is sn on the increase?

[spritefairy]

Now this is not to offend anyone with a child with sn but every other post seems to have someone who has a child with sn be it disabled or autistic. This makes me wonder.
Is sn on the increase or is it just diagnosed more than it used to be due to medical advances?

I suppose that's where online groups are great. I actually met one of my best RL SN mum friends online. Our children are actually quite similar & I moved to just around the corner from her (after being 300 miles away initially!) - we've supported each other for years.

I think its becoming more common to have a child with special needs and or visible disability.

When i was a child (im 27) i very rarely saw children with special needs or children with a visible disability.

Now i go to my local shopping centre or to the local park and very often see children in a maclaren special needs pram or in a wheelchair etc.

JadedAngel ido think they are ASD focused. but I used to think that was because that is where the support was most needed. I think not having a child with CP ......I am now the one without support as online and in rl finding people in the same boat is so hard. even resources like my local sn youth scheme is geared up for ASD and "non visible disabilities" very few places for young people who use wheelchairs.

I know an exams officer (for a big secondary school) who says quite openly that dc get a diagnosis purely to get an unfair advantage in exams, mainly more time. She is outrageously unprofessional, but considers herself right. But I know quite a few teachers who say the same thing. They just say the children have nothing wrong with them really. It's like being back in the Stone Age.

Samcro/jaded angel - what ages are your kids? I found it much easier to find 'people like ds1' (in terms of needs & severity of disability) once he started at an SLD school. Until then we really didn't fit anywhere (& that was with an ASD diagnosis! Still couldn't access the groups).

In terms of the why's - that is hard. I find it gets picked up every few years. One of ds1's (new) professionals has decided he wants to revisit that & has arranged a bunch of tests. I'm happy enough to do that as it's not long before ds1 leaves paediatrics & I'd rather it was done now (not sure it would even be possible under adults - there's no way he could stay on a hospital ward alone).

Not read entire thread, but my dd is on Sn register at school, as she carries an epi pen for her allergy.

mine is an adult now, that can be even more isolating.
most groups and things (even online) are aimed at children like mn is.
once you hit 19 plus transition its a night mare, my dc went to an sn school same one from 3 to 19 so leaving was a MASSIVE thing. yet suddenly the online support disappeared as I no longer fitted into any groups iynwim.
yet here I am coping with 8 weeks college holiday, no respite apart from a few hours at a day centre. its very hard when you are looking after an adult with severe disabilities and falling apart physically your self.

yeolde, my DS has a diagnosis of ASD. You wouldn't know it to look at him in the school environment. Home, of course, can be entirely different.

Samcro - I am dreading adult services.

As good as an ASD diagnosis is in many ways it can also be a negative thing in the sense that people make such massive assumptions about what children with ASD can do. They seem to forget the spectrum side of the name.

So whereas I can fully see where those with children with different special needs are coming from there is often so much more to a child with additional needs than the diagnosis so although the piece of paper says different the needs and problems encountered along the way may not be so different.

I hate the term additional needs , just had to say it, my child is way to disabled to just use that term.\

adult services havn't been to bad so far. helps that dc is classed as having ld's due to their CP.

They seem to forget the spectrum side of the name. this is one of the bug bears I have about the fact that the term aspergers no longer exists. We have found that it as been assumed that ds has development delay and issues with understand because he has been diagnosed as asd. He is not and does integrate strategies incredibly well, but will play up if you treat him like he is stupid. He gets incredibly frustrated with a lot of the so called asd friendly strategies because they don't suit the issues he has. And then you get oh but we have implemented x,y,z we HAVE made reasonable adjustments. NO, you have made the problem worse and actually the issue is underlying bullying which is affecting all kids, and allergies, and hearing issues which are nothing to do with the asd diagnosis. He just wants to be like the other kids and your strategies are making him a bigger target for the bullies.

Its a common thing everywhere that people/companies/doctors dont take other diagnoses into consideration (or even look at them possibly aimed at my recent cardio).

Exercise recommendations for one problem are not possible with the second, diet changes advised for x not possible with y, medical test for something requires something that another condition makes impossible/affects the results.

I prefer additional needs to special needs - I hate the use of the word 'special' - partly because it is starting to get used as an insult (of course), but also because my children are all special, all the children at ds's school are special, but the ds and the children with disabilities have needs that are additional to his siblings and the other children.

The people on the sn boards who I keep in touch with in rl, are the posters who have children a similar age - their children have ASD, Downs Syndrome, genetic conditions or are undiagnosed. Our common ground is the journey through all the testing, worry, hospital appointments, judging and school starting.

I don't really mind that the sn boards have an ASD bias, it is inevitable really. I think the thing that annoys me is on the main boards, where special needs = autism, and autism = lots of assumptions. An example would be the This Is My Child campaign, which I think most posters assumed to be about children with autism.

Jaded, I have found it really useful to get to meet the other parents at ds's resource base, there are only a handful of them (10 in the unit).

Wrt SWAN, it is odd, I feel as though we are taking a break from looking, as ds is in the DDD and has a 'possible diagnosis' of Kleefstra, and even having that 'possible diagnosis' has made a difference wrt hospital visits etc. My friend's ds has a mosaic microdeletion, and is the only case that is recorded, she said she feels completely in the dark with regards to the future - there is so much going on with him, but everything is put down to the chromosomal deletion.

my dd is on Sn register at school, as she carries an epi pen for her allergy

I am surprised by this, my dd1 carries an epipen, so has a care plan with reards to this, but isn't part of the sen register?

Samcro I understand what you're saying about feeling isolated because the majority of posters on here discuss ASD's, I don't talk about another disability that has occurred in our family purely because I have never seen it mentioned on any of the sn boards, it's a pretty rare congenital defect and for years I felt that isolated because of it.

DSs have been on SEN register (yoyo on off) but do Not have SN.