To pretend I didn't receive the text

[GinghamStyle]

So background for context. I'm a LP to DS (10.5) currently at the end of Y5. He has ASD and ADHD. He was excluded from school on Wednesday last week until this Wednesday. DS stayed with my mum Monday night to give me a bit of a break as the whole thing had really stressed me out.

At the reintegration meeting on Wednesday, school suggested that he move onto a P/T timetables gling to school in the mornings a school it's the afternoon where he struggles the most. I've recently reduced my hours at work from 3 days to 1 day so I can have time to go to support groups for parents of SEN children, attend counselling and have more time for myself. My boyfriend (who is just that, he does not live with us) and I do not get much time together and so we were looking forward to having more time when he's off work and DS is at school, so this P/T timetable has put a stop to that.

I agreed to the P/T timetable because I need time off from DS and I don't want him to be excluded again (which is likely). I'm lucky that work has been amazing and I'm going to work 9-12 two days a week to herb my hours in. I emailed school saying that I agree to P/T hours 9-12 and that on my work days I'll get to school a soon as I can. There are a couple of days I have counselling and can't cant be before 2 but said I'll ask my mum to pick up these day she if she's off, otherwise I'll collect at 2. I also said that in September he should return to school full time.

I received a letter from school yesterday saying that DS will be in school for 15 hours a week 8:50 - 11:30 and that when I have counselling I should take DS with me. They also requested that I work with them so I emailed back asking them to work with me! Stressed is an understatement.

Mum had previously agreed to have DS every other Saturday night and I checked with her yesterday if she was still OK to have him tonight. She confirmed that she isn't doing anything and so to bring him around after she's back from work.

This morning, she text saying that she's not able to have DS tonight's as she has stuff to do. I really need some time outside of this house!!

So if I just ignore this message and pretend I haven't received it, AIBU?

I get you wanted a break but she's been at work all day and you still expected her to babysit for the evening, Thats really selfish. She already helps out a lot and this isn't her responsibility. It's yours and his dads.

As for the boyfriend, surely your son should come first? He needs his parents to be there for him.

SugarisAmazing, you clearly know nothing about ASD and ADHD if you seriously think they can

There is a LOT of people on this thread who don't have a fucking clue. Like I said, sheeples who see the direction of a thread and go with it.

People are allowed to be disappointed. This is a snapshot of a small part of a really tough life and the OP was allowed to vent that disappointment as is everyone else who needs to vent sometimes.

Don't rule out babysitters, plenty of them can and will care for SEN children.

Although it sounds like he just needs to be home and settled with you. He needs to feel like he is your priority rather than feeling overwhelmed at school or being sent to his nana again whilst you go out.

Sympathy is limited, frankly.

You have a kid and can't do what you want, suck it up, welcome to the real world.

My DC has epilepsy. I work full time.

Many weeks I would have liked a break, but life is unfair and you can't always have what you want.

Agree with many pp.

The school can put in place a reduced timetable. It's about what's best for the child, not you and what you want. When you have a child, and particularly one with additional needs, they have to be supported and come first. You should done working with the school to do the best you all can for him.

Sometimes you have to accept you are restricted. And you have to get on with it until things change. To put all that onto someone else ie your mother is poor.

Op no real words of advice but for you.

Candypinkstars given that you apparently have a similar ish situation in stunned at your utter lack if understanding and compassion.

From reading your other posts, the BF pops round most nights after work therefore no reason he couldn't have just come round and had a takeaway rather than a meal out. Surely that would have been the better option in the first instance, your son gets to take part in a shared treat, your mum isn't put upon and likely cost savings compared to going out given your minimal work hours.

You also say when your mum babysits on a Saturday you pick him up at 4pm the next day. Maybe that's part of her reluctance as it's not just her Saturday night you expect her to give up for her Sunday day off too.

I understand, absolutely. What I find distasteful is that the assumption seems to be missing a date with the boyfriend is a huge disappointment. It isn't.

No one chooses those circumstances, when you have a child with additional needs, it's hard. I'm not disputing that. But my DC has it harder than I do. He has to live with his condition. I just have to help him manage it. Is that difficult? Yes It is. Does it mean I can't always do as I would want? Absolutely.

It's the whining I can't stand and the I should get to do want I want regardless attitude. Yes, it's hard. Yes a break would have been nice. But you dont always get what you want in life. It's the child who deserves the compassion and understanding. They never get a break from their condition.

You sound very young and like you are struggling a lot. It must be so difficult to be in your situation. Can you call social care and see if there is anything they can put in place to help you?

School don't sound like they are equipped to help your lad. Are there any other schools in the area? I note you said they mentioned PRU... Can you ask them more about that? PRU isn't just for naughty children and they may be able to help you both.

Regards Fortnite. I know you say he enjoys this, but is it really suitable for him? School have said not and I suspect it isn't.

Don't give up trying to get more help. There are services out there who can help you. Hang in there.

''The expectation of going out - SN etc aside - I always find a bit baffling. Dh and I have been out for dinner alone once since we became parents 13 years ago

That sounds utterly dreadful. I couldn't live like that.'

We appear to have survived. :)

MAT worker is Multi Agency Team. She's able to help with all kinds of things and I am very glad to have her help!

I do have boundaries and consequences with DS but if I punished him for every thing that he does in the same way you'd punish a NT child for the same things, he'd have nothing fun ever. There is so much negativity in his life already, the very last thing he needs after a morning of lessons and struggling with friendships is for me to impose consequences for something that happened more than a week ago. Not being at school in the afternoons is because he can't regulate and is at risk of dangerous behaviour - it isn't a punishment for something that's happened, it's to prevent further things from happening. So we'll spend the time having fun together in the sunshine talking Minecraft, visiting museums, going on walks and using that time to coach him about how to regulate and to talk about the 101 things that have upset him and make sense of those feelings.

He misses his friends, but school have told me that he doesn't have any friends. Because he is so unpredictable, most of the children are scared/wary of him and he actually spends a lot of time playing on his own. Although now I type this out, I realise that the Head totally dismissed my point which was that he is friends with a lot of the Y6s at school as they are in the same class and obviously they'll be leaving in a few weeks for secondary. Whether they like him or not wasn't the point, it was that he's attached to them and will be thinking about next year when a lot of his "friends" have moved on.

In the park with the swearing boys, DS went to the oldest child there, I assume with the idea that the older boy would tell the younger one to stop swearing. I don't think it's always clear to DS that other families don't have the same rules that I have for him.

Mum is a brilliant help and I don't know where I'd be without her. Our relationship and her understanding of DS has taken a long time to get to this point. She's taken the view recently that rather than counting down the weeks and months until retirement, she should be enjoying her grandchildren and so her freezer is always stocked with ice creams and her biscuit tin full of goodies because of course, a grandmother's prerogative is to spoil their grandchildren! When I don't collect DS until 4pm from her house it's because she's told me not to. Other days I'll have to collect him at 9 or 10 but if she isn't doing anything and has scheduled a lazy day, I'll be told not to come before 2/3/4pm and they'll spend the day watching TV, playing in the garden and just having quality time together. Some of my happiest memories as a child are helping my Nan in her garden and so it's lovely that DS is now doing these things with my mum.

The MAT worker has spoken about a Social Services and Advocate service referrals and I'm already in touch with SENDIASS who have already been a very big help.

I just wanted to say that I've been through similar. It's very hard and I had other children. My ds was excluded and then put on a timetable that utterly broke me. 9.30-11.30, but bearing in mind one child was in school 9-3.15 and another in a nursery on the same site 9-12, I was expected to do 6 trips to school a day or a lot of waiting with a very difficult child. It's easy for someone to say that your child should be in school for full days etc but the reality with these sorts of disabilities is that life is often not like that. In the end we did shift the times slightly but I have to be honest that school was dreadful. We ended up moving to an area with a resource base and (for a period) he did a lot better and was in school full time. We've never had time off or a night out as he was impossible to leave and any family help has focussed on giving siblings a nice time rather than ourselves so I can totally empathise with his difficult things feel and are. Good luck x

Can’t speak for the other poster but I have a child with asd and while consequences won’t cure nd disorders the absence of them certainly won’t help.
The way I see it is that my dc might need extra help and support to meet certain expectations but that doesn’t mean we don’t still have them. I’ve done the EarlyBird training and training with the adhd foundation and neither advocate failing to address completely unacceptable behaviour due to a diagnosis.

Fortnite probably isn't suitable for him. I think my issue with school telling me not to allow DS to play it is that I feel they are over stepping their boundaries. I really try my best with DS and he was nagging me for weeks to play it. I spoke to BF who has a PC (my laptop is too old for anything anymore) and he agreed that DS could play it at his house and I then used it as a reward for when he'd had a good weeks at school. I think in all, he'd played it 3 times. It wasn't just about playing the game though, it was about being part of the Fortnite crew at school, my BF played it a bit and so it was something for them to talk about, plus he was trying harder to have a good week to get the reward. When I'd go to school to collect DS from school, the boys would be rushing to get home calling to their mates that they'd see them on Fortnite and although he wasn't playing online with them and had a strict no mic/audio rule, for a little while, he was part of that group.

Then came the conversation with school about how inappropriate it is and it had to stop.

He can floss like a pro though!

I totally understand school's stance that he needs a P/T timetable at the moment. In the lead up to summer holidays, it would be 3 weeks of hellish afternoons and if he's climbing trees and trying to jump out of windows 5 weeks before summer, I dread to think what he might be doing in the last week! I absolutely want to avoid that and also avoid him being excluded again and so, on the basis that it just until the end of term and it's 9-12, I agree to the P/T timetable. Only it turns out I don't call the shots on this and need to get further advice tomorrow.

School had also asked/told me that if DS is "naughty" during school hours, they'll ring me and asked for my agreement which I didn't really feel I had any choice but to accept. When I wrote to school agreeing to the P/T timetable I told school that I take back the permission to ring me when he's naughty and in their letter to me, they basically have said that if they want to ring me, they will.

I just feel like I've put so much in place to enable me to cope with DS better and school are chipping away at the time and opportunity that I have to do these things. I feel really trapped - and then I've still got to fit work, counselling and everything else in.

I don't think, as things are, that school are Equipt to deal with DS and I have asked school quite bluntly that when they reach a point where they feel that they can no longer meet his needs, thatbtheybtake the appropriate action so that he can move to a setting that can, though we can't do anything like that until we have a ECHP.

I've had so much advice from school, Ed Psyc, MAT team etc over the past year, I knew that I had to make more time so that I could do more while DS is at school, like counselling, like accessing support groups, like grocery shopping as DS cannot cope going shopping after being at school all day. So I took the plunge and quit my job to be a full time carer and take the pay cut which was outweighed by the positives of having more time to do things and in turn, more patience, better MH and hopefully be a better mum. Then I agreed with work that I'd continue just working 1 day a week and they assured me that when things get better that I can increase my hours again. Counselling, support groups, shopping and self care were very easy to fit around working 1 day a week and I got busy scheduling things in on my free days. Now DS is only at school in the mornings, all that has changed and I'm worried that if I neglect my self care, that I won't be able to cope and my anxiety kicks in telling me 101 stupid untrue things, which at the time feel 100% real and make the whole thing so much harder to cope with.

So thank you to everyone who took the time to post and helped me through this frustrating couple of days. Hopefully tomorrow when I've spoken to DIASS and the MAT worker (and collect DS at midday), things will start feeling better and easier to cope with.

I don't ignore his behaviour.
His ADHD/ASD might be the reason behaviour occurs but it isn't an excuse for it.

He's already having a shit time of things and is getting punished at school and then school punish me by making him stay at home for 6 days. We talk about what he did, what he should have done, what to do next time. When we got home, he had to do some "jobs" and wasn't able to just come in and watch DanTDM like he wanted - but then it's over. He's been told off, I'll keep talking to him about coping strategies but I'm not going to keep going on and on about how naughty he's been because that's not going to achieve anything other than bad feeling between us and damage our relationship.

When he's naughty for me, of course there are consequences. But him being naughty for me is very different to when he does it at school because I don't have behaviour policies and other children to safeguard. I also don't have somebody senior to delegate him to, at home the book stops with me. Sometimes we get in negative cycles and spend all of our time shouting and falling out, which is horrible as I'm not coping. Mum is often busy/tired and I have nobody else that I can ask to have him even for a few hours so I can stop wanting to jump on a train and let somebody else deal with him. Obviously when things get like that, it isn't good for either of us and I want to prevent that from happening, which is why the self care is so important.

OP can I just say that you have been really let down by the system. Your son is almost in year 6 and only a recent ASD diagnosis and no EHCP.

I'm sorry you feel you have no support or anyone to help your son. What does the SENDCO say at the school?

But yes you cannot pretend you didn't see the text. You need to explain to your mum that she has every right to say no, but maybe more warning wouldn't go amiss. Hope you managed to have a nice weekend.

OP are school in the process of applying for an ECHP?
It takes months and a lot of paperwork and then once it's sent off, it takes weeks to get an answer.

I think the school should have pushed for the EHCP as frankly it is in everyone’s interest for your son to have much more support and maybe a specialist school. Sometimes parents don’t pursue these earlier because they don’t realise how bad things are even if schools try to nudge them to, but schools should be more proactive than they sometimes are.

However it sounds like in some ways the school is trying to help you - did you say they had suggested counselling? They aren’t ‘punishing you’ with the PT timetable - they are desperately trying to look after and educate your son and all the other children in his class with diminishing resources. It is really up to you to pursue the help and support (respite, special needs babysitters etc) you need to cope, not the school’s job to help you do this. I know that’s hard and exhausting and it isn’t fair if life. But wanting some kind of support for yourself or care from the school is a dead end and is just going to frustrate you. They don’t owe you anything.

At both this school and the Infants school he was at previously, the Head Teacher is the SENCo and so what the Head decides is what happens.

I don't know if I mentioned upthread but it would seem that right from him being about 3, everyone has "known" DS has ADHD. He was at nursery from being a baby until he steers school. The staff apparently discussed amongst themselves that he must have ADHD but no referrals were made and no discussions were had with me, he was just "naughty" and every day of her it and every day I'd be imposing consequences and our lives were just a negative mess.

Then he started primary school and I thought perhaps having a routine and clear boundaries at school would settle him down. Nope, he was just as bad justbin a different setting. They didn't know what to do with him and the Head shouted at him so much he wet himself, so we moved to infant school.

At infant school, though they did initially refer him to school doc and ed Psyc, they were very keen for him to be medicated and when he was in Y2 and had the head (who is also SENCo) for his teacher, she was horrible with him. She had zero patience and was just biding her time for him to move up to Junior school for them to apply for ECHP. Ed Psyc even said during a meeting that HT wasn't making the application because she didn't want to do the paperwork and HT just shrugged.

When DS was crying about having no friends, HT (in front of me) retorted "is there any wonder?".

HT at Junior school at first was a breath of fresh air with her compassion and not just seeing his behaviour - but I guess all good things have to come to an end and she isn't like that any more. She's just exasperated.

I looked at moving him to a different school that would let him be more creative last year as he doesn't seem to be suited to mainstream, but they said his behaviour was too extreme and so couldn't take him.

DS was referred to CAHMS and she said that his extreme behaviour was his autism and once we got to grips with his autism that things would settle down.

I had a meeting with her on my own as we couldn't say a lot with DS in the room and we had a really good discussion about what steps I need to take to make sure I'm able to cope with his behaviour/needs which included counselling and attending support groups.

School also referred us to the MAT team for me to have a support worker and with reducing my hours at work, I felt like things were really moving in the right direction for us both to be properly supported.

I’m sorry the school, especially the infant, were so poor. In my personal experience, which is less extreme by far, though my son has dyslexia and processing difficulties, it feels like my DS’ infant school almost just want to muddle through as they know it’s only three years, and put off some problems till junior school. We had to have him assessed privately and school haven’t been great about working with the diagnosis, even though they have, to be fair, put support in place for him and others who were struggling in Year 2.

You have definitely been let down. We had similar. When I first mentioned a statement (as it was before) the senco laughed... roll on a year and diagnosis of ADHD and ASD and suddenly they wouldn't have him without a full statement which got rushed through in a record 8 weeks. The head had been convinced he was just 'naughty'. They also tried to force medication for ADHD as he was so much easier to manage, the problem was it didn't suit him, made his tics 10 times worse and he jumped out of a window and moving car. The HT said we were unreasonable to discontinue medication. In the end we had to see a gp, take him out of school but leave him on role so that it was in everyone's best interests to get it resolved fast. We were advised to send him to a different school by the LEA, but that was a drive away whilst our younger kids were settled in that school, and the head of the school we were told to send him to quite clearly said she couldn't take him and that they were already at max capacity with additional neeeds. As I said before, we ended up moving out of area after he was out of school for 1 year.

On one hand, it's nice to know I'm not the only one this happens to, but on the other, I'm totally appalled how many families and children are so let down by the system! How do these HTs get to keep their jobs??

You've been seriously let down.
I'm so surprised that an EHCP wasn't applied for right at the start of his school life. It benefits everyone involved but yes, involves a huge amount of paperwork and money from school budget if the EHCP is granted.
Sorry op, I hope you can get some things in place to help him cope at secondary school.

The school can put in place a reduced timetable. It's about what's best for the child, not you and what you want.

This is absolutely untrue, Candypinkstars: schools cannot put in place reduced timetables unless there is a medical reason for them attested by a doctor - it's illegal unless they record it as a formal exclusion and give the parents notice on each occasion the child is sent home early of their rights to make representations to the governors; even then they cannot exclude for more than 45 days in a school year.

The Upper Tribunal has also made a formal finding that sending a child home early without arranging something like home tuition to make up their right to full time education is disability discrimination. It's not a great disciplinary example to pupils when a school breaks the law.