Parents of autistic children

[Jennybeans401]

Dd in Year 5 has already changed school last year. She was bullied by a group of girls in her class so we moved to another school. There were no other places in the area apart from this one school which had a bad ofsted but seemed like a better environment.

She's been there around 6 months but struggles with friendships. There are only 8 girls to 16 boys in her class which means her options are limited. The girls leave her out because she's not on social media and has totally different interests. She tries to join in but gets told to go away or stop following them.

We are still waiting for the SENCO to go through the forms with us for a pathway to a diagnosis (I'm going to speak to GP also). In the meantime though she's really unhappy. I don't know whether other schools would be better or if home ed would be better. She repressed her stimming at school and masks all day which is also exhausting.

@JustKeepBuilding we are going to speed up the process with seeing the GP but there doesn't seem a lot of extra support at school

The school should be providing more support. Support in school is not dependent on any further assessments/diagnosis/CAMHS/forms/the GP… The school don’t need to do 2 assess/plan/do/review cycles before providing further support either.

Schools must make their best endeavours to meet a pupil’s SEN whether they have a diagnosis or not. But if DD is going to receive the support she needs you will have to advocate for her. As posted your other threads, you can also apply for an EHCNA.

Your poor DD. 3 of my sons are autistic and your dd sounds very much like my youngest who is 8. This year he has made a friend in his class who is also autistic, it's been really lovely. He has also always been friends with a boy who is more severely disabled than him and non verbal. I think my son likes that there is no pressure to make conversation and both of them just accept each other as they are.

Honestly it’s hard. When kids are severe autistic like my son you have to accept, you want him to have friends, he doesn’t care if he has them. On the other side, if your child has undiagnosed needs and is difficult, kids shouldn’t be made to play with them! Your job is to teach your child how to interact with the world no child owes your child special favours.

I'm not sure if a school would allow therapies during the school day unless it was something they were organising. We booked the play therapy for after school. It took quite a while to get a slot though. You could look into it now for September.

Something school could and should do is some kind of social skills group. Your DD won't be the only one struggling.

Also, we've found there's a lot of mileage in looking out for opportunities for our DD to play with kids a few years younger. It's simpler and easier socially.

@Jennybeans401 we just requested the time as we would for any appointment. I think as she was clearly struggling it was viewed as acceptable. We also had the issue that the person we needed to see only worked mid week and after school was very difficult due to younger sibs. It didn't impact her school work, which helped.