but Its driving me mental.
My son starts secondary school next week. He is a lovely kind gentle boy with ASD, and when we looked around all the local schools, our closest (by miles) school, which he can walk to in 5 minutes, and which is an OFSTED outstanding, the sort of place people remortgage their grannies to get into, was the one he really REALLY was excited to go to.
My daughter (also ASD but we didnt know it at the time) went to this school and lasted a year before she had a complete breakdown and had to be taken out altogether, but little brother is a different child and he wants to go. He knows if it goes tits up we can move him or home school, but he is sure that is the school for him
My stupid big worry is about his hair (see I told you IABU and its a stupid stupid given the huge number of things I could be worried about - bullying being the main one, him being targeted because he is quite obviously 'odd' although liked by his peers from a very small primary, and he doesnt get the social interaction bit too well)
He has always had long hair. This has been his choice. He has had it cut, but we have always had to say it is being 'trimmed' because of his aversion to it being cut. If its a sensory thing or a self-image thing I dont know but he has always been adamantly against what you would call a traditional 'boys' cut. He used to scream if we took him to the hairdresser and only allowed it to be trimmed if it began to get unmanageable due to knots, as its very fine. He is used to people mistaking him for a girl, and generally corrects them, and is pretty nonchalant about their confusion - its no big deal. He is confident in himself.
Of course this school has a 'boys have to have short hair' policy.
Tomorrow he is having it all cut off. well I say all but Im thinking we will have to just keep some length and have it cut straight round at the length we can get away with, and layered through it, as he absolutely refuses to have any more taken off. He has asked our neighbour - a hairdresser - to do it but he is absolutely beside himself. he is not sleeping. he has been crying. he has been going on and on about it for the last 2 weeks and now he has just gone to bed really worried and anxious about it. Ive tried commiserating and Ive tried just being matter of fact. Nothing is helping to be honest.
He says that if there was a proper reason then he can understand it, but there just isnt. He says that it is sexist, because the girls all have long hair and some of them have short hair which look like 'boys' haircuts. It cant be about safety because they dont make the girls tie theirs back, even though he would be quite happy to tie his back. He says it cant be about going to work because he sees loads of men in work with long hair - some very successful ones. He says when you go to college before you go to work you can dye it purple and grow it to your knees and nobody says 'we are teaching you to be responsible' - he says he likes rules (this is true, he follows rules to the letter mainly because he can see they are there for a reason) but he doesnt understand the reason for this one. But he knows he has to do it if he wants to go to this school.
He says that he feels like its just because they want to break a part of him, which I feel is a little dramatic, but I guess he feels very strongly about it. He is a good student - he studies hard, he is keen to learn, he pays attention in class, he never misbehaves, has never been on the red or the yellow, always polite and helpful and has fantastic SATS results. On induction days he found the lunchtime clubs and asked to join in - he knows how to avoid the situations which could make him stand out as a target
so why am I feeling so apprehensive