Hi everybody I am new here and have been lurking for a while but felt the need to post for some help, advice and support, I am a mum of 3, DD 22, DS20 and DS 7 - so I have been around the education block so to speak.
The current situation related to my 7yo - since day 1 we have struggled with the academic side of school, he attends a very good school with extremely good Ofsted results and the staff are very supportive as is the school community including parents.
DS has had an IEP since reception with 'issues' across the board in all subjects including literacy & numeracy. We have supported him to the best of our ability thru his infant school life and have made okay progress - in my opinion with reading, and spelling which in more recent times he has enjoyed success with.
At the end of infants I was invited to meet with the SENCO coordinator, school are concerned that DS will find Juniors very difficult as he found infants difficult enough for the reasons stated above. We met, we discussed the issues he has and we started to work on a plan to discover whether he has an individual requirements or a multitude of requirements - for example he was in the top 90 percentile for language when he started school and he is in the bottom 20 percentile at the end of year 2 - there seems little progress in his language skills and vocabulary which is the main concern - he seems to have stopped developing.
He was already known to Speech and Language Therapy as this seemed a good place to pick back up as he had a dis-fluency issue, which co-incided with good progress in reading so we picked this back up and we have just finished 2 assessments which have given some clues. SALT advised school they felt he should see EP which is happening on 17th October and school are also looking into testing for Dyslexia.
To cut a long story short, I am scared, I am scared for DS and I am scared for me and his daddy - I feel lost in the information being fed through, feel worried about the time to find to 'play games', develop skills and keep on top of this and his regular school work, I am scared he will be 'labelled' throughout his school career as both his DS and DB struggled were as they found it difficult but there was no support from outside agencies (it was a long time ago) - pleased to say that they managed to reach their goals the hard way mind both are in Uni.
I am reading lots about ADD - he has poor attention, finds commands difficult and has poor retention but I feel I am looking for a solution in this - thinking that if I know what I am tackling I can deal with it.
Since all of this started I have been scrutinizing his behavior - again as though I am looking for pointers, he is generally a good boy, nothing out of the ordinary but yesterday I lost my temper for the first time EVER with him, he ran off in Toys R Us laughing, dodging me and his dad until I got hold of him and REALLY shouted - I felt dreadful as I knew I had just lost it. I felt like I was looking at another child and that for so long I may have ignored signs in behavior that all is not well, such as day dreaming, zoning out and just being generally dis-interested in anything except the things he wants to do.
I know its a long and rambling post, I feel like I have a ball of wool, I know there is an end to the twine but I just can't begin to unravel it as I cannot find the start. Are my feelings normal/Can anybody offer supportive advice? I am not a novice as far as parenting is concerned but at the moment I truly feel like one - thanks for reading - P