Busting a gut to pay private school fees for badly behaved daughter...

[mulranno]

I have 4 children. we both work full time really long hours to pay private school fees for daughter who needs learning support. However her behaviour at home is so bad that I resent making so many sacrifices to pay her fees. The other children miss out on our time as we are working so hard. Is it wrong for me to swap to state because I don't think that she deserves it?

LIZS - not sure what you mean by school being entirely honest with me? - She is v timid at school, does not contribute in class but is very good socially with friends - is never in conflict. This is consistent behaviour from nursery (where she was asked to be Mary in the nativity precisely because she was so quiet....but then wet herself on stage) infant and middle school - as well as with friends and family (my sisters etc). But nannies, au pairs, babysitters etc have been appauled at her behaviour in the home to her siblings and volatility v difficult to manage.

I just wondered if there may have been the odd instance of her losing it at school which hasn't been fed back. If you had to bottle up emotions all day you'd probably feel the need to explode in the safety of your own home too. she hasnlt yet foudna constructive way of coping. You've tried what this school has to offer but it hasn't helped.

Does she have ocd? Scared of new situations? This may mean she 'needs' to be overly controllnig of her environment - easy at school as there are already strict rules in place, harder at home with three other siblings!

As Liz says it's a very common behavioural pattern

Def never lost it at school, with friends or extended family. Transition is a real problem for her tho -- weekends, school holidays, holidays generally are an ordeal. She has to have everything packed for school night before to feel secure and get stressed if she cant get to sleep on time. Dont know about ocd would need to look it up. One of her pet kick-offs is when the house is messy - this can send her into orbit - but her own room is often a tip.

mulranno please see your GP and ask for a referral

mrz - where do you think this is going? Have looked up OCD doesnt fit.

mulranno I wouldn't like to make a suggestion but I do think for the sake of your family you need to investigate the cause of your daughter's behaviour. What you describe is very familiar but could apply equally to a number of conditions so it is best to see the experts to either confirm or rule out.

mrz - without asking you to make a suggestion - would you mind enlightening me on the very familiar/number of conditions - that this behaviour could apply to? Do you see the behaviour and SEN as inextricably linked?

It is the type of behaviour I see in some of our SEN pupils and have observed in my own child but not exclusively with SEN children which is why you need to seek an expert opinion

Going to stick my neck out here (having also had a quick look through some of your previous posts) and suggest a retained moro reflex. You are describing the emotional, behavioural and educational problems almost exactly as we are facing with our ds (9) which to us comes across as a mixture of asd and adhd traits. Try googling.

I know lots of kids who are angels at schools and hideous at home. It's quite common for kids without SEN too.

didl...have googled loads of links but none that I recognise as credible ie NHS etc - can you direct me to a credible link?

Will check but only have access to mobile not laptop at the moment. in the meantime check out indigobell's posts on here - it was her that got us going along the lines of a behavioural optometrist (nhs)

You'd need a referral to a community paediatrician in the frst instance or in some areas CAHMS service bring lots of specialists under one umbrella. From there maybe an Ed Psych, Behavioural Optometrist, OT etc to help look into the underlying issues and suggest alternative ways in which you and a school can support her. However from the list of traits you mentioned earlier, it may be that she is already in the system. Who diagnosed those or is it just the school's opinion ? The problem is that they may well be working on the symptoms rather than the cause, which your dd suppresses until she is at home.

She has a visual problem so has been in the medical system for some time - also has had an Ed Psych assessment (picked up the anxiety) and lots of sen monitoring at school - so again in the "educational" system - but we have not done anything official about her emotional/behavioural issues - which on reflection seems wrong.

Can I ask what sen issues are being monitored by the school as it may all be relative

Summary of Ed Pysc Report (done when she was 7): This assessment indicates that has a specific learning difficulty. * weakness with her auditory short-term memory and verbal skills significantly interferes with her ability to learn to read, spell and write fluently.

She also has a visual problem - binocular instability in both eyes near and far, often she sees double.

Recent school assessment:
Non-verbal Skills:RavensColouredMatrices -StSc 84, Percentile rank 14% Age equ 8y2m (when she is 10y6m)
Verbal Skills:BPVS - StSc 94, Percentile rank 32nd, age equ 9y7m
Speed for processing info is low.

I think you have your answer to her behaviour. I would also suggest the school isn't meeting her needs hence her melt down at home.

I suggest looking at Indigo's web page www.dyslexiaadvice.co.uk/vision.html

mrz can you elaborate - are you saying that the root cause of the SpLD and behaviour is soley visual? What should the school be doing for her? She has always been very aggressive and challenging even before she went to school - I supposed we thought that it was terrible twos etc and that she would eventually grow out of it.

She IS probably aggressive and challenging - these things may have nothing to do with her SN. Buy her a pony

Mulrano - we had awful behaviour at home last year from our son. Its HUGELY improved this year. Simply because he's happier at school - the teacher is meeting his needs much better - which means he's not anxious all the time. Could problems with school be causing your DD to have this behaviour at home?

Since I wrote that page about vision I've learnt a lot more.

The root cause of your DDs SpLD may be solely vision - and certainly correcting her vision problems will help her SpLD.

But it's more likely that it's the same thing that is causing her vision problems / SpLD is causing her challenging behaviour.

The root cause being cerebellum deficit.

And if you do a neuro-development therapy you will cure both her SpLD and her behaviour problems.

The therapy my 2 kids are doing is Tinsley House, and we have had amazing results.

It includes vision therapy - which will absolutely cure her vision problems.

(Vision therapy is computer software to train the muscles in the eye which are causing the binocular instability.)

It's also cured DDs auditory memory problems and her slow processing.

She's now for the first time ever learning to read and spell.

Within 2 weeks of starting the therapy her word finding problems disappeared... which meant she was now able to learn in class.

Behaviour of both kids has also totally changed. For the first time ever DS is showing empathy.

Not sure I explained that properly

Her vision problems are causing her reading problems. In order to be able to read you need to be able to focus both eyes on a single point, and then be able to move them smoothly to the next single point.

If you can't do that it makes reading very hard.

This problem is very easy to fix - but I only know of 2 people in the UK who are licensed to sell the sw you need. It's much more readily available in the US.

Then, I'm hypothesising that both her vision problems and her behaviour problems are caused by developmental problems with the brain. Problems that are also totally curable - by doing a nuerodevelopnent therapy.