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.

She needs to find coping mechanisms for it with support from you to ensure she isn’t late. It’s not a reasonable adjustment to permit persistent disruptive lateness, which can be addressed. It wouldn’t be acceptable in a job so now is the time to sort it.

I honestly do not remember anyone doing this at my secondary in the late 90s/early noughties. It was a mid-large school, 1600 kids, 8 classes of 30 in most years & a couple of hundred in 6th form.

The corridors were busy but kids were far more resilient, if you were jostled you shoved back. If you were late you got merit points docked. There were no lockers you just had to carry all the books you needed every day.

I cannot remember a single pupil getting "overwhelm" or having meltdowns. There were kids who were very quiet, kids who were quirky, kids who hated school. Generally we did not spend much/any time focussing on our feelings & adults certainly didn't pay them any mind.

Strange for an article like it to be in Pulse.

Oh the ignorance and arrogance!!!!

So because you don’t remember and weren’t in the heads of children with autism and adhd it didn’t happen.

Are you as dismissive of more visable disabilities?

Most wouldn't at secondary school because they'd have the piss ripped out of them so masked instead or just wouldn't attend. Hello MH problems in later life.

Yes isn’t it. Care to link. Some really ignorant journalists need to be doing a little more research as to what the body who employs doctors is saying and has discovered having done extensive research with experts in the field.

My daughter is late to classes. She doesn’t disrupt anyone, she just gets on with it. Nobody complains about it.

Also GPs absolutely do not do adhd or autism diagnoses and don’t even read the subsequent reports.

Rates of mental health problems are much higher among these young people than the people before them who masked/put up with it and got on with life

Which suggests current approaches are making it worse

Who says they are?

The key thing to look for is consistency, if they aren’t always getting overloaded in crowds, then they are trying it on. If your child can’t walk in a corridor with other kids, but can be in a stadium with 5,000 other people…then they certainly don’t have a sensory issue, they have a compliance issue.

This is 100% false. I’ve had this conversation twice in the last couple of weeks, once with my autistic daughter and once with an autistic colleague. They both hate crowds. I’ve seen it first hand with my daughter. She visibly shakes, becomes very disregulated, you can see she struggles to deal with it. She really struggled in loud classes, unable to focus on the task and had to work really hard not to melt down. However she has always loved concerts and shows. When I asked her how she is able to deal with it, she says it is because of the ability to focus on the performance. She has something else there to look at and listen to, and she can shut out her surroundings. She doesn’t like the bit before and after where she has to navigate the crowds, but she times it so she avoids the worst of it. My colleague said exactly the same thing.

My daughter is getting much better at dealing with the issues at school, helped massively by the fact she is now in senior school so classes are smaller, but she still can’t bear to be around the dinner hall or in a crowded corridor. She has to avoid both of those anyway because of her mobility issues.

Nope

It's just that those not diagnosed tend to have been recorded as bipolar or other mental illness

Also, there was a lot of alternate routes for those not managing school
Lots of kids ended up leaving early and getting work which isn't an option now

I’d love to see the statistics on this because my 53 year old sister who has only just been diagnosed with ADHD, has incredibly poor mental health. Thankfully, with the right strategies and treatment she is on the mend.

What strategies have you tried with her so far?

The quotation marks dont indicate anything other than highlighting the reasons given.
If noise is an issue,i would certainly challenge why they are not permitted for moving between classrooms.
I would also seek diagnosis re any ND and sensitivity issues that may help get her support.
My daughter had a similar issue in her case it was due to her fearing being bumped and barged in the corridors (she has no neurodiversity or adhd ) which made her slow down and hang back ,hence being late. Her school was supportive and let her leave first accompanied by a friend ,this resolved the issue for her.

They didn’t have ear defenders when you were at school. Perhaps they didn’t have cars and also used a horse and cart, do who needs cars, eh?

Understanding of autism and ADHD has massively improved. Children who would not have been in school are retained. The school system has changed. The class sizes are enormous compared to when ‘we’ were at school. Those classes are taught according to pedagogy and rigid curricula with little space for creative teachers to adapt to meet the needs of individuals in their classes. Teachers are chronically assessed for performance, which further means they have less scope to be adaptive. They are also assessed on the measures of children’s progress. I could go on… but school today has bugger all resemblance to when we were at school.

Oh, and when you say that its ‘all made u - per the original post - you are talking rubbish from the perspective of a person who is a) not qualified to understand SEN and b) clearly not trying your effing damnedest to support an SEN child, usually not in isolation from siblings, whilst juggling as two working parents (also not a big thing when ‘we’ were at school). In fact, when you make such statements you are being ableist and offensive. Hence your prior comment being deleted. If you don’t know what you are talking about, please step away from a thread where a mum is asking for support and advice that you clearly are not qualified to give.

Hope that helps.

Nuffield trust::

https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resource/the-rising-rates-of-common-mental-health-conditions-across-all-ages

There are other reputable sources & statistics on this, its quite widely known.

That’s article is not about mental health in young people with autism and adhd.

I’d love to know where any reliable data on this is as children and young people with autism/adhd or mental health or both went completely undocumented, undiagnosed and unsupported in previous decades.

This, especially as they then expect adjustments in work too. Reasonable adjustments should be to help.the person meet the requirents, not change the requirements so they can meet them.

Does it? Or maybe it's worse because children are forced into school now or parents are fined. Maybe it's worse now because there's less staff and funding to support current children. Maybe it's worse now because we recognise MH problems more than we did back then (and even now middle aged/older people don't recognise they may be anxious/depressed/be ND because they've never learnt about it). Maybe it's worse now because schools are so academically focused whereas when I was at school in primary we had two playtimes and lunch break every day, we did more art, music, PE and less sitting in rows at desks and in high school we had GNVQ options as well as GCSEs.

Only 11-12% of children are documented as disabled so maybe don’t quote nonsense.

Did you read this article?

Apparently not!🙄

No but the helplessness is getting to a breaking point. The 5 minutes grace is a reasonable adjustment, it just so happens that this is extended to everyone.

Is this parent speaking to the child about ‘hiding where it is calm’ close to the next classroom? Mapping a route? Looking for pinch points? Or just telling the child that school is discriminating and getting angry?
This isn’t something schools have capacity to do for so many children. The easiest adjustments need to be made first before it is escalated, that way the ‘leaving a minute early’ is only used by those they really need it, otherwise half the school is in the corridors at that time and it defeats the point of the adjustment.

Life is about taking responsibility for putting strategies in place. The same goes for all disabilities, obviously things like ramps for a wheelchair are very clear. With neurodiversity it is nuanced.

Im sorry if the parent has done all these things and just didn’t mention them.
but it seemed from the post she has jumped straight to ‘school needs sort this out’ where there is responsibility elsewhere. Schools simply do not have capacity and we can either stamp our feet about it or live in the real world where we have to be part of the solution.