Lunch club

[claw4]

Ds used to be part of lunch club, a group for about 6-8 children with SN's with a high ratio of adults.

They would sit a table away from the other children and eat thier lunch, then go to the nursery to play games instead of going out into the playground.

Ds really enjoyed this to start with and was able to eat his packed lunch. Anyhow since Easter last year ds began to beg me not to make him go to lunch club. The other children in his class had been teasing him about being a 'baby'. The other children in lunch club also have quite limited communication and some have 'challenging' behaviour. One of the other children hit him in the face and made his nose bleed. Ds is very 'chatty' and desperately wants to interact and communication, albeit he doesnt quite get interact and communication.

When in lunch club ds also had a an eating plan in place from OT which involved trying something from school dinners, although school messed this up by not following the recommendatins correctly and caused ds anxiety.

So ds hasnt been to lunch club for a number of reasons, it was causing him more anxiety, but he has not been able to eat in school since. He drinks his drink at lunchtime and thats it.

I have been informing school of this and there attitude is ds has to go back into lunch club. Ds really doesnt want to go to lunch club.

What help can i expect school to give him to enable him to eat in school, without having to be part of lunch club?

Excuse my grammar and spelling mistakes, not much sleep last night

Oh goodness claw, that is not acceptable that he hasn't been eating in school is it? Would they allow him to eat his lunch in the classroom? It would at least make sure he ate something then it could be a slow progress to move back intro the dinner hall.

But your school aren't very reasonable are they?

Starfish the thing is he really wants to sit with all the other kids from his class, but he cant eat. When he is feeling anxious, he needs prompting/encouraging to eat. Not even for a adult to sit with him, just an adult to prompt him. He could eat his lunch in about 10/15 minutes, he is not a slow eater and has a tiny packed lunch of a small plain bread roll, crisps and a biscuit. Is 10/15 minutes of intermittent prompting/encouragement too much to ask?

He says that the tables are not clean, they have school dinners split on them and food on the floor etc. He has a big food phobia is worried that other peoples food will touch him.

No school are not reasonable.

That sounds so familiar claw, DS1 has huge food phobia, the dirty dinner tables, smells make it impossible for him to eat in a lunch hall.

I think it's wonderful that your DS wants to eat in the hall, school should be actively encouraging him, does not seem unreasonable for an adult to prompt him to eat his lunch, what on earth are they thinking?!

Starfish, ds appears to have no sense of smell!

He does however hate sitting still and just sits there for the minimum amount of time allowed before he rushes out into the playground to run around and spin. Now thats another story, if school were to follow the OT advice of movement breaks, sensory diet etc, etc he might not be in such a rush to get outside and run, spin etc. Although school would say its 'normal' for a child to want to get outside, i agree, but it is also 'normal' for a child to want to eat and to be able to do so!

Ds is very aware that he is 'different' with regards to his eating, he is also very bright. I think he is just trying to 'fit' himself in and feel as 'normal' as possible hence wanting to sit in the lunch hall on a table with his peers, despite his fear of the food.

Aw thats horrible for your DS.
It sounds like the lunch club might not be entirely appropriate if there are children with limited communication and your DS wants to talk. In my DS's school the lunch club for him consisited of a TA and several selected people from his class. It was for social skills, and the first few they talked about things that bothered them about how other people behaved, and some of the girls gently told DS about how his shouting out in class annoyed them and one or two other things that he needs to learn to curb. It also meant that they got to know him better and played with him more in the playground. The club was tailored to him. Can your school not do this?
Another day DS has a sports person who eats lunch in the hall with DS and a few other children and takes them out to the field (weather permitting) to play team games. This is aimed at a few children who need this help.

Ds has also been allowed to eat outside the dinner hall if the noise and smells are too much - but not on a regular basis - only if he is having a particularly bad day.

Would the school be prepared to try any of this do you think?

Oh claw, ds1 has the same issue re dirty lunch tables and 'contamination', we wrap his food inside a big piece of foil that he spreads out over the table so nothing of his has to touch the surface.

Does he have a TA? If so, is there any way you could ask them to redeploy 10/15 minutes of her time to lunch while this issue is ongoing? As Starfish said, it's great that he wants to eat in the hall with the other children and is something the school should want to encourage and support.

Something is niggling at the back of my mind about perhaps coming at it from a duty of care angle, in that if he doesn't eat he can't access his afternoon lessons effectively. So, not eating is a barrier to learning that they have to do their best to remove.

Also, could you approach it from the angle of encouraging peer/social interaction and appropriate social behaviour, in that eating is a hugely social circumstance in our society. (Ds has mention in his statement of his phobia of tv and film and it's affect on his ability to fully socially integrate due to the nature of peer group interest - so social eating can definitely be included as a necessary skill set that should be supported and encouraged.)

Sorry, too tired to formulate the whole idea at the moment, but will come back if I can think of something you can use to push it. It takes a while to get me old cogs turning these days, but things often slowly filter through as the day goes on.

It's a tough one, ds2 regularly doesn't eat his lunch because he knows he's slow and will miss playing with his friends, then he gets pale, tired and exhausted and struggles in the afternoon lessons.

No they wouldnt Alison, they have their once size fits all lunch club where the most 'severe' children with statements attend (there are 7 children with statements in the whole school). They tell me i am 'lucky' to be offered this for ds, as he doesnt have a statement!

This group is also for social skills too, they go to the nursery to play games, to help with turn taking, coping with losing, not going first etc. But ds has never had a problem with any of that, in fact he is probably the opposite he is very submissive and needs to learn to be more assertive, not taught how to be every more submissive and compliant than he already is. Ds has a problem with unstructured activities ie playtime. As i say, he is very submissive and other children take advantage of him. He doesnt know how to deal with these situations, other to let other children take advantage of him. Then he feels bad about himself and compares himself to others being 'stronger' than him or 'smarter' than him. He has very low self esteem, which in turn, makes him even more submissive.

Moose, he has no 1:1 TA time at all.

School are saying yes he should be able to eat and he was able to eat in lunch club, put him back in! I have told them ds doesnt want to go into lunch club, ds has told them he doesnt want to go into lunch club, but school are saying, the help is there if ds wants it. So they are no refusing to give him help, just offering the wrong help. Its lunch club or nothing.

Try telling a social worker you CAB to facillitate lunch at home lol! Can you threaten the school with a CP complaint as he isn't eating?

My DS has a 1:1 at lunch times who is ASD trained and is gradually helping him integrate to the mainstream. After a year DS now eats school dinners at a table of 6 of his classmates. (so not on the long benches with all the others but he's now in the main dining hall). He then plays outside with the others for 20 mins then gets 10 mins on a go-kart as a reward, before retreating to the library for any remaining time. This is such major progress from the kid that hid!

DS's issue is noise & crowds not the food, but it's a very similar principle and proves it can be done. He can't work on his communication skills if there are no suitable peers to communicate with! So the lunch club is a cop out. It has been hard work and the specific TA assiigned had to be changed.

At annual review fight for a 1:1 assigned lunch time TA to work on your DS's specific needs as opposed to just babysit, which is all the school are currently offering. The support in this area DS has wasn't given to him, I had to get it via Tribunal.

is there a child in ds' class who ds gets on with, and who is not likely to make fun of ds, and who would be willing to help?

could they sit at a table, in the hall, by themselves, so that ds can be in the general atmosphere, taking part etc, and able to eat his lunch? (if only ds and one other to start with, then less chance of spilled food/mess).

and then slowly add in more children one at a time?

this is what dd1's old school did with dd1 when she was on her mainstream visits - start of slightly separate, with one known (trusted, liked, etc) child, and then build up slowly. maybe only do it one day a week to start with too, so not too overwhelming (for ds or for the other child).

on the one hand I can slightly see the schools pov - if there is no designated TA (I know that's a whole other story!), and teachers are on breaks too, then it can be hard for them to structure something different, and they do already have the lunch club runnign and staffed etc. But it is not acceptable at all that your ds has not been eating lunch for the last year. it is also unacceptable that the other children made fun of your ds for going to the lunch club - this is the kind of thing that can destroy so many good initiatives. what was done about the teasing? because you could get school to (potentially) agree to lots of different things, but if they are all going to be undone by teasing and name calling, then there is not much point.

Claw, The help Ds has for lunch and playtimes was put in place before he had a statement. He could not cope with the unstructured time and was constantly getting into trouble. When he got hit with a football for instance he thought someone had done it deliberately and so hit them etc. It was a necessity to do something else at these times.
Remind me how old your DS is?
At DS's school they have an IT club once a week where they can go in and play on the computers when they have eaten. Perhaps something like this would be an incentive to eat?
Also as several people have said, he is not accessing the curriculum if they do not put strategies in place to ensure he has eaten and so has the energy to concentrate in the afternoon ( we have been through similar but with drinking but that is because of DS's phobia of school toilets).
This definately is a problem for the school if it is worded this way.
Ditto the social stuff. If your DS does not come back from lunch happy then he cannot concentrate and disrupts the class and does not engage in learning. Therefore he needs to have successful break and lunch times to enable his learning. It needs to be provision appropriate to his needs. The school need to tailor it.

Hi ya Silver,there pov is that they have 7 statemented children in school, all of which attend the lunch club, so even if ds does get a statement they are expecting he will go lunch club.

So i suppose i need to offer workable alternatives to lunch club if i want alternatives.

No they did nothing about the teasing and i have to admit to not chasing them up about it. At the moment i feel i have bigger battles to fight. I show them pictures of the massive sores ds has all over his body and the best they can come up with is "we will keep an eye on him".

If im honest, i dont think another child woud want to sit next to ds every day. If it was someone who had previously liked him, i suspect he would get on their nerves after a few days forced interaction.

Alison, my ds is 8. The difference i think is that ds doesnt cause a problem for anyone else. So school are managing, ds just sits quietly, not eating. When he goes into the playground, others take advantage of him and he just suffers in silence, he doesnt hit, he doesnt tell a teacher, he just lets them take advantage of him. He is not disruptive in any way.

School have just said put ds back into lunch club, then he will be able to eat! They will turn it around that it is me who is stopping him from accessing the curriculum, by not allowing him to go back into lunch club!

You have to point out that the lunch club is causing him emotional distress ( ie teasing) so therefore it is not appropriate unless they can stop the teasing. Also that the content is also not appropriate and see if it gets you anywhere.
It seems unbelievable that they are so obtinate - like a lot of other things I have read on here lately.