Have some fairly trivial school problems I've just been made aware of.
- The teacher is inisiting ds1 sits on for the whole literacy and numeracy hour (please tell me there aren't two of these a day- is it one hour of the day?) which is all well and good, but he's not going to understand a word of it. The govt apparently says he has to "have access to the entire curriculum"- well yes but if his language skills are below that of his 21 month old baby brothers then sitting in a room of other children doing literacy and numeracy is not the same as having access to the curriculum.
- there is a handdryer in the toilets which he is terrified of. He has now wet his pants twice becuase of this (and it also means he won't go in public toilets if he sees a handdryer). It was suggested (by his nursery manager) that as he is going to the toilet seperately the handdyrer is switched off at the wall when he is in there so it can't go off accidentally- but no go- the teacher won't have it.
- I haven't got a home-school link book. I need something as I have no idea what goes on in there (obviously ds1 can't tell me).
- Other minor stupid things like he'd just learned his LSA's christian name but has now been told he has to call her Mrs X. He can't say anything remotely like Mrs X. it doesn;t really matter because he only ever said it when he was saying goodbye anyway but I think its kind of sad he now can't say anything. I don't really mind about this but I think it just demostrates they don't really understand how far behind he is.
Now I think the literacy and numeracy hour would be a good time for him to do his one-to-one work with the LSA- surely there's a way that can include literacy anf numeracy.
None of this is major as he only attends 5 hours a week at the moment. Just wondering how best to go about addressing concerns. I don't want to go in like a bull in a china shop within a couple of weeks of him arriving. I think the very good autism outreach worker is in tomorrow and I'm hoping she'll sort out something about the hand dryer (whether its a phased introduction/desensitisation to it or turning it off) and also the literacy/numeracy hour.
I think overall I'm just worried as I think the school are expecting too much. They are expecting him to be able to behave like a normal kid, when he can't. Of course its all early days- did anyone else have these sorts of problems initially and how did you go about sorting them out?