.
You were perfectly right when you said in an earlier post, that teaching someone something doesn't mean they are actually learning it.
Stick to your guns, advise school that you will defer with their approval or without it, and that it would be helpful all round if they cared to inform themselves about adoption-specific issues.

Now for the second one, why do they think he should remain within his year group?
Because that is just the way things are, in England; and if an exception were made for one child, then other parents would come asking, and you'd have to start thinking about what the real reasons are for this inflexibility, and you might find yourself coming up short (after all, it works well in Scotland, to provide some flexibility) - so better to nip it in the bud before it becomes an issue.
This insistence on everyone remaining within their year group may make sense on a population level, but not on the level of everyone's individual best interest.

Does it affect there attendance figures?
I seem to remember a friend be pressurised because of this.

If he's only been with you a month then essentially he is still a LAC and you need to get your SWs on board to help you argue what is best for you and your child.

Our daughter was nearly 5 when placed with us and had already done a couple of weeks of school as she had been expecting it. Then she came to us and didn't go at all for quite some weeks.

We had a consultation with Family Futures before matching and placement and they advised keeping girl off a year, which was impractical and unrealistic as she was already in a school frame of mind. PLUS, as an adult you wouldn't move somewhere new and then not socialise with people - she was too old for toddler groups and everyone her age was in school. She could hear them at playtime and wanted to be out there making friends and playing. She got bored being with just us.

So, after a couple of months she started going a couple of mornings a week, and we very slowly built up from there so that by the end of the school year last summer she was doing full time.

We were lucky that school do really 'get' it and were completely accommodating of her needs at the time, and we had her SW engaged who backed us up in what WE said was the necessary way to do it. WE are the parents, it's up to US how we do it for the best advantage of OUR children.

So we were fortunate with the school, but having the SWs there supporting what we decided was really helpful and useful - it gave us a bit more clout!

And about the peer group thing FWIW, our friend's son is in y1, his best friend is in reception, their birthdays are 10 days apart. So one is the youngest in his year and the other is oldest. School year peer groups are a nonsense! If they chuck it about again I would really politely point out that a birthday a few weeks in either direction could radically affect which year he went in to and that 'peer group' is based on an arbitrarily chosen date in the calendar and doesn't really reflect the reality.

Thanks 64. Bless you for your interest. I have pmed you with a much longer reply as I would rather discuss details off thread.

Disney I am not sure what drives schools, conformity, I think. Will pm you.

flightywoman thanks so much, I am so glad for you it worked out. Will pm you too!

I wonder if others have had experiences of any schools that have actually recommended a child stay down a year?

Hels20, if you manage to dig out that article, I'd be very interested in it too... Would you be able to send me a link?

Angel these links are great.

nurturestore.co.uk

theimaginationtree.com

Have only skimmed the thread Italian, so apologies if it has moved on, thought I would tell you our experience.
As you know, dd3 was only six months old when she came home but has a diagnosis of FASD, not diagnosed until she was five.
When she was due to start school they had just bought in the all children starting in September, not the staggered entry according to birthday.
Dd3 is a summer baby so was only just four and a little bit. We ummed and ahhed about what to do, the head teacher at the time would only allow afternoon part timers, and only two hours at that, he really did not want any part timers so made it very difficult.
So we made the decision to send her full time from the off. A decision I still regret now.
From the first day I realised she found lunch times difficult so she started coming home for lunch- she still does one day a week now. It really helped her 'touch base'
Even now at the age of seven I have to be standing in the same spot everyday to collect her, and early too because she wouldn't cope if she didn't see me.
We now have a different head teacher whose approach is a lot more nurturing so there are still a fair few who start part time.

Thanks moomooie it makes my blood boil that parents are forced to do things they are not happy with because it fits school!

Things are moving slowly and I will update soon. I feel even more sure of things now but it does really help to hear others experiences, so thank you for sharing and sorry that it was tough.