To consider keeping my son off school on his birthday

[Clarabell77]

Bit of background - he has autism, he’s in mainstream but needs a LOT of support, can be disruptive in class, doesn’t have friends, I don’t think he finds school a pleasant experience and doubt he ever will, regardless of how good they are with him.

His birthday is one week before Christmas and there’s not usually too much happening. I feel like asking if the head teacher would mind him having the day off because a) I want him to have a lovely day and b) I think he’ll be too exhausted to enjoy what’s left of his birthday when he gets home.

Am I being unreasonable?

Are you expecting him to work as an adult? If so you will be setting unrealistic expectations of how the world works.

I always book my birthday off 🤷‍♀️

Our eldest autistic child never had his birthday off. Never even contemplated it. Nobody else had their birthdays off and we wanted him to be the same as everyone else.

Our youngest autistic childs birthday is in August so not an issue but we would have applied the same action as the eldest.

I commented on the other thread a few days ago that it would be wrong but your situation is different. December time is very tiring and overwhelming for an autistic child.
Would he tell his TA about it and to other children in class?

@LauraNorda I get that if your child is able to cope with it all, but my son isn’t the same as everyone else and it really stands out. He really should have a specialist place in my opinion (shared by the staff at the school) but local authority refused, so he has lots of additional support in the mainstream classroom, time away for other activities, a quiet room to deregulate etc. I don’t want to make him uncomfortable/unhappy just to try and make him the same as the other kids when he is so obviously not. As a PP said, he will probably be up half the night and highly dysregulated anyway, in which case probably not fit to be at school.