To be angry, and even a little bewildered on how to tackle this with the school?

[MaddyHatter]

DS has SN.. he has Autism, ADHD, Sensory Processing Disorder and Dyspraxia.... it makes for some very complex needs, a big one of which he CANNOT process emotion or self regulate and will go into a meltdown very suddenly.

One of the outcomes of him getting upset and frustrated and having a meltdown is that he lashes out during them, and can hurt the people near him. The school are aware of this, there are strategies in place to help him try to manage his feelings.

One of these strategies is the provision and freedom to go to a room called the Calm room, which is painted with calming colours and has cushions and bean bags...etc.

There was an incident today. Ds isnt having a good week and there is a piece of work he is flat refusing to do, and they keep trying to make him. Today they tried again and he began to get upset. The Learning Mentor tried to get him to go to her classroom to calm down, but his auditory processing issues meant he didn't understand and he thought she was going to try and make him do this work, and he lashed out.

He has been suspended, which i nominally support, even if i'm not happy, as in my eyes they're punishing him for part of his disability..

However, i asked DS why if he was getting angry, didn't he ask to use the Calm room (its right opposite his classroom) and he told me he wasnt allowed in there because some of the yr6 girls were using it as a PE changing room.

WTF?!?!

Now.. i appreciate at 10/11yo the girls may not wish to change in the classroom with the boys, and an alternative should be provided... but WHY THE FUCK are the school letting them use THE CALM ROOM which is there for children like my son to use as and when they need it?

I am so fucking angry... we spent AGES getting it through to him that he could remove himself from a situation and go to that room if he felt the need to help prevent him going into meltdown, and now, he has to check if its being used as a fucking changing room and isn't allowed in there if the girls belongings are... and has now ended up having a violent meltdown and hit a teacher and got suspended.

I just don't know how to tackle this or even where to start.

Coming at it from the other side of the argument here. I started my periods aged 10 and the whole getting changed for PE thing was hell. School wanted me to get changed in the girls toilets since I didn't want to be in the classroom in front of the boys, which was fair enough. However, the layout of the girls toilets meant that the cubicles were really too tiny to be changing in and there weren't enough of them for them to be used as changing rooms anyway, so getting changed in the toilets literally meant on the floor in the middle of a tiny room, right in front of the door out onto the main corridor, with kids in and out constantly opening the door. I hated it so much I decided the classroom was the lesser of the evils and PE became a real struggle for me.

While I completely understand how your DS benefits from having a room like this available to him (I have a lot of experience with autism), your child isn't the only child in the school. The school can't have a room dedicated just to him, it has to benefit other children too to justify it being there, even if your son perhaps uses it more than other pupils at times. From your post, it sounds as though, given the room was being used to change, your DS was given an alternative in the learning mentor's classroom. It's not as if while the calm room is being used for changing, there's no where else for him to go if he needs time outside the classroom. On that basis, it's perfectly reasonable for it to be used a couple of times a week to provide a safe environment for other children, it's not like year 6 has PE every day. The rest of the time it's a space your son and other SEN children can use.

YABU.

thanks.. i already reported it for being a disablist pile of shit!

igottwo you really haven't got a clue

YANBU OP

I've reported also: it was clearly grossly disablist. Unless she's namechanged, Igottwo has only been on MN since yesterday. Not the greatest start, really.

Notonyur, you might like to get your post that repeated that pile of rubbish removed as well.

Igottwo if you read the full thread, it sounds like the girls would otherwise get changed in the girl's toilets, but the headteacher prefers them to get changed in the Calm room.

We got changed in the girl's toilets for PE throughout primary. And surely this would be the only option if the school hadn't provided this Calm room for a child who needs it to be able to access his education.

I will be generous and assume you didn't mean to be so rude to parents of children with ASD as to suggest that it had never occurred to us that it might be a good idea to help our children learn how to cope in the world. If it were that easy, do you not think we and the schools would have done it?

Notonyur, you might like to get your post that repeated that pile of rubbish removed as well

Will do.

dona
Perhaps the girls could have got changed in the learning mentors room ?

Send in a pop up tent for if the calm room is being used by others again

The op's child doesn't "benefit" from the room. He needs it.

Igottwo I am hoping you are just a total GF and that's not really your opinion. That is one of the most ignorant, ridiculous posts I have ever read. The fact you took the time to write all of that out without realising what awful tripe you were typing depresses me beyond belief.

OP and all the other mothers on here with children with SEN - unmumsnetty hugs for having to read that shit

I reported and asked that they provided a link to This Is My Child.

It's depressing how ignorant some people are.

donadu The school can't have a room dedicated just to him, it has to benefit other children too to justify it being there

This is not correct, and suggests you don't understand how hard it is for many children with ASD to adopt a new strategy to manage their meltdowns. Keeping it simple is crucial.

If your attitude is adopted in mainstream schools, the alternative is for the state to fund much more expensive provision in specialist schools - which will have a number of calm down rooms and spaces available - all for the sake of a glorified cupboard.

While your argument sounds superficially reasonable, it's not a sensible approach.

Dona, do you not understand that if the school tells a child with ASD that he needs to go to the Calm Room when he feels stressed, it can't just withdraw that facility when it feels like it unless the staff have a guaranteed alternative and he knows about it? One of the features of ASD is that children often have great difficulty coping with change and need a lot of preparation for it. The situation here is that the room unexpectedly wasn't available, and OP's DS had no knowledge of the alternative; being already in a heightened state, he was hardly in a position to take in what was going on. It's not answer to say that the learning mentor's room was fine if he'd had no preparation for that eventuality and, in his mind, good reason to think he was being taken off for other reasons. It may surprise you to learn that a child with ASD and anxiety can't time his crises for those periods when the calm room isn't needed for other purposes.

If OP's child was disabled with something like Crohn's, would you think it was fine for the accessible toilet to be annexed for a girls' changing room because there was an alternative toilet two floors up?

OP

YANBU

That's all.

How old is your DS, MaddyHatter?

Yanbu

Igottwo

I am not an expert, I am just a mum

A mum who thinks a bit about what she's saying when she's ignorant

Dona YES the school CAN have a room dedicated to one child. It's called INCLUSION.

SOME children NEED that.

I agree that of course older girls and boys need separate spaces. That needs to be addressed as a separate issue. It's not the OP's son's problem.

It's the schools and they need to fix it NOW.

he's 9 Balloon. Yr4.

lgottwo how depressing your post is.
You can't have been here very long &
I'm surprised your brain didn't kick in while you typed that drivel. Reported.

MattDillon

Concisely put

"From your post, it sounds as though, given the room was being used to change, your DS was given an alternative in the learning mentor's classroom. It's not as if while the calm room is being used for changing, there's no where else for him to go if he needs time outside the classroom. On that basis, it's perfectly reasonable for it to be used a couple of times a week to provide a safe environment for other children, it's not like year 6 has PE every day. The rest of the time it's a space your son and other SEN children can use."

If ds' disability means he cannot cope with change, then that is precisely why he is not the one who should be given an alternative space. Are there really people in this day and age who need this explained to them?

And Augusta, just for the record I have known idiot school teachers apply exactly the same logic to my wheelchair using dd: of course we will adapt to her disability but you must understand that she isn't the only child in the school and sometimes it is simply not convenient. So what was she supposed to do when it wasn't convenient- fly? [grrr]

Can I have your phone number Igottwo I'm guessing your up for a demonstration of you brilliant healing skills and are willing to show everybody how to make my child walk so his wheelchair won't need to be accomadated avoiding the need for it to be someone else's responsability