normal or private nursery?

[saladsandwich]

ds starts nursery in january, he is currently at the private one but people are saying its a bad choice? im in 2 minds what to do, ds knows the private one so well, he will be heart broken if i pulled him out but he will have to leave in 2 years anyway for school. my only grumbe with the private nursery is they attended his caf and said he was on target, the community paed puts him 9months behind and i agree with him although its ds's behaviour that is the bigger concern for me atm.

the school nursery has an outstanding ofsted and my friends are saying ds would be better there so everythings in place for going to school, but ds's private nursery actually do his speech and language stuff with him they are trained for it, hes come on so much from starting there but someone said today that education wise he'd be better at school nursery, im so confused.

if i could also ask, what do you do if you see a difference in your child? ds as started getting worse for lining cars up ect and matching things, and being "particular" as i like to call it but its so bad that if the line is knocked over he is lashing out i feel lost tbh. x

why do you think the state nursery will be better? does a place at the state nursery guarantee a place at the school? (it doesn't normally have any effect at all)

fwiw dd2 stayed at the private nursery. she was happy there, they were great with therapists coming in and were happily providing 1-1 support funded by the lea, and ieps through school action plus.

starting again from the beginning at a state nursery would have been a pointless waste of time.

why are people saying it's a bad choice? he loves it there and he's making progress, and they provide specialist therapy. what's not to like?

traditionally state schools do better for children with sn than private schools. but ime, at the nursery level it matters not.

why are you listening to what 'people say' and not what you think?

are you planning on applying for a statement? i assume you don't have one.

Who is telling you that its a bad choice?. Family members?. Phooey to them if that is the case. You have to deal with the everyday realities re your son; they do not. Outstanding ofsted reports in my humble opinion mean bugger all and give no indication as to what a school would be like with regards to SEN.

Did you query the nursery's comments re DS being on target when the paed has stated a 9 month delay?.

Re saladsandwich;s comments as detailed below:-

"traditionally state schools do better for children with sn than private schools. but ime, at the nursery level it matters not.

why are you listening to what 'people say' and not what you think?

are you planning on applying for a statement? i assume you don't have one".

I would be asking exactly the same.

Would seriously consider applying for a Statement asap and particularly before he goes into school because his additional needs would then be properly recognised. Do you think your child could be somewhere on the ASD spectrum?.

Never forget that you are your child's best - and only - advocate here.

IME a lot of people think that if DCs don't go to the school nursery, they won't have any friends when school starts and their lives will essentially be ruined. Which is tosh, obviously.

I don't know where you are, but in Scotland school nursery sessions are incredibly short, I think they are 2.5 hours a day over 5 days. Within this time there will be a huge amount of 'organisation' - putting coats on and off, washing hands for snack, etc - so on a very simple level I think time available for therapy would be seriously curtailed.

(Education schmeducation by the way - he's what? 2? He'll learn just the same things in a private nursery as he would in a school one btw. Even though there's a teacher in a school nursery, they both follow the same curriculum.)

But my main advice is this - you seem to have concerns about your child's development. You are currently in a nursery where they know your child and support his therapy, albeit they have made a comment about his progress that you disagree with. If you are go for statement / dx in a new nursery, you may find that they don't agree with you, or don't agree with your approach, or say something like 'hmmm, let him settle down for six months' and try and pat you down. You of course can go for statement / dx anyway, but it's far, far easier to do that with a nursery who know DS and who are on your side.

thanks everyone, i just feel all over the place at the moment. the nursery have an IEP in place but everyone seems to be dumbing down ds's problems, i don't know if he needs a statement no ones mentioned it honestly i am literally clueless but i just don't know if its me being over fussy with ds or if they are getting it wrong? .

they don't see what i see though the nursery, my best friend who has a ds the same age as ds though said she can see why people think there is nothing wrong with him but she agrees with me there is something definitely not right.

the way he plays, he is nearly 3 in 6weeks and this week he as just started doing a tiny bit of role play with happy land figures so that would tally with the paeds 9months behind?

ds has medical problems at the moment and im trying to keep up with them it's just never ending, i've decided ds is staying put though definitely i am tempted to ring the health visitor up as she runs the CAF, ds is de another appointment by the community paed and it hasn't come.

thanks again to you all

We kept DS (ASD) in private
The problems we had (inexperienced staff, no knowledge of autism, poor outreach, insufficient SALT) would have occurred in both.
The funding was the same FT 1:1 except the private nursery got all the money from the LA when a school would have had to put it in from a delegated budget and I suspect would have been less likely to give DS dedicated 1:1.
The LA were desperate for him to move to a school nursery so they would not have to fund it as extra and could control what we did (we were doing ABA (private therapy) at home and asking LA to pay for this in longer term and private nursery supported it was really helping DS). The LA put huge pressure on the private nursery to say it was not working / not back us at tribunal. They really bullied the nursery. Despite this the nursery did help us and say the outreach was crap, the support insufficient etc and helped us win specialist provision for school age and even came as a witness for us at tribunal. They also allowed our private therapist into nursery to do training which a school would have blocked.

A school nursery would not have backed us on specialist placement - LAs make schools say they can take children whose needs they clearly cannot meet. The LA wrote to several school nurseries behind our backs on the basis if there was a teacher all DS problems would be solved so cheaply - every single school said it could meet his needs even though the Ed Psych said he should not be in mainstream. We felt as they were all employed and funded by the LA, school nurseries were too scared to go against the LA. They would not have been witnesses against the LA.

In theory all the support eg SALT etc should be identical in both. LAs should treat any nursery that provides free places (from age 3) in the same way as a school nursery and put in the same level of training, funding etc.

If your nursery will do the training, do the therapy and spend the money it gets on your child then stay put. Lots of schools will promise one thing but then do another or share 1:1 around.

Some schools locally are known to be great with SEN. Some are absolutely awful. One we approached put us off and clearly did not want him

DS was used to his nursery and they adored him, the staff had been through his diagnosis with us. We had ups and downs with them when the pressure was really cooking with the LA, but in the end they put DS first and I do not think a school would have done that.

A private nursery is less in the pocket of the LA and that worked well for us.

Also the hours are better eg DS could go for 4 hours not 3 and that meant the difference between me being able to keep my job and losing it.

None of my children went into school with their friends from nursery (DS3 has no friends anyway as his social skills are so far behind). It has made no difference, in fact often I feel sorry for the children whose parents insist they stay together as often they don't feel able to branch out / make new friends and lets face it how many of us still have the same best friend we had at 2?

If you have a good relationship with your current nursery that is worth a lot in my book.