Sorry, this is going to be long
DD2 is 9 and has just started in year 5. She has some quite complicated learning needs, and also struggles with anxiety.
She's really routine focused and when things happen that are different or unexpected she gets horribly anxious. This is usually panic about things going wrong - things like will mum forget to pick me up from school? Will my hamster die? Have I got spiders in my hair? Is Nanny OK? (My grandmother who is now quite elderly and frail and has been having some health issues lately). She gets quite obsessive and this builds and builds and builds until she becomes overwhelmed and then completely breaks down.
One of the things that the Ed Psych recommended was a picture chart which shows her what's happening now, and what's happening next - she has problems processing too much information given to her in one go, so we have to give this information to her in small chunks. We have a chart at home and last year she had one in school - worked brilliantly and she was much less anxious.
So this year. It hasn't gone so well. New classroom, new teacher, new expectations, rules and routines and she's found it all really difficult. She always finds those first few weeks in a new class really hard and needs a bit of support to begin with. I had a meeting at the beginning of the year with her new teacher and the SENCo to discuss her needs, etc, and the teacher made it clear that she didn't want to continue with the chart and felt that DD would soon get used to the timetable and routine in her class. SENCo was great and really supported me, and in the end the teacher reluctantly agreed that she'd continue with the chart for the first few weeks then we'd revisit it after half term. Fine, once she gets used to new routines she's fine, so no problem.
On Tuesday I picked DD up from school and I could see that she'd not had a great day and the TA mentioned that she'd had a bad afternoon. The obsessing about Nanny/hamster/spiders/etc started on the way home and ended with a full blown meltdown when we got home. It turned out that her usual teacher wasn't in the classroom for the afternoon as she had some planned non-contact time. DD had come back from lunch to find a different teacher - DD loves this teacher - she was in this teacher's class last year so no issues with the teacher or the change, but she wasn't expecting it and it was 'different'.
I had another meeting with teacher yesterday (at her instigation) and I mentioned Tuesday and wondered that where possible, could DD be warned about changes like this.
Obviously, things happen unexpectedly and we can't control everything and sometimes, with the best will in the world, stuff just happens. That's fine, we'll deal with that, but in instances like this, where the change is planned and known about in advance, is it really that difficult to accommodate?
All was that when they're changing the pictures on the chart to say something like "it'll be maths this afternoon, but I won't be in the classroom so when you come back from lunch X will be here"
The teacher refused point blank and made it clear that she thought I was completely unreasonable to even ask.