To feel sad my DD missed Christmas dinner

[UndertheCedartree]

My 11yo DD is autistic and she has recently started at a new school. The school have been great in supporting her.

Sadly, she went into a Science class for the first time yesterday and as they have set seats she asked the teacher where she should sit. The teacher snapped at her that she didn't know and she had to stand at the front of the class waiting for the others to sit down which really unsettled and upset her.

Today was their Christmas dinner day and they could go in wearing pyjamas. She was really looking forward to this. But as we got closer to school this morning she got more and more distressed. Once in school she had a full on meltdown that went on for ages. Eventually she calmed down enough for me to leave and they took her up to the Learning support centre where she promptly fell asleep exhausted after her melt down. She missed her Christmas dinner! After a while they asked me to come and pick her up. I feel so sad for her. I'd spent a lot of time preparing her for the Christmas dinner and it was going to be a nice way to introduce her to the canteen. And she was so looking forward to it. All spoilt because a teacher took her bad mood out on her.

@Witsend101 I have a huge amount of empathy for the child. I know how overwhelming your average school is for an ND child and as a teacher I do my best every day to ensure they feel safe and supported.

What I don't appreciate is the mother seeking to blame her child's teacher for 'causing' a meltdown, when that is unfair and unnecessary.

Mainstream teachers get very little (if any) specific training on how to support autistic children. We get sent very long plans with recommendations and so on for each child on the SEN register, but in state schools, where you might have 6 or 7 per class on the register (and probably 7 classes), that's a huge amount of information to retain and act on every day. Expecting teachers in mainstream education to deliver SEN specific personalised teaching is therefore unrealistic. Yes, the teacher in this scenario snapped and has admitted they were in a bad mood. But they clearly didn't know that asking the OP's DD to wait while they worked out where she could sit would be a problem for a ND child. That's not the teacher's fault. It's the school's fault for not providing adequate training and support to the OP's daughter's teachers.

Unfortunately the push to get more children with high needs into mainstream education has not been supported with any additional budget for teacher training. Increasingly mainstream classroom teachers are being expected to deliver hugely differentiated, specialised support to children with severe SEN while also teaching the rest of the class, with no TAs and no training. It's not fair on anyone, and being berated by parents for making innocent mistakes certainly doesn't help.

Sorry don’t have time to tag everyone but if u read the op she stated that the teacher “snapped” at her dd, my autistic dd has been through the same experience and it took her a long time to to back to that class, the people saying it’s not the teachers fault and they get blamed for everything, imo they get blamed when necessary, and they should know which students have certain additional needs and accommodate them.

Op I feel u, as asn parents we just want our children to have the same experiences as their peers and it can take a long time to build them up for things. It’s my ds’s 15th birthday today and she had a music prelim resit today, she couldn’t go as she had a meltdown before we left the house, I’m so sad it’s spoiled her birthday and feel so awful for her, big hugs to u and ur dd

Why was your daughter new to the class?

How do you know the whole school are aware of her needs?

With the best will in the world, even if they’ve had a whole staff briefing that morning on your particular situation (v unlikely) asking her to wait and see where a seat is just isn’t unusual.

Your ire is misplaced.

This, and everything @EnidSpyton said at 18.05

YABU

How was it the teachers fault?

We do children no favours by removing all stressful or triggering situations for them. It means they never learn to cope and see that they can manage anxiety and feeling upset. In my school, we’ve been advised to stop allowing SEN pupils to avoid assemblies etc, but to support them in coping and it’s incredible how their confidence and ability to manage anxious situations has increased.

🤣🤣🤣 mmm a world of ignorance.

Op really sorry this happened its not good at all I hope the school can sort things out in the new year ! Has she got lsa ? Definitely a shame on her losing out =( my dd ( asd) has spent the last 2 days hiding from the chaos by any means necessary =(

@UndertheCedartree sorry your DD had this experience. I have a friend who is a secondary school teacher and she tells me that they are frequently given next to no information on their students’ sn or other issues.

The tone of voice is very much a subjective thing and she probably didn’t mean to sound abrupt though we can’t know either way.

out of interest why on earth is she starting a new school in the last week of term?

Anyway give your girl a hug and move on.

To feel embarrassed by being made to wait a d that the teacher is cross when the child asked a reasonable question is not helping teach the child. She did nothing wrong. It's teaching her that it's okay for adults to be rude to children for absolutely no reason. Being 11 and neurodiverse is completely different to being 18 and neurotypical.

It's nerve wracking starting a new job as an adult. Let alone an autistic child in a new school.

Children can be taught resilience in so many other ways. This is not one of them.

Great post.

Goodness. How nice it must be to have the luxury and privilege of being a parent who doesn't have to think about or fight for this stuff...

@UndertheCedartree what a shame the plan wasn't followed. Maybe an addition to the plan? "DD to be accompanied to new situations by member of ASN team for support (to both parties, your daughter and the unfamiliar staff member)". I've been thinking about this because of similar issues. No malintent, just unfamiliarity, and people being reactive to problems rather than proactively avoiding them...and as you know, that's not an approach that works...it's death by a thousand cuts...

It’s hard isn’t it. And lots of things are hard.

Your DD is easily overwhelmed. Schools have min-portraits if their needs and info is sent to teachers and lots of effort is made to make things easier…..but things like this crop up still. A teacher finds themselves with your DD who hasn’t received the info…and easily something which is difficult for your DD occurs.

Huge amounts of effort are made to get messages out to people and often teachers are receiving 50 or more emails per day and details about loads of students which comes short notice. It’s almost impossible for everyone to know in advance about every child they will encounter and be prepared for their meeting with them. It is the reality and however much effort and planning is out in, with schools being busy places and teachers seeing maybe 300 students in a week and things changing fast, things always will slip through the net.

OP, I can see you’re disappointed and I’m sure there are lots of disappointments like this and life with an autistic DD is hard and lots of things happen like this. Sometimes schools and other places are doing a bad job and letting children down. But not every experience like todays is a sign of this. The reality is that things like what happened today will happen and happen again, even with huge amounts of effort put in to smooth the way for her. You’re right to be disappointed but it’s not right to let this overwhelm you or for an instance like this to lead you to see the teacher as unprepared or unkind or the cause if all the incidents of the day.

I’m sorry, but there will be days like this…and with so many many cogs in the school wheel, last minute changes and decisions, and the fact your DD finds these kind of things so difficult, bad days will happen. You won’t achieve a perfect environment for her within a school like this. If there are lots of good scenarios and positives, you’re basically winning. Some fails and disappointments will happen, even though you’d like them all eliminated. Quite simply they can’t and won’t be.

Fine to be disappointed for her. You need to keep it in perspective and know too that sometimes with teachers looking out for maybe 150 kids in a day and messaging not getting through and quite simply them having too many balls to juggle, your DD won’t get the personalised care she needs.

I don't understand why people post AIBU threads when they've clearly made their mind up and nothing people say will make any difference.

Learn resilience?

Fuck me.

Every child with a disability who gets up day in and day ready to put in another day under the most difficult of circumstances doesn’t need to learn about resilience. They’re already the very meaning of the word. They know all about it. They are resilience!

Yanbu to feel a bit sad. But please, just leave it at that and put it in perspective.

Honestly, while the teacher may have 'snapped' at your dd. I seriously doubt it was intentional. It will likely have happened in the stress of the moment in the last week of term when they had a million other things to deal with. It's not great, but teachers are human too. The teacher is unlikely to have done it to purposely upset your dd. I'm sure it wasn't personal. It's probably not the last time something like this will happen, either.

You can dwell on it take it very personally and be angry with an exhausted human being trying to get through the last week of term.

Or, you can chalk it up as something that happened and sounds like it's going to be dealt with, and move on.

You have no idea what else that teacher had to deal with that day.

New start in January when things at school are calmer for everyone, maybe?

Not the teachers fault and yes those with autism need to learn resilience, I was determined that my dd could live in our world because quite frankly nobody is going to do things differently for her once she's out of education.

Asking a new pupil to wait until the existing children are seated is absolutely fine, those kids may have issues too for all you know.

My dd is an adult now and I honestly think that we do kids no favours giving them special treatment at secondary school, was always suggesting she was segregated and sent to special school and I fought for mainstream, she graduates university this summer without adjustments!

It wasn't an unreasonable request from my DD, no.

And most have not read this properly. The teacher didn’t ask nicely or in a way suitable for any child but snapped at the child.

it’s also absolutely any teacher’s responsibility to know if a new child being added to their class has any sen needs!

it is furthermore the school’s responsibility to inform the teachers of any sen children and how to approach them.

Yes, it was. And honestly, I don't think a teacher being rude to her is a good way to develop resilience and neither do the school. She's had far too many things happen to her already that she's had to build resilience against.

I don't think anyone has an idea how difficult things are in school now. I have been a SEND teacher and now work in mainstream.
Personally I feel children progress so much better in an environment that is specific to their needs and I think mainstream school lets them down. There is not the money, resources and staff for children with SEND to flourish in mainstream.
The teacher was probably stressed which does not help your daughter. However, she probably does not have the staff support and training. It's sad but it is the way it is.
It is a complete and utter mess at the moment but I know if my child had autism I would be searching for a specialist school.

I’ve just read your last post OP.

If your DD is to be in mainstream school and you yourself are to cope with having her there and getting her through, you are going to have to accept that everything will not go exactly as planned.

Teachers are humans. There will be instances where the latest info hasn’t been read by everyone or where a change of plan or timetable means a teacher encounters a child they weren’t aware was coming…or has forgotten was coming. These things happen and can’t be totally avoided. People will sometimes speak with a tone which isn’t so friendly. It happens. You will never have everyone, every day (including ourselves) saying exactly the right thing and in the right tone.

I get that these things make a bigger difference to your DD than to most - she is easily thrown off track. I get that you wanted this to be a special day for her and it didn’t work out. That is disappointing…but you move forward and some of that involves accepting things won’t be perfect and not seeking to apportion blame with everything, but accepting these things happen.

What happens next? Do you want to accept this as one of those things and move on from it? Do you want to contact school and talk about what happened (without apportioning blame) and things that can be done to try to help avoid it in future? Do you want to complain about this teacher? I’m not quite clear if you’re venting on here and will then move on, or if you want next steps??

Regular contact with school and regular discussion about things that work well and less well and working together to make adjustments to help your DD, rather than looking to blame is probably the best way to make progress. And you have to know that progress can happen but won’t be linear or necessarily fast and there will be bad days. You know that. And sadly, you also have to know that the funding and demands and resourcing of schools mean your DD is unlikely to get the level of support from every teacher that she might need….the communication and time that each individual teacher can put into making things work for her, whilst doing everything else they have to do, will never be as much as it needs to be. Comi png to terms with that and working out what can it be compromised in and what is unacceptable, vs what is a bit disappointing and not ideal, but to be accepted as a consequence if an over-stretched system, is something you will have to decide.

Hope tomorrow is a better day.

It’s really disappointing but this is a lot more than one exchange with a teacher.

I sympathise, but do you have any idea how many instructions secondary school teachers get about specific ways in which to deal with individual students (either because of SEN or because of other isolated issues)? We get new ones daily. I'm not exaggerating. Remembering all of them is nigh on impossible.

I teach 11 classes. In any given class, I probably have students with ASD, dyslexia and/or ADHD who all have different suggested teacher tactics, students who have problems going on at home which require us to remember not to issue penalty points this week/month or not to talknto them about certain things, students whose parents have just requested that they should not be sat next to certain other students, students who should be allowed time out or immediate toilet visits, or who need print-outs of all Powerpoints in advance, students who shouldn't be pulled up about uniform because they have a note. And more. We try, but slip-ups happen. Then we check our emails at the end of the day and discover a bunch of new instructions.

If your child had a physical disability you would expect them to get "special treatment", yes? Or would you be ok with them struggling on physically without adjustments?

I don't think it does ND children any favours expecting them to struggle on in a NT world without adjustments, effectively expecting them to mask 24/7 and see asking for accommodations as some kind of weakness. All that will do in many cases is lead to burnout and MH problems.

I think that is wonderful advice. It's so hard we all want things to go perfectly for our kids but that will never happen 100% Hope your daughter has a better day