This could end up being very long and ranty, so apologies in advance. DD is nearly 3, and goes to nursery 3 mornings a week. She has recently been diagnosed as ASD (but we have known for ages, the dx was a formality, and we told the nursery when we went for an open day and asked if they could cope). She is bright and funny, making great headway with language (her biggest problem, but she is improving steadily) and loves puzzles, colours and numbers and singing. She does not like play-doh, and is beginning to be interested in painting.
Dd can be difficult to cope with - she is, after all, 2 - but she is not impossible to manage, nor is she impossible to engage with or settle down to things.
Since dd moved out of the baby room last October (we didn't think she was ready, and had a meeting with the nursery to discuss where they assured us she was) we have been less and less happy with various issues. Dd took a long time to adjust to the new staff dealing with her (but we had stuff going on at home as well so was hard to tell what was affecting her) but I just don't feel that the staff have got the measure of her at all.
Dd's paed recently asked for a report from the nursery to supplement her developmental assessment. We relayed the request, and nothing happened. I chased it up, and nothing happened. 6 weeks later, and this is what was sent (I had to push to get a copy as was originally told to get a copy off the paed ):
"XXXX has made some progress in some areas. She is still very repetitive, and has her rituals. Instead of lying by the door rolling around, she will now occasionally stand near an activity. She likes to throw toys on the floor but with guidance she will now put bricks back into the box.
XXXX still gets up from the lunch table and will not sit with the other children during story time or registration. She will occasionally concentrate on what staff are asking her to do.
XXXX shows no signs of wanting to join in with her peers in any activity, but she will go to a known member of staff and join in with an activity on a one-to-one basis.
We have recently introduced potty training although with little success. She has no understanding of why she has been sat on the potty.
Before the birth of her baby sister, XXXX would on occasion try and converse with the staff, although since the birth this has stopped."
I am, quite frankly shocked by the report. Whenever I pick her up, I ask how the morning has gone and invariably get told "she's been fine". The report written for the paed does not describe a child who is fine .
Dd does not lie on the floor rolling around unless extremely bored, will do almost anything to get someone to read a story, can certainly do more with bricks than just put them in the box, and is never quiet for a minute at home. Putting aside the fact that all children behave differently at nursery than they do at home, I find it very hard to believe that that report was written about my daughter.
We wrote to the nursery last week as dd had been awarded funds for an additional support worker which the nursery has done nothing about, and have since heard that they intend to do nothing as dd is leaving at the end of August (they have had the funds since April so dd will hae missed out on 5 months of extra help by that time).
We have not been told that she has stopped communicating with staff, nor that she was still getting up from lunch continually (she used to do this, then we were told that she had improved vastly after working with her on this). The potty training is a whole other issue as the nursery decided themselves to start this without consulting us and now dd is just thoroughly confused, poor thing.
I have a meeting set up with the nursery next week to try to resolve some of this, and wanted to check whether IABU to be upset by any of this? I admit that I sometimes lose perspective where dd is concerned - she is little, and generally confused due to ASD and I wonder whether I am just expecting too much to be kept informed as to her progress generally, and also whether IABU to expect the nursery staff to be able to connect with her at all?