Page 33 | To feel sad my DD missed Christmas dinner

UndertheCedartree · 2023-12-19T17:25:25+00:00

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.

EnidSpyton · 23/12/2023 10:58

BungleandGeorge · 23/12/2023 10:28

The vast majority of teachers know very little about neurodiversity, most know very little about dyslexia and that’s around 10-20% of students. Autism is under 1% with diagnosis and estimated 2% overall. Many of those are not in mainstream education. It worries me when people pertain to be so knowledgeable because ND is complex. It’s not hardly covered in teacher training. My personal experience is that the vast majority of teachers know very little about any of these conditions, the best ones are those who are willing to admit this and listen to parents and experts and the child themselves and at least try to make their life that bit easier. The understanding of ND in recent years has expanded infinitely, it’s pretty difficult to be knowledgeable and up to date as a practitioner working in the area.

Do you have any facts to back up your sweeping generalisations about the uselessness of teachers when it comes to ND and supporting young people in their classrooms? Suggesting that the vast majority of teachers are wilfully ignorant and have no experience of autism just shows your ignorance of the current situation in schools. I think you’d struggle to find a teacher who hasn’t taught an autistic child in the past 5 years.

In my experience the percentages of those with autism are far too small to reflect reality. In my small independent school, in Year 7 alone we have 6 children with clear signs of autism but no diagnosis (parents unwilling to entertain the idea that this is what’s really going on), and 4 with an actual diagnosis. That’s 10 kids out of a year group of 60. Every teacher of Year 7 has at least one of those kids in their class without an LSA, some of these kids as I say are undiagnosed, so there’s no plan to follow, it’s just working out what’s best based on prior experience and getting to know the child. And this is just Year 7. Throughout the school the same pattern is followed in every year group. I know from colleagues in other schools that the situation is similar elsewhere. Lots of anecdotal reports of two or more children in every class with autistic traits, either diagnosed or undiagnosed. I think on the whole we are much better at recognising it now as a profession and it is often schools
and not parents who first start the conversations about autism and diagnosis.

AllProperTeaIsTheft · 23/12/2023 16:46

My personal experience is that the vast majority of teachers know very little about any of these conditions, the best ones are those who are willing to admit this and listen to parents and experts and the child themselves and at least try to make their life that bit easier.

We are told by the SENCO what strategies we should use with individual students, in order to make their learning and experience of school easier, which we do to the best of our capacity.

What I know about these various conditions is mainly due to long experience in working with children who have them, and from years of reading IEPs etc and becoming familiar with the different strategies on them. If a parent suggested further strategies at parents' evening, or via the SENCO, I find it unlikely that teachers would refuse to listen to them.

BungleandGeorge · 23/12/2023 17:28

@EnidSpyton perhaps ask people who are actually autistic or neurodivergent or their parents what their experience of school is/was. And ask autistic teachers their experiences. Although clearly only a very small minority of them will have had the privilege to attend an extremely small independent school. And it’s not too difficult to work out why such a school would be attractive to parents of autistic young people as opposed to the more usual 200 plus per year group in a state school. Honestly are you really suggesting the vast majority of teachers are experts on autism and are instrumental in diagnosis? What are sendiass, ipsea and all the other support organisations around for then?
IEP is ok but Sencos need minimal training to take on the role so there is huge variation in skills and they have to be actually read and followed to have any effect.
i think this is really a situation where it’s vital to listen to the end users and take on board the vastly increased rates of EBSA, the reduction in school attendance, the increase in applications for EHCP and tribunals, the increased applications to special schools.

WhereIsBebèsChambre · 23/12/2023 17:47

@BungleandGeorge where on earth did you get @EnidSpytonsuggesting the vast majority of teachers are experts on autism and are instrumental in diagnosis? *

She put '. I think on the whole we are much better at recognising it now as a profession'
Not that teachers see themselves as experts.

EnidSpyton · 23/12/2023 18:01

@BungleandGeorge

I have been teaching for over a decade and have taught in many schools. The school I am in now is one I have only been in since September. The number of autistic children here is certainly not unusual compared to other much larger schools I have worked in. None of the parents have chosen this school because of our SEN provision as honestly we don’t really have any!

I did not say that your average teacher is an expert or instrumental in diagnosis. What I said is that we do on average have a lot of lived, practical experience of teaching autistic children that does give us much more knowledge than you give us credit for, and in actual fact, for many children, it will be the school who instigates the process of diagnosis rather than the parents, as teachers have a vast experience of normative and non normative behaviours to draw on when observing ‘typical’ milestones, whereas most parents only have their experience of their own children.

Teachers are always happy to listen to and work with parents to ensure the best outcome for children. Where you have got this idea that teachers don’t want to help autistic children and don’t want to listen to advice and expertise from, I don’t know, but it’s certainly not from anything I’ve said.

Hercisback · 23/12/2023 18:59

Honestly are you really suggesting the vast majority of teachers are experts on autism and are instrumental in diagnosis?

No one has said this.
People have the single job role to be experts in autism. This isn't a teachers job.

Abbimae · 23/12/2023 20:23

Oh look… yawn another mumsnet thread that becomes a teacher bash. It’s like they love them… oh wait..

Teder · 23/12/2023 20:43

Abbimae · 23/12/2023 20:23

Oh look… yawn another mumsnet thread that becomes a teacher bash. It’s like they love them… oh wait..

You are yawning at a woman who has autism feeling sad about her child and she said lonely with nobody to support her in real life. All this to defend a random teacher you don’t even know. The OP didn’t even complain about the teacher!!

WaitingForMojo · 23/12/2023 20:52

I think it’s very true that autism is much more common than the stats reflect.

My experience is that schools generally and therefore most teachers tend to have a very deficit-based view of autism and their goal seems to be for the child to learn to behave as though they weren’t autistic, and that masking is seen as positive. Which doesn’t serve autistic people well generally. I do think there’s a way to go with understanding of neurodivergence and not just among teachers, it’s a very new concept after all.

I don’t think anyone’s bashing teachers here. There are amazing teachers out there who are highly responsive to children’s individual needs, and learning all the time.

There are also teachers who are very fixed in their views and dismissive of being flexible.

Teachers are just like any group of people, they can’t all be wonderful. Some are going to be grumpy bastards with an attitude problem. Some will be amazing and go above and beyond (my dd has one of these this year, my other dd once had the other kind).

Mommywomb · 24/12/2023 00:30

EnidSpyton · 22/12/2023 22:55

I can't believe this thread is still going...

OP, the issue with your belief that we all just need to read our emails more carefully and have more training is that every autistic child is just as unique as any other. All autistic children will have different triggers and different needs and different coping mechanisms. There is no 'one size fits all' approach to teaching children with autism. Getting more training would be great, but theory only takes you so far when you're dealing with real people.

Moreover, the 'plans' we get sent are often as useful as a chocolate teapot - 'Sarah likes to talk about teddy bears and doesn't like to share. Sarah gets anxious when she doesn't understand instructions. Sarah takes everything literally so make sure you don't use euphemisms' would be a typical 'plan' in my experience. All that tells me on a practical level is to be as literal as possible when giving instructions. If this fictional 'Sarah' walked into my classroom for the first time and I had told her I didn't know where she was sitting, there would be nothing in my plan to tell me that this would cause a meltdown.

Learning to get it right with an autistic student takes time, patience, and often trial and error. I am only just now - one whole term in - getting to grips with how to make the classroom a safe space for the severely autistic child in my form group. It's taken me a good three months to work out what works best for him. His 'plan' just tells me he doesn't like electric noises and to allow him to wear ear defenders if he gets overwhelmed. That's it. The rest I've had to figure out for myself. Thankfully his mum is very understanding and supportive and gets that we're all on a journey together to learn how best to help her child manage school, and when something's gone wrong, we chat about it, chalk it up to experience and learn from it rather than her accusing me of being rude or uncaring.

You seem to be unwilling to appreciate that your expectations of your daughter's teachers are a little unreasonable. Expecting a teacher to get it 100% right with your daughter, who by the sounds of it has considerable needs (you don't seem to think so, but in my experience, a child who has such a severe meltdown at school that they need to sleep it off is a child with high needs) in their very first lesson with her is utterly unreasonable. You need to allow the teachers time to get to know her.

You do also need to get over this strange idea you have that in professional settings, everyone is automatically able to switch off their personalities and be polite and kind all the time. For most people, the occasional snappy comment under pressure is going to come out from time to time. It doesn't make them bad people or rude people. It makes them human. Saying there is 'no excuse' for rudeness in a professional setting is idealistic in the extreme. We are not robots. All of us have the experience of being snapped at by someone in a professional setting, and I'm sure all of us have been able to appreciate that it was nothing to do with us and everything to do with the person having a bad day for whatever reason. We've all been there, and so none of us have the right to judge.

Of course you are not unreasonable to be sad about the fact that your child has missed out on something she was looking forward to. It must be incredibly difficult to watch her suffer as a result of her autism. But blaming her missing out on her Christmas lunch on a teacher who spoke to her a little harshly the previous day is unreasonable. It is not the teacher's fault that your daughter had a meltdown. The teacher had no intention of causing your daughter to have a meltdown. Your insistence on wanting to apportion specific blame rather than accepting that school is an unpredictable environment that is going to be challenging for your daughter no matter what interventions teachers put in place is the unreasonable approach teachers and other posters on this thread are trying to explain to you, and you just don't seem to see it.

This!

even after this such a detailed post, @UndertheCedartree u don’t understand, then there is no helping you in making you understand I think.

Thank you, @EnidSpyton!

evenbarnyardanimals · 24/12/2023 11:13

EnidSpyton · 22/12/2023 22:55

I can't believe this thread is still going...

OP, the issue with your belief that we all just need to read our emails more carefully and have more training is that every autistic child is just as unique as any other. All autistic children will have different triggers and different needs and different coping mechanisms. There is no 'one size fits all' approach to teaching children with autism. Getting more training would be great, but theory only takes you so far when you're dealing with real people.

Moreover, the 'plans' we get sent are often as useful as a chocolate teapot - 'Sarah likes to talk about teddy bears and doesn't like to share. Sarah gets anxious when she doesn't understand instructions. Sarah takes everything literally so make sure you don't use euphemisms' would be a typical 'plan' in my experience. All that tells me on a practical level is to be as literal as possible when giving instructions. If this fictional 'Sarah' walked into my classroom for the first time and I had told her I didn't know where she was sitting, there would be nothing in my plan to tell me that this would cause a meltdown.

Learning to get it right with an autistic student takes time, patience, and often trial and error. I am only just now - one whole term in - getting to grips with how to make the classroom a safe space for the severely autistic child in my form group. It's taken me a good three months to work out what works best for him. His 'plan' just tells me he doesn't like electric noises and to allow him to wear ear defenders if he gets overwhelmed. That's it. The rest I've had to figure out for myself. Thankfully his mum is very understanding and supportive and gets that we're all on a journey together to learn how best to help her child manage school, and when something's gone wrong, we chat about it, chalk it up to experience and learn from it rather than her accusing me of being rude or uncaring.

You seem to be unwilling to appreciate that your expectations of your daughter's teachers are a little unreasonable. Expecting a teacher to get it 100% right with your daughter, who by the sounds of it has considerable needs (you don't seem to think so, but in my experience, a child who has such a severe meltdown at school that they need to sleep it off is a child with high needs) in their very first lesson with her is utterly unreasonable. You need to allow the teachers time to get to know her.

You do also need to get over this strange idea you have that in professional settings, everyone is automatically able to switch off their personalities and be polite and kind all the time. For most people, the occasional snappy comment under pressure is going to come out from time to time. It doesn't make them bad people or rude people. It makes them human. Saying there is 'no excuse' for rudeness in a professional setting is idealistic in the extreme. We are not robots. All of us have the experience of being snapped at by someone in a professional setting, and I'm sure all of us have been able to appreciate that it was nothing to do with us and everything to do with the person having a bad day for whatever reason. We've all been there, and so none of us have the right to judge.

Of course you are not unreasonable to be sad about the fact that your child has missed out on something she was looking forward to. It must be incredibly difficult to watch her suffer as a result of her autism. But blaming her missing out on her Christmas lunch on a teacher who spoke to her a little harshly the previous day is unreasonable. It is not the teacher's fault that your daughter had a meltdown. The teacher had no intention of causing your daughter to have a meltdown. Your insistence on wanting to apportion specific blame rather than accepting that school is an unpredictable environment that is going to be challenging for your daughter no matter what interventions teachers put in place is the unreasonable approach teachers and other posters on this thread are trying to explain to you, and you just don't seem to see it.

This is a very insightful post. I agree with every word.