School lateness punishments, neurodiversity and the law

[VividDenimTiger]

Posting here for traffic really. DD 14 has had issues in secondary school- we suspect ADHD to be honest. I am unravelling my own mid life ADHD traits at the moment too.

For DD, one of the things that manifests in school is persistent lateness. She just can’t organise herself to get to lessons on time. The school has now brought in a punishment for lateness where anyone late more than 5 mins gets sent to a punishment room for the lesson. Needless to say DD is now missing loads of lessons because of her lateness.

I know that it’s annoying for teachers when kids are late for lessons but it feels like this policy unfairly targets kids, like my DD, who might or do have some issues with timekeeping because of other things going on.

Aibu? I am trying to unravel some of this for DD (and myself) but I am really angry about how punitive this policy is- it feels like it disadvantages kids who genuinely have issues with organising their time and themselves. The corridors are really busy in school and she gets upset and overwhelmed and that doesn’t help all of this.

Wow. Is it your reading comprehension that's the problem or do you have a disability I should be aware of?

The issue is not getting the school on time.

It's moving between lessons.

DD could get up at 4am every day and it would make zero difference to how quickly she can move between classes.

i haven’t read the responses but i guess it’s the usual unempathetic stuff. I have this issue too and I feel for you!

That’s where her mum comes in, hence, I am offering suggestions that she can implement herself without the school being involved. The answer can’t be that she is just allowed to be late, that’s not helping her in the slightest.

These people making endless excuses for their ND child don’t want to live in the real world, do they? I send my ASD / ADHD child to bed at 8 as she has been masking all day and needs decompression time. She’s asleep by 9. I help her with strategies for organising her life (I don’t do it for her) so she’s got what she needs and is where she needs to be. That’s what parenting a child like mine is all about. We make a point of not doing things like pop concerts or football matches because that would be too overwhelming but come up with strategies for coping in things like assemblies and corridors that she can’t avoid.

If your daughter can’t get to school on time how’s she going to get a job? Get to exams? Doctors appointments? We need to stop making excuses for people and help them with strategies for coping with real life.

If they let her leave class a couple minutes earlier she wouldn't need the 5 minutes later. My ds left early and so did others with no issues.so schools do allow this.

It seems, however, that you, an adult, are still not capable of reading a post before commenting. Perhaps you need to learn a strategy.

If PIP payments continue to be as generous as they are at present, added to UC, then it looks very much to me as if we are creating a generation of mildly° affected SEN children who will live life on benefits instead of being taught that if you want to support yourself as an independent adult you need to work out how to get to places on time.

This. One of the biggest issues we are facing with the current cohort of young people, is that they have been given:

• a far higher level of financial support through EHCPs, DLA, disabled child element
• a far greater level of adjustments in education (one to one & small group support, extra time, movement breaks, accomodations for all sorts of stuff

Yet this has not improved outcomes relative to previous cohorts who had less support.

It has not improved attainment in school, it has not improved the level at which the SEN proportion access employment relative to the wider cohort. It has not reduced the levels of EBSA. It has not reduced the levels of poor mental health or self harm in this cohort.

It is very to justify continuing this level of expense (to the detriment of spending on other areas) when it does not appear to be helping at all.

The OP has explained that her DD is struggling with moving between lessons as she gets overwhelmed in a school that is loud and has 1800 students. The school have refused sensible strategies (early exit pass, loop earbuds). I’m not sure what this has to do with getting to a doctors appointment on time?

Yes -and then again no. There are plenty of places of education and work which do not or would not require an overwhelmed child to walk through the bedlam of school corridors to access an education or to do a job.

OP the school are acting illegally. I suggest you get angry, get some advice and start fighting for your dd. You shouldn't have to, of course, but this is where you are.

@Bringing “That’s what parenting a child like mine is all about.”

Precisely. And your child may not be like all other ASD / ADHD children. And your school environment may be less / more chaotic than the OPs. And you also may have had more practice developing strategies and supports for your DS.

Some kids appear NT until secondary and it is then a scramble for parents to work out how to support them when “the wheels come off the bus” in a chaotic high school environment.

I really feel for the OP, who is trying to think of strategies and supports to get her DD to class on time. She is not suggesting she be able to do whatever she wants. She is not suggesting she shouldn’t be attending on time. She is trying to develop strategies to deal specifically with overwhelm in the hallways which is causing her daughter to hide in a quiet place and then making her late to class. This all feels like a pile-on of her parenting / her daughter’s behaviour which is just not right.

Or maybe, if the child is supported with sensible and reasonable strategies on school to help them complete their education and gain the qualifications they need for the world of work, they’ll then have both the quals needed and the confidence to be able to find a career that suits them and their individual needs?
I’m a highly educated and experienced professional. There are a whole myriad of jobs that would lead me to crash and burn. Indeed, I have left jobs previously because they were not for me and I burnt out. It took me time to find my niche, which I did and I am very good at at what I do. Just because I don’t have the executive skills to be able to cope with working in any environment doesnt mean that I can’t be brilliant in the ones that suit me. And though there is no shame in claiming PIP, I have never needed to do so. I have, however, made excellent use of the government run “Access to Work” scheme.

And yes, I am well known for being late to social events. So shoot me.

One of my children has AuDHD. The ADHD diagnosis is for Inattentive ADHD. When they was assessed the results were the most Inattentive the Ed Psych had ever seen. This was more of a problem day to day in secondary than Autism but it's the Autism that got them the EHCP and extra support.
Their Inattentive issues meant they were late for everything even if they had a head start, missed important info, would totally zone out or be in a dream state, took too long to do anything, put themselves in tricky situations by just not being attentive.
They've left school now and life is much easier but it feels like ADHD isn't treated as a disability (particularly evident in some of these posts)

Your poor daughter.

My asd son's school made a couple of very minor adjustments so that he thrived there and didn't find attending so awful that he had to hide in bed every night to cope. He lives in the real world too by the way.

When she works she’s going to have to learn to cope. She needs to develop strategies for coping with noisy corridors.

Interesting. Are there other underlying differences between this cohort and previous ones that could mask the impact of the support (ie Covid disruptions, higher rates of SEN, broader societal changes linked to austerity)?

Or she could choose to work in one of the very many workplaces that don’t have hundreds of people all trying to get through the same corridors at the same time, adjusting her start and end time if needed.

She doesn’t hide in bed. She just needs time away from people in order to be a people person the rest of the time. She’s thriving at school thanks. Gets 90-100% in every exam she sits, is happy, fulfilled with a wide circle of friends and has universities contacting her asking her to apply for their courses. It’s all about giving young people strategies to help them thrive, rather than telling them education isn’t for them, but hey here’s some benefit money so go any live off that for the rest of your life…

Agreed, my SD is AuDHD and she has a full life, including pop concerts, sporting fixtures and theme parks and doesn't get sent to bed at 8pm. She has support to help her with overwhelm and movement breaks at school, and is just finishing her GCSEs which she's predicted to do very well in.

Telling her that because she has AuDHD she just has to accept that she can't live life like any other teenager has never occurred to us.

If Sendco is useless, try the head of year, or escalate upwards. Demand a meeting with someone. The suggestion of leaving a couple of minutes early may be enough to solve the problem, if you can just get to someone who will authorise that. Point out the risk of school refusal otherwise.

Sure, your daughter is so famous that Universities are randomly contacting her out of the blue begging her to enrol. 😂

Some of the posts on here just reflect how neurodiversity is misunderstood.

Like trying Loop buds that the school have said they will confiscate?
Or leaving somewhere a little bit earlier to avoid crowds? I’ve never seen an adult use that strategy (sarcasm).
You can liken so many of these posts to someone telling a person with mobility issues that they just need to workout how they can get up and down the stairs because “that’s what they’ll need to do in the real world”. Yes the world is full of steps. But thankfully now we also have lifts and ramps and assistance on trains etc. Ever heard of the social model of disability?

....and how resentful and unwilling some parts of society are to make even the tiniest, most reasonable adjustment to cater for it.

There will always be underlying differences between cohorts as there are fundamental shifts between generations that can't be controlled for when making comparisons. For example, technology, science and funding can all make a difference.

What we do know though is that spending on SEN has roughly doubled in the last decade. Educational outcomes have not improved and some statistics are absolutely woeful, for example, only 5% of people with learning disabilities go on to enter employment. We are currently stuck with an expensive and ineffective system that is financially unsustainable and not enhancing the future workforce which is ultimately has to be the primary function of education. Instead we have ended up with a worrying amount of NEETs with those with SEN more than twice as likely to fall into this group.

At some point we need to question whether throwing endless money and resources at the problem is effective. We need to look at what SEN actually is and really question if the net is being thrown to wide and whether the adjustments we are making are helping or hindering our young people in the long term.

What about when the adjustments being requested are completely unreasonable though? What about when the help they want would be a hindrance to everyone else?