Yet another fraught conversation at the start of the school day when what I thought was going to be a simple two-minute conversation ended up being an argument that made the teacher late to take her register and inconvenienced the head as well. I feel awful about it, awful about the fact that the teacher with whom I had previously got on so well seems to feel increasingly irritated, insulted and frustrated every time I open my mouth, and awful about getting a name for myself as a nightmare parent.
I'm also unhappy about the result of the conversation, but I have to think positive and concentrate on the positives, which is that ds has had good 1:1 support this last week and the staff have been very kind to him (they always are kind and nice to the children; that's why I've still got him in the school) And we are going to proceed towards statementing, although they don't think he will get it, and they will get the EP in to see him next term.
This latest argument was about ds going part-time in Year One. I've been told that this is a much harder set-up with ds having to use the "big-boy toilets" (toileting is a massive issue) and having the same amount of children with less staff, plus a more demanding curriculum. At various points in the year ds' teacher has expressed her concern about how he will cope. There's also been an ongoing issue about ds biting and pushing and putting his hands around other children's necks which recently led to his being threatened with exclusion and things got fraught then with me saying he needed more support. This was when I brought up the issue of flexi-schooling.
So I found out about it and found out it was legal and a matter of private arrangement between school and parent as the child is then classed as educated off-site for part of the time. Great, I thought, no need to put ds, who is very young for his year and very young for his age, in Year One full-time and watch him struggle while we go through statementing, which we might not get anyway; he can go in the mornings, we can have a transition plan, we can phase him in full-time later if we want but it buys us time and flexibility.
DS' teacher says she is not prepared to even think about it until we have gone through statementing and we can see what support ds will get and what support I will get (?) and "see how he gets on". I said I was worried about the transition and she said she was not prepared to think that far ahead. Suddenly the story is that he's made great progress, the strategies are all in place, he'll be supported next year just as he has been this year. My perception is that despite a lot of effort being made to accommodate him (I've made it clear I'm not criticising the school) ds is getting very stressed and tired and making a fraction of the progress he could make. So if he has found it difficult in reception how is he going to manage in year one? I don't want to "wait and see" - wait and see what? If he is publically humiliated by an inability to control his bowels and bladder? If the progress I've made with him over the summer holidays gets undone and he steadily slides backward? If the pressure steadily builds in him until he lashes out and alienates the few friends he is slowly making? Errr...that's precisely what I am trying to avoid! It might not happen, of course, but I was hoping not to take the gamble.
What is irritating me is that the school are saying that flexi-schooling is too risky a decision to make quickly. As if putting him straight into Year One full-time is NOT risky! What they mean is that it's not the conventional option; and we all know how well the conventional way of doing things serves our children, don't we?
I'm sorry, but I feel as if I can see the whole scenario unfolding with horrible predictability. My son will have a few token assessments done at the beginning when special care will be taken to support him, by someone who has a qualification but doesn't know him or what he is capable of. He will seem OK and he will be given just enough support to get through the school day without disrupting lessons too much and participating in activities in at least a token way. He will make some progress and that will be classed as great, because it's so hard for autistic children to make progress isn't it, that even just being included is progress isn't it? Nobody will know any better, because they don't really know him, and the people who do know him ie. his family, will be treated with professional pleasantness and care and listened to just enough to shut them up and get them out of the classroom so the professionals can do their job.
The cracks will start to show later on, of course, as he finds it harder and harder to keep going. But by then the support will have been decided, the decisions and reports all made. Sigh...
OK, rant over. I feel better now :)