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.

Teacher here. It sounds like she needs a 3 minute leave early pass to avoid busy corridors. If she is hiding outside between lessons, that is a very time-consuming round trip, and as others have said, it is genuinely disruptive to have students come in 5+ mins late, not just ‘annoying’ for teachers. Talk to HoY. Lots of students have leave early passes, regardless of diagnosis (I would revisit this btw - as others have said, schools should respond to need not disgnosis, and it seems unusual they’d say something different - a possible misunderstanding?). Missing the last 3 mins is far less disruptive to your DD’s learning that missing the first 5+ mins. Seems like a very simple solution.

Yes, getting SENDIASS involved has made a big difference for us. The external pressure has finally opened a way for my child to receive more support and fewer punishments. In our case many teaching staff and the head of year were supportive anyway but SLT had been insisting on a discipline based approach, despite a complete lack of success with it over two years.

It is so difficult now as there are so many ND kids. Honestly you’d be surprised at just how many need a time out card, an early movement card, a uniform card, a toilet card. I get it. Your dd is your only concern and rightly so. But I’m just trying to say that schools are absolutely overwhelmed right now trying to accommodate so many kids in a supportive and helpful well. The system is broken. It doesn’t work.

It's really not unreasonable to expect a 14 year old (adhd or not) to get from one lesson to another on time. How on earth is your DD going to be able to cope with anything in life if she can't even walk down a corridor when she's meant to?! It's honestly quite infantilising to mollycoddle her and jump to the conclusion that she isn't capable of managing it. It's obviously great to make reasonable adjustments for children with needs but there is a fine line between making adjustments and instilling extremely entitled attitudes in children and learned helplessness. If your DD has the cognitive skills to attend a mainstream school I'd be very clear in telling her that she needs to get a grip and self-manage this tbh

Teacher - also autistic (diagnosed years ago)

Firstly, schools don't want conflict with parents because that escalates things.

Persistent lateness is an issue. This is how it works in a classroom:

1. Get kids in and sitting down
2. Date, title, recall /settling task of some kind
3. While they're doing that, take the register
4. If anyone's missing and you can see present marks for them in other lessons, send an email to oncall
5. Oncall then have to go looking for the child - safeguarding
6. Child arrives once you've started teaching, have to stop teaching, reopen the register, amend as necessary
7. Child doesn't know what the lesson is about (no date or title in their books) so you have to go back over that otherwise they can't engage

In other words, it's not teachers being awkward, instead it's about having strong routines which, every bit of research shows, is better for kids with autism and ADHD. So lateness is actually working against your DD.

There's also the related problem of where exactly they're hiding to escape the overwhelm. If it's the toilet, then yes, school is going to take a dim view of a pupil who routinely, between lessons, goes and hides in a cubicle. The reason for this is that the overwhelming majority are doing this to either access their phones or to vape / trade vapes - not saying this is what your DD is doing. The sanction is in place to prevent this, not to 'punish' ND students.

So, the way forward, a trial leave early pass, gives your daughter 3 minutes (or something like that) at the end of one lesson so that she's front of queue for the beginning of the next lesson. If she's still late, then the 'hiding to escape overwhelm' will have been tested. Presumably, you would be happy for this trial and to act on results? Speak to the SENCO. See how it goes for 2 weeks. That's not enormous problem for the school to manage.

One theory I read is that because kids now spend so much time alone on phones, not out and about, they can’t cope with transitions in real life.

Teens can benefit from a mild sort of “exposure therapy”.

I would be insisting that dd comes with me to the supermarket (start early say 8am Saturday) then build up to going at 11am when it’s frantic. Take her to a busy shopping centre, a packed out pool session or gym class, a city centre, a train or coach station at rush hour and so on. Get her to do the navigation, in a situation where you are there to support her

And get her off her phone!!!!

It seems that the OP doesn’t want to be part of the solution, just to say how shit the school is.

I suppose people do need to be able to vent on here, but it’s likely that she’s going to also have to work with her daughter on how to at least ameliorate the issue.

she needs to distract herself from her own anxiety

Fidget toys/squidhy/clicker etc she needs one in each hand to walk between classes - she can hide them in her pocket and do it

give her a tongue twister like sea shells or Peter pepper that she needs to say on her mind while walking between classes

a mint- tell her to sneak a mint in her mouth when the bell goes and to aim to have it disappeared before she gets to the next lesson

Calming patches or roll on anxiety oil

when the bell goes tell her to take a deep breath, to touch something, look at something, listen to something , smell something and put the mint in. - it’s called grounding techniques of your not aware. Have a look online

tell her to try these for a few weeks and see if there is any improvement

at home the things you need to do are a solid routine, good diet
, lots of water, yoga on YouTube, have bedsheets and pyjamas that make her feel calm some kids like fluffy ones some like weighted blankets. Lavender in every room. Reward chart and everyday do a run down of things she enjoyed and things she didn’t enjoy that day and talk through them

I have adhd. You are being unreasonable. Your DDs adhd is not more important than other students rights to disruption free education. If school starts at 8.30 and Sue needs to leave at 8.15, you need to get her out the door at 7.50 and tell her she has to be at school for 8.15 and she gets a reward for every day she does it. The easiest way to hack adhd is to gamify it and include rewards and/or a competitive element.

Have the school done any testing?

Also, if you are three years in, go private.

My eldest has ADHD and her school has consequences for lateness. I support them with that even though I know my DD’s diagnosis puts her at a disadvantage. She ultimately needs to learn to be on time in life, so I’m not upset about her facing consequences. However, her school uses escalating levels of detentions, excluding a child from a class seems absolute madness. I would be supportive of consequences for lateness but not THAT consequence.

Honestly- I have tried EVERYTHING to be part of the solution. The school haven’t supported anything due to no diagnosis yet.

Thankfully lots of people have helped clarify the SEND position based on need not diagnosis on here for me.

So many see it as just a walk to another lesson, and for many it is but she is obviously not able to do it and get there on time and as a consequence she is missing out on education. The punishment is not working and really missing a lesson because you are late if you think about it is really silly. This is what worries me though the government want more children in school and for schools to 'deal' with SEN rather than get EHCP etc.. yet this is a prime example of schools getting it wrong. They need to understand what is going on to make her late and work with her to improve her time keeping, this might be a gradual process but getting her to miss education really isn't the solution. Sadly with the lack of support staff this type of problem that could be solved just ends up into something bigger.

It will be this.
along with maybe needing to be in the toilets when nobody else there if she has period issues?

I hope you get through to the school - invoking the law and send code and her right to an education.

OP, I wonder if you might be better off getting the thread moved to Education? If you post in AIBU, you will get honest, unfiltered answers, and if you are feeling fragile about the situation, or if you are not willing to be told YABU, it is not going to be doing you any good.

Does your daughter have a smartphone? If she does, the first thing I would be doing is swapping it out for a brick phone.

I think you should ask for a meeting with the head of year and senco and insist that they allow her to leave classes 5 mins early and threaten to take things further with the school governors and local authority if not. You're really not asking for much and it seems churlish that they are refusing.

You should also find out exactly what steps they will take to accommodate her if she is diagnosed with ADHD. If they're not very good, it might be wise to move schools now. If they are very good, try to find 3K and get her diagnosed earlier.

My DD has a physical disability so allowed to use the lift, which is not as helpful as it sounds because getting to the lift often involves moving against the one way system (similar huge school to OP's DC) and, even if she is going in the same direction, she can't walk as fast as everyone else.

She found leaving lessons early was not helpful as it meant she missed things and that just added an extra layer of anxiety.

The strategy she did find useful was to take her time leaving the classroom so she was a minute or so behind everyone else. The "traffic flow" is such that it meant that students would have moved away from their start classrooms so that the initial rush had passed, and the new batch of students had not yet "moved in". So I would suggest trying this as a strategy. She also had a friend walk with her and check she was ok/keep others at bay, which might also be a strategy that your DC could try.

Op, at 14yo I'd be looking at a private assessment because her support needs probably extend beyond lateness and she'll be doing her GCSEs in a couple of years. We did this for our ds in the end at the same age and he's now on medication.

He has struggled at times getting to class on time - particularly after break or lunchtime. In ds's case it was time management - he'd be playing football on the field at lunch, the bell would go and then he'd refill his water bottle before going to class which made him late. So we told him to set an alarm on his watch 5 mins before the end of lunch to give him enough time. Adhd is a reason why these things happen, but you still have to equip them with strategies to manage their more problematic symptoms.

If the school are not prepared to work with you, then you should push more forcefully because support is based on need and not diagnosis. We've had some success by phrasing things from the school's perspective: "we recognise that lateness/ not having the right equipment causes inconvenience to the school, so how can we manage this together?"

Support has still been extremely variable to be honest, and I do think you have to be prepared for much of the necessary scaffolding and symptom management ideas coming from you, firstly because you know your dd better than anyone and secondly because I still don't think schools are very good with adhd. Behaviours associated with it are still largely viewed as a choice rather than a result of neurodevelopmental difference. Smart but Scattered Teens is a helpful book which I'd recommend.

As well as education, schools are setting up children ready for life.

Being on time is a life skill. I'd be digging deep to find ways to support her to be on time otherwise she will struggle with employment if she learns that being on time is not important.

Instead of being angry (which is your issue) why aren't you putting that energy into supporting your DD to be on time? Why are you minimising the disruption of other pupils' learning, disrespect towards the classes and her teachers, and the handicap that persistent lateness will impose on your DD in her life?

As someone with a child who loves to learn, and is frequently coming home upset and confused YABU. DS often comes home and recounts how not just one but often multiple lessons are disrupted by children just like yours rocking up 5, 10, 15 minutes late. It’s disruptive and detrimental as the teacher then has to go back over the material already covered, instructions etc… meaning the whole class is pulled back because one person can’t get their act together.

Word of advice. If you do go down the private assessment, try to get in writing the providers they respect. They will be signposting parents to certain providers they respect and have seen used.

ADHD is a disability and not being unable to pull your act together.

ND kids have ooodles of resilience. They are coping with hugely difficult disabilities day in and day out. Getting into and surviving a day in a huge school setting with a disability is a massive achievement for many.

Sorry haven’t read the whole thread so don’t know if it is already mentioned or not, but it is illegal for the school to refuse accommodation for a suspected condition until there is a formal diagnosis. They have to provide accommodation based on the GP referral or other letter the GP writes stating what they have referred your child for.