Situation with tutor reached boiling point today, advice please

[claw2]

I have started a few threads about home tutor and ds not engaging with her. Ds is 9, been out of school for about a year, due to school anxiety and self harming and receiving 5 hours HT.

Ds is due to start school this week for half a day. Tutor has been trying to increase work to help him cope with demands of school day.

However, ds was previously engaging with tutor, but has now stopped due to the increase and no doubt the pressure of knowing he is going to school.

Today, I had to carry ds downstairs and he sat refusing to engage with the tutor curled up in a ball.

After half an hour, tutor came out and told me she didn't see the point of continuing and wanted to leave.

I went into the room and managed to pursued ds to engage.

Any suggestions please on how to help ds cope with this?

DS1 would struggle with the literacy task, too, claw. They use detailed planning sheets at school, but even with those he often can't change the viewpoint at all. Language for Thinking seems to address some of this, but that doesn't help you with a tutor who has no idea how to motivate or differentiate.

Oh well an afternoon at school this week has been agreed, next week professional meeting with school. I am hoping at that meeting we can agree more time at school and less time of home tuition, providing his half day goes well.

She may be cramming in the work because she's worried that now ds is going back to school she's going to be 'judged' by her line manager for the progress that ds may or may not have made while he's been with her.
He's made massive progress in actually feeling that he can go to school though.

This morning she has turned up a different tutor after speaking with CAMHS.

I prepared the motivation charts again for ds, he told me what he was finding difficult and I told him we would speak to the tutor this morning. Ds was up, dressed and waiting for tutor.

He is engaging fully with her, chatting away. He was allowed to come and get his ipod to show the tutor a particular song he is obsessed with and she is giving tokens for his chart.

Different tutor and different kid this morning just goes to show how being negative really does rub off.

You know what Claw. She's not great, but she does sound like she's trying. Did she contact Cahms off her own back?

No I told her I would phone CAMHS for some advice (as she wasn't listening to mine) I made suggestions to CAMHS, I think CAMHS could get the gist of what was happening, by the fact that ds was refusing to engage and they suggested that a phone call to tutor 'might be helpful'.

She is ok Star, is it difficult to understand ds, as we know, everyone seems to struggle with it!

He is very able, so when he finds something which should be very simple, very difficult, she thinks he is just being awkward, tries to use the forceful approach, rather than helping him with the difficulty.

Hmm. My ds is very able. I am frustrated that his schools are making him do boring hundreds, tens and units when he can add multiple digit numbers in his head, and convert imperial into metric.

But all they see is that he doesn't understand hundreds tens and units which is where the language difficulties come in. Also the language of maths isn't very motivating for him so he switches off.

A child can be very capable indeed, but not be able to demonstrate those skills consistently due to the language barrier.

As ds what 7 take away 4 is and he'll answer. As him how many more is 7 than 4 and he'll not have a clue. To then mark him as not being able to do takeaway sums isn't technically accurate, but to be fair, he DOES have to be able to answer the latter question too.

His refusal to engage, is mostly due to the tutor pushing him too much, it is difficult to get a balance of pushing ds forward and pushing too far. It then just turns into a negative circle, the more you push, the more he withdraws, the more he withdraws the further she pushes and so on. No one wins.

Today ds had positive motivation, it has broken the cycle and he has had a great day, engaged and done some work.

I could hear that she was using some of my methods, like letting ds choose which activity to do next, more concrete methods for written maths such as a bag of coins etc. AND she allowed ds to get his ipod for 5 mins and there was some laughing and some singing from ds today too!

She hasn't left as much homework, reading (which ds enjoys) and some French work. She also said to me that the work done at home wasn't so important, the priority was getting ds back to school yay!

The tutor may be 'ok' as a person but I don't think that she is at all suitable. You have tolerated her but you have been posting about her since January and it does not seem that she has made a positive contribution to either DS or you but has been a huge headache.

It is common for DC with HF ASD to have both enormous strengths and huge difficulties. A suitable tutor would believe him when he said he did not understand and present the material differently. Provided that the teachers at the school have appropriate qualifications and experience this is the way they will teach. They will not just repeat and then berate the child. This may be the strongest draw for DS - it was for DS1. The tutor is soon-to-be-past but school is the future, focus on that.

In any case, even if he were NT, it is just quite wrong for a tutor to behave towards an anxious child as if they are just being awkward or naughty. I know from experience the damage to self that this sort of attitude and behaviour has resulted in. The fact that DS1's teachers may have been 'ok' people was irrelevent.

Imagine if his disability was visible - does she also think that wheelchair users are just lazy?

She pisses me off so you deserve a medal to have put up with her this long and DS deserves to be shot of her asap!

Keep, I don't think this tutor is suitable to teach ds either. But that wasn't really her purpose. After previously being accused of fabricating ds's difficulties and being the cause of his behaviour by school and me just not sending ds to school because I didn't get what I want, a statement and me disengaging with professionals etc. Her purpose was to enforce the LA's case.

This battle wasn't worth fighting, in order to win the war.

This is what worries me, claw. First, she is the only contact that DS has had with school for most of this academic year. It would have been in his best interests to get rid of her earlier and insist on an appropriate tutor. If he had been at school and she was his teacher would you have tolerated her behaviour? The continued 'acceptance' of an inappropriate tutor does not prove that DS needs are 'genuine' (ie that you are telling the truth not exaggerating).

Second, why do you think that her purpose has changed? My LA were also attempting to use the EOTAS tutor to create a case that I was negative/exaggerating/not willing to engage etc. My data request shows an email sent from the EOTAS manager (ater I met with her) to all tutors reminding them that their only purpose was to provide an education to DC out of school not to pre-empt tribunal rulings on placement. Tutor was gone. She did not see the light though and submitted a statement to tribunal with her view that there was no problem and DS1 would be fine in m/s.

Given that you believe that the CP threats were to influence the outcome of tribunal, then the tutor, as an LA employee, and a spy has the same hidden purpose as ever - to influence the outcome of tribunal and placing of DS.

I worry that the case could also be constructed that you did not care about the quality of the tutor as long as 'you' got home tuition (ie that your priority was not meeting DS's needs) and that you don't care about the quality of the statement as long as 'you' get indy placement. (Did I mention that I am prone to paranoid wonderings?)

Keep, I don't think its any wonder we all have paranoid wonderings, given what we go through!

Yep she is the only contact that ds has, both her and her husband (manager of PRU) have been supportive of me in meetings with professionals, including SS. She has described ds's behaviour to a room full people (who have no contact with ds), while school have sat there and tried to continue down the 'don't know what mum is talking about, he is happy in school' (with the previous backing of SS)

Her and her hubby have openly recommended the indi school and really 'sold it' at meetings too and said that ms is not the place for him. She has been very 'on side' and in my opinion has really helped to turn things around. SS are now questioning why they are even involved as the matter is educational.

I think the LA were using her to try and help their case, but it has backfired

Same as they were using SS to try and help their case, this too has backfired and I now have a social worker who is very much 'on side'