Tell me about your primary transition arrangements

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What arrangements/ adjustments have been made to help your 4 year old autistic/ ADHD child settle into primary school in September please?

DD is definitely ND (not sure if ADHD or autism), lots of sensory/ social emotional differences but very academic.

I need to discuss an enhanced transition with the school, but not sure what to ask for. I thought asking about others arrangements would be a good starting point.

The school plan to start all the children full time from day 1 no and this will be too much for DD, so I'm going to need to advocate an enhanced transition.

I don't have an EHCP. We are doing independent school so there will be no additional funding unless we pay ourselves (which we have some scope to do).

DS sounds pretty similar.

The two things that helped us most were:

Meeting teacher and TA before school started and in the classroom. Hugely important. I could practically see DS's anxiety level going down.

Having a transition meeting with nursery keyworker and teacher (but without DS) before school started. Again, really helpful for everyone.

It can be a struggle to persuade teachers that ND kids are also clever. There's this odd assumption that an autistic kid can't eg actually understand maths, they've just 'memorised the times tables'. Annoys the hell out of me.

Anyway, if you have the money (high single digit thousands all together) it is helpful to get tribunal standard SALT, OT and Ed Psych assessments. Partly so you can apply for an EHCP, partly so you can say to school 'No, DD really is clever, it's not just PFB syndrome' or 'No, DD really does struggle with wearing this bit of school uniform, it's not just whinging'.