Been in tears, cornered by inclusion and teacher separately today and feel hopeless :(

[moosemama]

My morning started with ds's inclusion teacher calling to tell me that ds is basically not producing any work at school in literacy or maths and that in a maths test he did yesterday he wrote on the top that he was embarrassed to hand it in. When asked about it he said that he is hopeless at maths and does not deserve to be in the top set. This is my boy, who when asked what his favourite lesson was in infants, always said maths and was confident of his abilities in maths always sitting at the top of the top group with ease. In the test he completed 14 out of 20 questions and got 13 of them right.

His class teacher and inclusion teacher apparently discussed moving him down into the lower group to show him that he is not hopeless at maths and they wondered if being the top of the lower set might be be better for him than bottom of the top set. The thing is, until this year he was the top of the top set and he knows it, he has lost all confidence in his ability to do maths and a few weeks ago I actually asked him myself if he would feel happier in the other grou, which isn't so competitive, does the same work, but has things explained in more detail and more slowly. He became hysterical, sobbing that he'd been with his group since Reception year and didn't want to leave them and how he doesn't want to not see his maths teacher, as if he's not in his group he will never see him at all etc.

She also said that they are continuing to have problems with him not producing work in literacy, even on the Alphasmart. At most he produces a couple of sentences each lesson, even though he is highly capable.

There are other issues, eg his teacher insists he is being deliberately defiant and disrespectful and his inclusion teacher feels he is extremely unhappy and totally lacking in self-confidence with regards to school.

Then, I went to fetch him from school and his teacher asked to see me. We ended up in a classroom talking for about 40 minutes and going around in circles. She said he is currently performing at a low 3 so won't get a statement I told her that he was higher than a low 3 at the end of year two, which was now two years ago and that represents not 'no progress' but a clearl backwards slide. She tried to tell me that he is 'age appropriate' in his NC levels, 'so you won't get a statement' . I told her that NC levels are irrelevant, he is not making progress and is capable of much more and clearly his disability is preventing him accessing the curriculum effectively and I will fight the LEA if necessary, as you do not have to be 'behind' to require a statement - although he is in effect behind anyway, based on his capabilities.

Honestly, it was farcical and I ended up telling her that in my opinion, my son's mathematical ability and confidence have fallen through the floor during this academic year and it isn't a situation I am happy to let continue - if necessary, if the school refuse to provide him with the 1-1 support he needs I will de-register him and home-school.

I asked her what they are doing/going to do and she just gave me the old 'I have 30 other children to teach as well you know' line. So I asked her if she and the inclusion teacher don't know how to teach my child effectively in order for him to make good progress and have confidence in his abilities - who should I be asking? The answer 'I don't know - there isn't anyone'.

When I pointed out that he was fine up until year 2 and produced lots and lots of top notch work with no support whatsoever, she just said that the work is more challenging now. He has had testing done which shows that he is more than capable of high level achievement, yet he has been sliding backwards at an unbelievable rate.

So, I came home in tears, sobbed all over my Mum and now just feel hopeless. My son has not made any bloody progress for two whole years. They have watched him slide backwards, fail and lose confidence and done sod all about it, then turn around and say that there's nothing they can do about it and there's no-one else who can help either and that old chestnut 'he won't get a statement'.

Ironically, I was told by the inclusion teacher this morning that the new SENCO and head of the ASD Inclusion Teacher Team feel that they have got enough evidence to proceed to SA request and will be going over the evidence the school and I have got together this week, with a view to setting the wheels in motion asap.

I just want to take him out of that bloody place and home-school him. At the moment it seems like the only way he's going to get the 1-1 he needs to achieve his potential. When he works with me I am constantly amazed at his capabilities. If he can do it with me, then he can do it for them as well, but they seem incapable of motivating him. The thing is, despite all the problems he doesn't want to be home schooled, he wants to stay with his best friend and he has actually been making some good progress with his social skills and made a couple of new friends recently as well.

I thought we were starting to get somewhere with the school and they were actually starting to understand and work with us - obviously I was wrong.

AAAAAAAAARGGGGGGGG!!!!!

No I haven't Ben10. I have been feeling so much better and no more odd episodes, so its just been pushed to the back of the queue.

Becaroooo, I hadn't thought of checking out the BBC site - thanks, I'll have a look. Problem is, its not basic literacy he's struggling with, he's brilliant with words and can write lovely poetry when motivated properly. He's having problems with literacy assignments that involve several steps and large chunks of writing. I think part of it is to do with the social aspects of literacy, empathy and working out how a character might feel and what they might do next etc, but there's also a big issue with executive function, planning and organisation type stuff.

I was thinking of having a go at teaching him mind-mapping. Not sure if he will be able to do it, or indeed will take to it if he can, but it works really well for his Dad, who is monumentally disorganised at home - yet a really good project manager at work. I think for dh, as long as he has a system/process to support the planning he's fine, so he's fine at work, but when he's at home and there's just an ever growing list of jobs, all with different priorities etc, he can't see the wood for the trees. Its always been me that kept the family organised, as planning and organisation has always been my strength, but with this latest ME crash I seem to have (hopefully temporarily) lost the ability, so we are all all at sea at the moment. I am just starting to come out of it and slowly start making order out of the chaos that our home had decended into, but am so scared of crashing again and being back to square one.

Mind mapping is a really good idea...I used it when I did my OU courses!

I try a bit of mind mapping with the DC I support. Schools usually have pretty defined planning frames for specific types of long and short writing tasks, would they supply some blanks for you to practise with?

He does use writing frames at school - is that a similar thing?

I was thinking of just starting gently, getting him to think about something he likes (that'll be computer games then ) and use a mind maps to organise his thoughts. We'll probably do it on the computer. If I suggest writing the idea will be dead in the water before we've even started.

I think I may have seen a mind-maps for kids type book on Amazon at some point.

The planning frames are something like a story mountain for a narrative story. Characters box, name, brief description of appearance and character. Setting box, descriptions again. Setting the scene box, build up box, climax box, resolution box, conclusion box. All on a sheet of A3 or A4 to give you an idea of detail needed, and dependent on size of child's writing.

Other frames for different writing types, advert, newspaper article, playscript, non chronological report, etc devised by the teacher.

I've had a go at mind mapping a favourite film, or fairy tale. I do the writing ATM, he tells me (with help obv) what to write and where. Will move on to more independent eventually. Do you have simple software to do it on? PowerPoint may be easier than Word. If you find a good book let me know, please.

Just back from Open Evening at the school and

We went through all his books and there has been such a steep decline since last year. Some of the books span summer term 2010 to present and its like a different child produced the more recent work.

Its also really hard to see his work up on the wall alongside that of his peers, when all theirs is pretty much on par with each other and ds's is obviously not. The content is there, but his handwriting and presentation looks like that of a reception child. They had all had to copy out a poem and decorate it for putting up on the wall. All the other children had done neat joined up writing, in sentences and stanzas etc. Ds's was one block of writing, no capital letters or punctuation, equal spacing between all letters regardless of where words start and finish and BIG letters. His writing wasn't like this by the end of year two - I just don't understand what happened.

If someone walked up to the displays and asked which piece of work was done by the child with SNs they would pick ds's work every time.

As for maths, for the work he has done he has all the answers right, but has only managed at most half a dozen questions per lesson, where the others have done 20-30. He's also littered his exercise books with sad faces. They are supposed to do smileys to show how hard they found the work but on one page in particular, he had drawn about 10 huge sad faces filling the bottom part of the page - yet he got every single question he'd done right.

Anyhoo - back to mind maps. I thought using the standard auto-art stuff in word might work for ds, as he's already pretty proficient at using it. That said, he uses powerpoint as well, but its years since I have.

Didn't get chance to check out Amazon in the end - will go and have a mooch about in a mo, when I've finally managed to eat my tea.

Oh, moose. He needs someone to keep him focussed and get his confidence back. And to use his Alphasmart unless it's worksheets or maths. Who cares about handwriting in this day and age. Once in work you never need to handwrite anything for public consumption. He needs his 1:1 for maths and literacy. Most of my job is saying, 'come on, go on to the next one, that one is right, well done!' Or 'ok, what's going to happen next, how could you say that? Great idea, what's a better word than big?' etc etc. The DC I support isn't that great academically. He would be average without his Aspergers. Your DS wouldn't be average without his. It's an advantage he has, he can learn, and will learn his coping strategies especially with the right 1:1.

I bet he's better at Word than I am! I know all 3 of my DSs are! It would take me ages in Word, but not your DS, probably!

I know people who've used Tony Buzan's books in the past and recommend them. He's 'the' mind mapping guru really.

This looks interesting, but maybe a bit too grown up for ds.

This one is out of stock, but looks like it might be an alternative to computer based mind mapping.

I was at how much animation he got into a recent powerpoint presentation he did at school. I used to use it a lot in my work but he picked it up in less than a day!

I wish you could come and be his 1-1. You've hit the nail on the head, that's exactly what he needs.

So do I, moose. But TBH, it's exactly what any half decent 1:1 would be doing for him. Good luck with the SA request, even 10 hours would make a big difference, 15 ideally.

Oh Moose I am so sad for your ds...ellen is right he needs focused 1-1!

xx

Thanks guys. Am feeling so and this evening and to cap it all the !x*!! inclusion lady hasn't fed back to me about the statementing evidence meeting she had yesterday, so I am still none the wiser about what evidence the school has to present.

Aaaargh!