How do you stop obsessing and any positive outcome from similar experience please?

[cantputfingeron]

I have a thread on the SN section but as a follow up I wanted to talk to everybody who has/has had children in reception who's gone through the same experience.

In a nutshell ds, 4.6, started reception last September. Teacher is not very happy with his progress so far and has suggested he might be on the spectrum. He's either too shy or too forward and he's struggling to make friends. We moved here just before started school so he didn't know any of the kids in the class to start with.

His behaviour seems absolutely normal to me but he does behave in a silly way sometimes.

Teacher wants to have him observed in class to understand if he's only shy/clumsy socially because of age or (it was initially suggested) if it's because he has behavioural problems due to SN traits.

Nursery where he was full time for 3 years have never noticed anything and scored him very high on his transfer form so he was expected to do well.

I am finding the whole experience very stressfull and now I try to correct his behaviour when I don't think it's appropriate- i.e. he will go around with a soft toy cat and pretend he's a cat and talk like a cat. Or he will say things out of the blue while I am in conversation with adult friends just to get our attention. Normally these are sentences he's heard in a movie which he finds very funny. Etc etc

The problem is that I don't know anymore what is appropriate behaviour for his age and I can see that some of the things he does can be seen as odd in the classroom. However when he meets with his old friends from nursery they all seem to do the same things and have a big laugh about the silly things they do/say and he has a whale of a time.

SO since original conversation with teacher I find his behaviour worrying sometimes, but I find the same behaviour cute in his little friends - how strange is that?

I am worried that if he behaves silly during observation he might be labelled wrongly. Also on the other end I want to check that his behaviour is deliberately silly and he can actually be talked through behaving normally (whatever that means).

HOWEVER this morning he really froze me after I had told him that I didn't like what he was doing, when he turned around and smiling very cheeckily said to me: mummy, do you like when I am sleeping only then?

I would really appreciate some input on your experience if similar and what was the outcome.

Also - how to stop obsessing about the whole thing?
Report won't be back before end of March (have been told after Easter!) and I need to take a step back and relax...

Hi ImaginaryFriend, you have put the finger on it! (sorry about the pun )

He's a bit of a clown and shy at the same time and he thinks that is the right way to approach people to make them friend.

And some of the older kids do look embarrassed by his antics.

I guess ds has taken this from me and dh as we always loved to make him laugh and since he was a baby have been playing with him to make him laugh.
He has a very contagious laughter and we would do silly things around him just to get his giggles.
I guess he thinks it's OK behaviour to get somebody positive attention and affection/love.

We are both serious professionals by the way outside of the house - but of course we are adult enough (not all the times) to know the appropriate context for jokes.

You have my total sympathies cantputfingeron. I know from past experience how hard it is to hear a professional suggest what your DS's teacher has.

I am going to go a little against the grain here though and suggest that you should let the SENCO come and observe your DS in the classroom. If by any chance there is something going on with him then having a helping hand early on can make the path later much easier.

The playdate things is a really good step forward - it not only helps your DS makes friends but helps build up a social circle for you.

Can I just very gently point you towards some information on dyspraxia to have a very quick read through ? I have been through something similar with my DD and she does have a diagnosis of dyspraxia & hypermobility, the early signs of which were missed totally by her nursery and our HVs.

it's interesting isn't it. Dp and I are both shy, dp's a thorough academic and I kind of used to be before my brain cells diminished, but we're also often very amusing (or at least we think so) for dd! She has an enormous laugh which I never tire of hearing. And she is never happier than when she's made someone laugh. A lot of comedians are quite shy and introverted aren't they? (I'm deliberately omitting the suicidally depressed side of comedians for the time being...)

I do agree with you chocolateteapot. If dd's teacher suggested assessing her I'd want it to go ahead too. There may be things the teacher is noticing beyond what we, the adoring mums, see.

thanks chocolateteapot

I had a look at the site for Dysphraxia signs and ds doesn't really tick many boxes. i.e. he reached all his milestones on time, rolled at 6 months, walked at 13 months, was talking in sentences by age of 2.8.
Good pencil grip, can dress himself(we had to help him at home to achieve this).

When I say clumsy, I don't mean he's clumsy phisically, but socially. So no problems going up and down the stairs or walking/falling off.

He's clumsy socially because he might approach other children in a way that can be seen as odd, but he means to be funny.

His attention span is very short but I don't know if this is because it's just him being a boy of 4 or for a more serious issue.

What was that prompted you to take your daughter to see a professional?
What triggered your worry?

I agree that the observation can only be a positive thing.
For sure it won't change the way ds is
anyway.

ImaginaryFriend, I think dh and I are/were silly around him because it's one of those times when you are entitled to be, what an outlet for stress.... like they say in my country with your kids you can let out the child you have inside and be silly again.

I think I will hold on to this thought for the next month, he's being a kid and I should keep enjoying the silly things he does.

I even managed not to notice that her elbow joints shot off at weird angles, despiteAh apologies, I read it as physically clumsy, not very wide awake today !

With DD a friend raised some suspicions about her when she was 3 so I shot off to our HV at the time who was no help at all. After her first parents evening I came home and had a nagging feeling that somewhere I had read something about speech difficulties and pencil grip (her vocab was good, she used sentences early but her pronounciation was a bit off) and I came home and had a good search on MN. I then approached her teacher and said I felt that there was a really good chance that DD had dyspraxia.

Her teacher agreed and said that they usually don't start mentioning things to parents until after the first time as they like to give children time to settle in, but seeing as I had raised the issue she would get the SENCO in to observe her. This resulted in a referral to a paed. and then to the local co-ordination clinic where she finally emerged with a diagnosis.

I was pretty much blissfully unaware until she got to school. She was my only child until DS was born just as she started reception so I had no direct comparison. She met her initial milestones on time ie walked at 13 months but then seemed to struggle with the rest and was for ever tripping. I thought she was fine getting dressed but it is only now with comparison to DS that I realised quite how much help she did actually need and that there were subtle things like struggling with eating lumps that I didn't realise at the time.

She grew up with the other children in the village we lived in at the time who were used to her and she fitted in fine - they were mostly boys so not many girls to have a direct comparison with. It was only when we moved and she started school that her difficulties came to light, which at first I put down to the move. She was completely obsessed with cats and used to pretend she was one for ages, which set her up for a bit of teasing as she got older, but she has learned now to moderate that.

She is doing really really well overall now and I am very very proud of her. We have been very fortunate to be surrounded by some excellent teachers and health professionals. The only thing is I have found that here there is a bit of a hole when it comes to getting help with the social side of things. It seems to be the non-verbal cues that she misses but she is beginning to develop strategies and understanding not to take people so literally which is making things much easier for her.

I am very confident that she when she is 18 you will never know that she struggled at first. Sorry, this has turned into a bit of an essay but please do try to hang onto the fact that if by any chance the SENCO does feel that your DS might need a little extra help then it really is a positive thing - and there is a really good chance that he is just fine and doesn't need any help at all.

cat64 - I am sure most teachers are great at their job and my hat off them for the hard work they have to do.

However, they are also human beings which sometimes don't get the kids they see.
What I have been told over and over again in the last few weeks by friends and relatives is that the teacher has 30 kids to teach and might not be able to know well all of them.

I am personally always very cautious when making assumptions on people I don't know well. Especially children in reception must be hard to decipher: how much is being immature and how much is problem?

To make suggestions quite openly to a parent that their child might be SN when said teacher doesn't know child very well IT IS a bit worrying for me.

I would have preferred she'd ruled out any other reason before making such assumptions...

I am looking forward to have ds observed and I feel reassured that even if he has any condition it must be a very mild one and I will still love him for what he is.

However, after my first conversations with the teacher I was very upset thinking that the teacher didn't know him at all and as a consequence she found teaching him hard. And of course ds was suffering as a result....

chocolateteapot - your story put tears in my eyes.

He goes to show that parents love is really important for any child development and you must be proud of your and your dd achievements.

I feel now that even if my son as any condition it's going to be quite mild and I will be there supporting him as much as I can.

Thank you for sharing your story, it makes me feel so much better