Dreamer of dreams,born out of my due time, Why should I strive to set the crooked straight. Wm Morris

[indignatio]

Hopefully the link from the other thread will work

My stats

ds is 4.5 - summer born
In reception class

Has issues with:-
Easy distractability (school work and practical tasks)
Concentration problems when not totally engaged by something (95% of the time)
Fidgeting
Getting "lost" in the middle of a complicated sentence/explaination.
Bossy manner
Isolation at school
Poor eye contact
Repetition of sentences until he hears the acknowledgement
No herding instinct

On the positive
Very loving boy
Exceptional reader for his age
Good at maths
Lots of "home" friends
If gripped by something, can concentrate on it for ages

dx:
teacher initially thought he might have dyspraxia - no longer thinks so.
I consider that he has more add traits, but would not go so far as to say he has add.
SENCO to informally assess him next week and then meeting to be arranged with parents, teacher and senco shortly thereafter.

Not sure what else I should put in.

Meant to say - did the first episode of Dr Who cause high excitement in the dreamers' households? . We always know where DS1 is atm because of the 'OOOweeeoooo.....OOO...oooo' coming from where ever he is.

Sphil - hope you dont all come down with the bug. Both boys are a little interested in Dr Who but not that much. However the "germs" thing is a recent interest for DT2. I told him he would get germs from picking up dirty things and he is now concerned that there are germs everywhere!. I dont think he had ever come across the word until last week but its now of major interest.

Castles - "I was told by a friend that DS won't get into a private school with his understanding problems. "

I would say that you might be right. At my own children's school, if you enter the school at 3, they take pretty much anyone, but if you applied to join later, you would have to take tests, and they would conveniently not have a place available for a child who presented any problems for them.

Thanks babygrand, I thought that would be the case. Still shocking though!

Castles - I think it depends on the school. My friend whose son has semantic pragmatic disorder visited two private secondary schools for her son. In the first the SEN room was in what she described as a 'garret' and the SENCO obviously had little experience of any SEN outside minor spelling/reading problems. At the second (which has an excellent reputation for SEN in this area) the Head talked directly to her son, stressed all his strengths and had plenty of strategies to suggest to tackle his weaker areas.

Thanks Sphil. We are not going down that road just yet but I can see it's something we will have to look into soon. Especially secondary as the schools round here are rubbish. How are the bugs? Hope you have managed to avoid it so far.

Yes thanks - DH recovered, none of us caught it and we are now in Somerset!

Sphil - welcome to your new home

Thanks Indignatio - we're staying with my parents atm while house hunting. As usual when we're here DS1 has become completely different - much more fluent, less dreamy, sticking more at tasks, more confident physically. It happens every time - it may be because there are more adults around but I have a horrible feeling it's because of the absence of school .

Sphil - I always feel like that after long weekends/other breaks like easter and Christmas. DT2 seems to become more mature, fluent and just more "together". I sometimes think its because I see more of him at his best, ie not after I come home after work (although I pick boys up from school 2 days a week but even then I dont really notice a big difference compared to the days I dont pick them up )but maybe its the fact that there is no school that makes him like that. I love days like today where Dt2 really shines when out for a day with Granny and Granda and they think he is so great .Dt1 is going through a teenager stroopy phase where he thinks grandparents are a bit ridiculous, in particular Granda who always laughs at him so he says.

I am looking forward to the next few days where I expect Dt2 to be at his best and lull me into a false sense of security.

Hope you find a new home soon.

spelling and grammer atrocious - thats what happens after 3 glasses of wine!

I am very excited as 3 books have just arrived from Amazon about dyspraxia - one is the Madeleine Portwood one recommended on the Dore thread the other day. I'm looking forward to having something positive to focus on over the holidays.

I read the Times article on Dore, also mentioned on that thread, and can't stop thinking about how it said that a large proportion of children with dyspraxia will go on to have drink/drugs problems. Aaagh!

Good luck in with the house hunting sphil. My DS is the same - most people don't realise he has a "problem" out of school. He also shines when there are lots of adults around, especially doting rellies

Wish us luck everyone - DS1 starts his new school tomorrow! have done as advised and written a short letter to his teacher asking for a meeting in a month's time.

We'll see what happens!

Anyone see that article about Home Ed in the Sat Guardian? Thought it was quite good.

Good Luck Sphil - hope all goes well. You are probably far more worried than him.

Let us know how it goes

Oh good luck Sphil. Hope it went well today.

The holidays have been great for DS. He relishes all the attention. I feel so sad about him going back to school on Wednesday.

Hope today went well

It seemed to go fine! The school is much more structured and organised than his previous one, which I think will suit him. Two comments he made stand out
" The other children were all very kind to me and let me be the leader ALL the time because it's my first day". (This is something that he found very difficult at his old school - his best friend was a very dominant and popular boy who had to plan and organise all games.)
" We did writing about plants. I don't seem to find writing as troublesome (!) as I did at X school."
Have no idea why this might be - though there is a f/t TA in the class (which there wasn't at his old school) so maybe he's getting more attention.

Anyway, so far so good! There are other nice little touches, like the children wait in a circle rather than a line for their teacher to call them in. As DS1 is invariably at the back of any line that forms anywhere, I am rather pleased about this democratic approach! It might even be worth the two hours I'm spending in the car every day to get him there and back. We've had an offer accepted on a house near the school but completion won't be until July (by which time my carbon footprint will be HUGE )

Thanks for all your good wishes

Great news! Waiting in a circle is such a good idea.

How are all the other bits of your move going?

Sound's lovely Sphil. Good move!
Just re-read your DS's stats and he sound's particularly like my DS.
With the "Needs adult prompting for tasks involving a number of steps", DS got "lost" with 3+ part instructions. His speech therapist has been working on this and he's progressed to 4 part instructions in just one week. And, instead of having a meltdown he is now asking "I don't understand, can you help me?". I am amazed. And chuffed: there may be hope for him yet.
Of course, this could all go horribly wrong when he starts back at school tomorrow

It's all going well so far - DS1 and 2 have adapted remarkably quickly. Living with my parents is interesting at times but fairly smooth so far. At least we all know it's temporary!

Felt a bit sorry for DS1 this morning - all the other kids were milling about in the playground and no-one came up and spoke to him. But I don't think they do, at 5/6?

He mentioned yesterday that there was a girl who kept smiling at him and he went over to ask her name this morning. I was a distance away but my heart sank when she turned away from him without replying. When I asked what he'd said, he replied " I said 'Who are you?'" This is fairly typical of DS - he almost gets the social stuff right, but not quite. I suggested he tried again saying 'What's your name?' and this time she answered ( I was crossing every digit I possess in the background.) He's fine when he gets to know people, but when he's nervous he speaks very quietly and indistinctly, as well as using slightly 'odd' language at times - and I think other children are put off initially. Sigh!

Castles - I thought they sounded similar too! That's brilliant about the instructions. I do feel that DS1 picks things up very quickly if someone teaches him explicitly what to do (like your DS and the SALT) - it's just that he can't do some things instinctively. Is your DS like that?

Exactly like that Sphil. Once he's been "taught" he's fine, remarkably capable in fact.
Re the social thing with other children, DS is also the same sadly, and it's becoming more apparent to me now he's at school. Know what you mean about 'odd' language and children being put off initially. My heart sinks most days though it's probably worse for me, at the moment. If he didn't know a child's name a year ago he'd call them "boy" or "girl"! Quite funny really, but I have taught him to ask "What is your name?"

If we were a couple of generations back, our dreamers would be fine, as they would probably have had 1:1 (depending on financial circumstances of course). My granny & her sister had a governess until they were about 14. I often reflect on this

Me again! This new school business is so stressful.

DS1 tends to play by himself a lot, particularly if he's feeling uncomfortable. He calls it 'fighting invisible enemies' and it basically involves jumping and twirling around on his own. He gets quite upset if I try to stop him - starts talking about how the enemies are 'real' and he has to fight them. I think it's a defence mechanism in some social situations - school particularly.

The question is, do I let him get on with it, or try to redirect him? Other children his age have seemed to ignore it up 'til now, but I noticed a couple of the boys in his class giving him odd looks this morning. Obviously because he's new I'm more sensitive - don't want him marked out as weird from the beginning!