Advice PLEASE x

[Lucaslovesfelicity]

Hi everyone, Im just on here looking for some advice really. I have got a 9 year old son with an ASD, who is really struggling in school. He is a bright intelligent boy but his lack of focus and concentration means he is falling further and further behind in class. The school is lovely, and has tried hard to put a sufficient level of support in place but we are all starting to realise this still isn't enough. He needs ine-to-one support in order to complete many of his daily tasks. He is in Y4 now and I am noticing that his confidence has taken a real nose dive this year. He has got two good friends who he loves to be around but has problems socialising with some of the other kids in the group. I pay for a tutor to come to our home twice a week but am now considering Home Education as a potential way forward. I am a teacher myself, and know it does make sense to educate him at home but I often find he works better for others, rather than his mum. Really not sure what to do at this moment in time. Any advice would be much appreciated

You are his mum and ultimately you know your boy best.

HE was the best option for my ds (multiple SENs including AS), as it has allowed him to flourish at his own pace.

In school ds was suffering so much he was loosing trust in us and he was becoming more angry about about being sent to school...as he started to relax at home, he began to do more and more work for me/with me; he realised the joy of working together; he showed off every night to his dad and sister (and everyone who listened!). Fastforward a few years: he is now a very confident young man -aware of his differences and abilities- whom most people are unable to even conceive he had so many hurdles to jump through, with an ambition to enrol in a uni course offered by only 4 universities.

Thank you for your reply Favadi. I feel exactly the same about my DS loosing trust and confidence in both himself and everyone around him. He told me last night that he feels that everything in his life s so confusing, which really brought it home to me that I need to step in and look further into HE as an option. His mental Heath comes first over anything. Thank you for sharing your story and you must feel so proud of your son for all he has achieved.

"I am a teacher myself, and know it does make sense to educate him at home but I often find he works better for others, rather than his mum."

If the tutor works well, you could carry on with that. It doesn't have to be a huge number of hours because it is more efficient with one-to-one attention.

Another option you may like to explore at some point is an approach called autonomous education, in which you literally hand over control of your son's learning to him. You might suggest or offer things to him, but the decision about what to learn, and how, and when, is his.

This is the style of home ed which my family use. Neither of my children has autism. However, some of my friends have ended up with this approach by default, because it is the only one their children with autism would accept! Autonomous education can be a difficult leap for a teacher to make, as it is radically different from anything you'll have done at school. But I think it is worth checking out.

Your son's story is, unfortunately, very familiar, so many ASD children end being HE'd because school environment becomes more confusing as they grow, the pace becomes faster and they start noticing they are different and may even feel isolated.

www.he-special.org.uk/ is a lovely support site that was an anchor for me in the early days.

I could have written some of the above except we are still on long road to diagnosis and DS masks well at school so they are saying there's no issue and refusing to help or get Ed psych in etc.