Do I need to consider private schooling or keep hassling the school?

[finefatmama]

This is a rather lengthy one so please bear with me.

DS2 5yrs attends reception in an oversubscribed catholic school (DH's preference not mine) but I don't think the school is working well for him.

Since starting reception, his teacher has complaining about his refusal to spend 80% of his time playing. He sneaks back indoors to turn on the interactive whiteboard or computer thus refusing to follow instructions. He's a september baby and bigger than most of the kids so he plays roughly with them (he also does martial arts) etc. He eventually got the class reward cuddly toy because he didn't have to be told off over the course of the day.

He now thinks of himself as a naughty kid but claims he can't help it (I don't believe that). During parents evenings, she usually has odd feedback ('he can read the whole word but can't sound out the individual parts when I ask him to break it down', 'you haven't taught him x' - often said smugly, 'when I left the class to go for my lunch he scattered the contents of my filing cabinet which I forgot to lock', 'he can count to hundred but most kids learn this by rote at home and don't know what these numbers mean so that doesn't mean he's brilliant', 'no he can't be extended because I have 30 kids to deal with and some don't even know the alphabet which is a priority', 'I know he's bored but I can't give him more work as it HAS to be 80% play for all our children', 'He has poor social skills which is why he won't go out and play' - very smug look). He once had a supply teacher who allowed him to work on the whiteboard and rewarded him for doing a correct sum which resulted in a negative number but according to him, his regular teacher would have told him off.

We have been working with him at home and he has just started year 3 maths and is currently reading Through the Looking Glass and Horrid Henry. We were ok with doing the extra work at home and trying to convince him that the teacher probably didn't mean that he's no good.

Most of the supervision is done by dad who works 9.30am -2.30pm about a mile from home. Fortunately and unfortunately following events at work, he's been promoted to a full time role in London and his current role is no more. We are now very concerned about leaving him to the mercy of the school. They have't been v helpful and have hinted that they are oversubscribed anyway and will have some kids waiting to take his place. our local authority has a shortage of primary school places already so a transfer is unlikely. If we keep fighting the school, we may end up making enemies instead of gaining allies.

We are now wondering if we should tighten our belts and pay for a good independent school where he would be taught at the right level, have access to sports activities, music lessons (dad currently takes him to flute lessons as the school dont allow for under 8s to learn instruments) etc. Or am I just romanticinsing the private school idea?
What other course of actions can anyone advise that we take to ensure a good education? We moved here to get DS1 into a very good special school and I'm not sure if we can keep the special school place if we move to a nearby LEA.

Agree with others though, that if he doesn't have the basic social skills, being bright is of no use in the real world. This is what we hope to address after DS1 is assessed by the Ed Pschologist this week. We would like to know why he's not always listening when asked to do something in class (all children can misbehave but DS1 is the same at home and nursery and has been persistent for a while with this behaviour, so it has been flagged now).

Even if you do put your DS2 into a private school will it really get to the route of the problem??? You have to wonder...I don't personally think it makes a difference what school you have your child in. You have to deal with the real issues at hand which happen to be issues with social skills. Otherwise any school is going to have the same problems with your child regardless.

"You can't keep a bright boy from 'acting up' so to speak, he's trying to alert staff he needs more to do. The only way to do this is to get rummaging in a filing cabinet or knock stuff down to get attention!"

The point is that in a well-run Reception class, with a child who has some level of self-motivation and genuine curiousity to learn, then a child should not need the staff to give him 'more to do' as they should be able to access it themselves through self-directed learning. As I say, DS taught himself to manipulate negative numbers and DD wrote full stories many pages long in Reception, both while 'learning through play', as the tools for writing and maths, as well as the tools for reading, exploration of the world etc were freely available to them and they chose to make constructive use of them.

Perhaps through over-formal tutoring - and maybe through how the particular class is run - the OP's child has not had opportunity to (or has not learned the skills of) self-directed learning and so is making himself bored because he cannot learn for himself.

It is much easier to be bored in a Year 1 or 2 class where there is much more 'directed teaching' which may put a ceiling on what a child can show they know. Being bored in Reception indicates either a failure of the provision in terms of providing the tools for self-directed learning, or a lack of the skills in a child to find out things for himself.

This may be a daft question but why wouldn't he be allowed to watch tv till Saturday?

You can't keep a bright boy from 'acting up' so to speak, he's trying to alert staff he needs more to do. The only way to do this is to get rummaging in a filing cabinet or knock stuff down to get attention

Agree Migrating.

Agree as well - bright but well behaved children progress extremely well in Reception classes all over the country, without having to resort to unacceptable behaviour. Unacceptable behaviour is just that - the reason behind it should be explored, but 'oh, he's so bright he has to misbehave' should never be used as an excuse

I'm always amazed how many bright badly behaved children act up out of boredom whereas other people's badly behaved child does it because they are evil little monsters who should be kept away from PFBs

Very true mrz

:o

OP - is DS quite literal in his understanding of language/ rules (ie. take some rules as gospel?)

+1 to Migrating. and Mrz

yesterday

"can I have raisins mummy"

"have a raisin ds2"

"why are you holding out 3 raisins if you want me to have A raisin?"

"ok, here's a few more and that's it for today"

"thank you mummy"

few minutes later "do you want more raisins ds2?"

"why are you asking if I me if I want more raisins when you've just said 'that's it for today'?"

My dd would say something like this to be funny. Is he being serious?

The other day I said to dd ' don't keep asking as the answer will be no'. She then said...... 'but the other day you said I couldn't but then let me have one, how am I supposed to know when you mean it or not it isn't consistent'.

I know he is a lot younger but if he has been around adults could he be being funny?

he was serious and sometimes he gets almost distressed when I use too much poetic licence.

"you can't eat xyz"

"yes I can mummy, look I'm eating it right now. It's easy for me"

"I meant to say you shouldn't eat it"

"But you didn't tell me that before and now I've eaten it already" "but you didn't tell me not to eat it. you didn't. If you did, that makes me a naughty boy again like the other time when.... and dad/you/teacher/grandma said i was naughty which is bad"

OP that last post sounds very typical of high functioning Aspergers type very literal thinking. Two of mine have been assessed for this, and I would be strongly pushing for a assessment ASAP.

Same here

This reminds me of Bertie in 44 Scotland Street:

"La senora e una vacca" daubed on the wall of the lavatories... by a 5 year old.

Tbh, it sounds more and more as if he may be on the autistic spectrum.

DS, who has many autistic traits, is exceptionally - occasionally debilitatingly - literal minded in exactly the way you describe (the instruction 'in Year 3 you are only allowed to go to the toilet at break times' was an example with particularly catastrophic consequences!).

Did I gather that you had an older child with autism? Could DS2 be using behavioural / language habits learned from an older sibling?

DS1 is non-verbal

OP - From all the information you have posted, I would push for an assessment of ASD/ Aspergers. From those examples, he sounds quite literal in his understanding of language. Can cause all sorts of misunderstandings in school.

I just wanted to post to say it sounds like you have a lot on your plate.

Is your son happy at school? If the answer to this is no, then I would look around for another school, not necessarily private. Happiness at school is important for learning and behavior.

It is hard when you suspect they just don't like your child. This happened with my first at nursery despite her being very obedient and generally bidable. This contrasted with my second child who had much patchier behavior yet seemed to be loved. I did nothing about this as obviously they moved on quickly, if it happened again I would look at moving them.

I would strongly advise you to back off a little with the tutoring and pushing academically. Just encourage his interests. He sounds bright and doesn't need it. I would also encourage him to like (as far as possible without forcing) things the other boys will like, football, star wars, lego, etc.

He sounds lovely and I understand why you have gone for lots of extra activities but if you can encourage a couple of friendships instead I think it might help you all.

My DCs are in a private school and TBH I think if your son were there it would be 50-50 whether he would thrive or you would be asked to remove him.

A good school with resources will spend time at this age trying to develop better social skills in those that are falling behind socially, and this is what they should be concentrating on at the moment - a gifted child with poor social skills will struggle to reach their potential. BUT if the school is not supported in this approach and able to work with the parents in concentrating on this aspect, then they are fighting an uphill battle. And I should also point out that the private schools play to the masses and would rather remove a poorly behaved child than risk the upset of other parents forever complaining that Johnny has pushed their own DCs around, tried to get them into trouble, whatever.

Especially given your DS1 experience, it is entirely understandable that you have concentrated hard on bringing out the best in DS2 and monitoring him closely. But I'm not sure that him being tutored privately and having DH teach him extra each day and have you spending time at school debating about his development is necessarily the best focus of your efforts with him. If he continues to develop at an accelerated academic pace relative to social development pace then his difficulties will only increase as the gap widens, regardless of the underlying cause, be it Aspergers or whatever.

If I were in your exact shoes then I would arrange a full Ed Psych assessment privately in the near future (make sure you get a good recommendation. I'd suggest Katherine Sharkey who conducts assessments in a number of locations, but not sure if she specialises in Aspergers). I would then take the assessment to both the SENCO at the current school and the private schools to discuss. From that point onwards you will need to take a hunch on who you trust most to bring out the best for your son. At the moment from the current schools' point of view they are stuck between a rock and a hard place because they will be getting very polarised opinions from you and the reception teacher and will have little 'objectivity' to go on.

Sorry OP, this is a thread hijack for mrz on the subject of infinity.

Where to start? The concept of a number is not something that's predefined and innate: the question "what is two?" is hard to answer until you relate it to a set containing two objects. And you know that it contains two objects because there's a 1-1 correspondance between the chant "one, two" and the set of objects. Likewise with any finite number, we know we have that number of things only if we can establish the 1-1 correspondance we call counting. But that doesn't give a definitive description of numbers - enough to generate the rest of mathematics. You need axioms, and the Zermelo-Fraenkel Axioms are most commonly used. (You don't have to choose this set of axioms, but this is the standard form for axiomatic set theory, together with the Axiom of Choice).

In this system numbers are defined using the axiom of infinity (included in the link). This asserts the existence of an infinite set S, which contains the empty set (called phi or written {}), and for any x in S, S contains the set x union {x}. As we know S contains phi, the axiom infers that S contains phi u {phi}, phi u {phi} u {phi u {phi}}, phi u {phi} u {phi u {phi}} u {phi u {phi} u {phi u {phi}}},...

We can identify a one-to-one correspondence between the elements of this set S and the natural numbers 0,1,2,3,....

So that's finite "numbers" defined. When you get to infinite "numbers", ordinals aren't treated in the same way as cardinals. So for ordinals, the set S defined above is the first infinite ordinal (and cardinal). We can identify it with the intuitive concept of infinity as it's an ordered set which is greater than any natural number (note the concept of "greater than" comes from the definition of the sets: a is greater than b if a contains b). The way S is constructed means that induction works. S is your standard infinity, often referred to as countable infinity, and if I was talking to a child, I'd use the word "infinity" as shorthand for the concept behind S.

You can define ordinal numbers bigger than S (which is written as omega when it's an ordinal, and Alephzero when it's a cardinal). Ordinal numbers are sets which have something called a well-ordering, which means there's a sort of internal number line. Infinite cardinal arithmetic is more intuitive than infinite ordinal arithmetic. You compare infinities by deciding if there's a 1-1 map between them (as sets). So, for example, the set of real numbers has a bigger infinite size (it's uncountably infinite) than the set of natural numbers. This tells us that there's more than one distinct infinity. In fact, there are infinitely many infinities. The axiom system described above isn't enough to tell you what you really need to know about the cardinals, that is, whether the size of the set of real numbers is the second smallest infinity, whether or not there's another middle-sized infinite set between the real numbers and natural numbers. The continuum hypothesis states that the real numbers have cardinality alephone, the second infinite ordinal.

This is the strangest post I have made on MN. I hope I've answered your question. With A level maths, the book by Enderton is a good introduction to this stuff.

Sounds as if he takes things completely literally- tonight's postings confirm this, but yesterday's "I wasn't given an instruction not to open the filing cabinet..." made me think AS or ASD.

I would ask GP for a referral tbh. Good luck.

teacherwith2kids you're comment after my own does actually make much more sense, and I apologise because I had not even considered that perspective at all :)

*your!