DS embarrassed by his SEN

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Does anyone else have experience of something similar?

DS (age 12) has dysgraphia. He is in year 8 at a comprehensive. He was diagnosed with dysgraphia two years ago in his last year at primary school.

I am finding out now that he has never really come to terms with having a SEN. I didn't realise until this week, that he has been hiding it from everyone at school. The teachers know, because the learning support dept told them but all the things he is supposed to do - such as type rather than handwrite notes in lessons has not been happening because he doesn't want anyone to notice.

The diagnosis came at a difficult time because he's otherwise academically very able and the class teacher (who doubled as the SENCO) was convinced that he was just being lazy by producing barely legible handwriting and writing down very little compared to what he appeared to know. She favoured the stick over the carrot for getting pupils to do their work so she was leaning heavily on him and making his life a misery.

It was my intervention that led to his private diagnosis and the y6 teacher / SENCo never accepted it, mainly because she disputed the existence of such a thing as dysgraphia.

DS was incredibly upset at the time, but eventually things calmed down and he's been able to discuss having dysgraphia with me and the learning support dept for at least 18 months without getting upset. So, I thought he was over the embarrassment.

However, now he has some exams coming up and he's adamant that he doesn't want the extra time and looking at his notes from class, he's not really got anything that he can revise from.

Sorry its so long. Can anyone suggest how I can address this?

Been there. It was a bit younger for dc so it took a very skilled Yr 5 teacher to re-build his self-esteem.

It is quite a while ago but getting linked up info about lots of high performing people who had assorted SEN seemed to be part of it. Richard Branson for example. Actually we found that a disproportionate number of CEOs of big successful businesses had SEN.

The other thing was concentrating on the things ds was good at - judo in his case and later rugby.

My DH was great at saying that in real life he hardly writes from one week to the next - in fact he only writes to sign his name and that is illegible.

It is tough for kids to accept that they have something which puts them in a minority, but it does come. Does school have any counselling?

The other big plus for dd who has SEN but different ones, is to do the exams in a room on her own. This is a great breakthrough.

Wish I felt this was helping more
Good Luck

Thank you so much for replying!

I haven't explicitly spoken to the secondary school about it. They are very good generally, but I don't like to bother them at least until i have an idea what they could do to help.

I can see that its DS who needs to change how he feels, but he's still quite young and sometimes he needs to be led. I just don't know how to lead him.

Perversely, its sitting exams that has brought this to the surface. The school calls DS and the small handful of special needs kids out of the main hall and send them to a small room on their own to do exams. DS hates it because everyone can see that he's being singled out and he's afraid they will ask why? He wanted me to ask the school to forget about giving him the extra time, but he needs it more and more each year.

He sure will need it more and more every year, the writing load just keeps mounting up.

Is he really the only one in his year going out for extra time, or just the only one from his group of mates?

I always say that it is not ds/dd's fault that they are in a minority when it comes to writing. They are entitled to have what would be given to everyone in the school if the majority of the class happened to write spell etc the same way that they do.

I think your dc's school have probably seen this a load of times.

My dcs actually do not always need the extra time but they do need to know that it is there.

We have such burdened language like 'what is wrong with you' - and of course the answer is 'nothing'. Everyone is in a minority for something, it is just that your dc is in a minority for the way he writes and nowadays that is our main way of testing.

I wish I had a magic bullet, but I can only think of sympathetic staff and family talking through it. And putting a lot of emphasis on your dc's strengths.

Good Luck

That's hard. I know that lots of kids get called out of the main hall for exams. It's getting past that first few times then in itself it becomes the norm.

Can the school compromise? Sit at the very back corner, all others leave but he stays? He try's it for 50% of the exams? He meets you halfway?

So hard as he will regret it later but you can't get kids to see that till it's to late.

Must be a compromise somewhere in this?

I always fall back to blackmail - if you do this for me, I will let you do xyz. I know that's not great but it's the only way I could get my nt boy to do any homework. After a while he just got on with it.

ds 16 has sn
he gets to sit exams alone and gets extra time.

hes not embarrassed by that but he does get embarrassed that he cant read a clock face or tie his rugby boots/cooking apron.

Thanks for all the responses.

Ds is one of about 10 who get extra time. Its a shame that the school call out their names forcing them to walk out of the main hall, with (DS thinks) the remaining 190 children watching them go and wondering why.

I doubt the others are so interested, especially when they have an exam starting in a few minutes but DS imagines that everyone is looking at him and I suppose that's what counts.

The other issue that's come up, since he started preparing for the exams, is that he has very little to actually study from. Either he is expected to note take in class and he's not doing it or the teachers are not actually teaching the material. They all sent home study lists and there were several subjects where DS had scant or no notes to revise from on the topics he was supposed to have covered in class.

He claims in certain subjects that they never covered the topics at all, yet they are at least half the exam?? Generally the subjects worst affected are being taught by teachers who are very young, and DS thinks its their first year in the job.

DS has a really good memory (developed I think in compensation for not being able to write much down), so I think there must be at least some truth in what he is saying. However, I suspect that he's probably also guilty of not writing down everything that he's told to make note of because he thinks he can remember it.

What do I do? Contact the teachers concerned or the heads of depts or the learning support? Or leave it?

The laptop use is a big issue for us. The children at Ds's school all have ipads but only DS has a keyboard.

Sometimes, the school require the DC to use their ipads in lessons and other times they insist they close them and write on paper instead. DS has a dispensation from that because of his dysgraphia. He is supposed to type as much as he can, but he avoids it at all costs.

When he does type essays etc (at home), the quality of his work improves by at least one full level to the extent that the English teacher didn't believe that it was actually his work.

As you say, jellyhead he will not be allowed to do his GCSEs on a notebook unless he regularly uses the same thing to type in class. I've explained this all more than once to DS. He understands it, but he's 12, and he just can't imagine it being relevant to him.

He's usually very mature for his age, but when it comes to this his head is well and truly buried in the sand. The only thing that seems to matter is not standing out in any way.

What should I do as his parent? Shock him out of it? Or keep sounding like a broken record trying to get him to take responsibility for this without knocking his already fragile self-confidence, even though its been a complete failure so far?

I'd have a word with the teachers over his revision notes, they may be able to outline what topics have been covered in class and either provide notes or direct you/him to websites where he can read up. Do his individual teachers know about the dysgraphia?

I'd have a chat with the school too about how he feels about the whole thing. They might not be aware of how it can make some of the children feel, being called out of the main exam hall - I would have hated that. Maybe they can speak to the ten or so children and arrange for them to go straight to their separate exam room.

Given that the extra time and support can make all the difference as he goes through school, and as the exams get more important, I would have a quiet word and see how school can help him.

All the teachers should know about his SEN, but its possible that they don't.

I had a meeting with learning support last November when I first realised that the note taking wasn't working properly. That was when it was agreed that it was time for DS to start typing in class. Learning support said that they would tell all his teachers that he's to be permitted/ encouraged to type in class. Also teachers would be asked to give DS a copy of any slides they sue in class etc to compensate for poor note taking.

Then I had parents night a few weeks ago. I didn't see all his teachers but of those that I did, there may have been just one who actually was aware that DS has a SEN (though God knows how they missed it if they've ever tried to read something he has written!). Others said that they'd received the list from learning support but not actually got round to reading it.

So, I emailed learning support again asking them to remind the teachers again because DS isn't receiving the electronic copy of the lessons that he's supposed to get.

Then DS started preparing for the exams and he was struggling at times. I looked through his notes and he showed me what he had on his ipad and it was almost impossible to get anything from it for certain subjects. e.g. we know on 1st December the can see the correct answer for question 1 in French was (B) but we can't see the question!

I really do not want to complain, but how do you email a teacher saying "DS is not learnign in your class and he says you haven't even taught half the stuff that's in the exam"

Or maybe what DS has is all that anyone has and the DC are spending an awul lot of time pfaffing about rather than being taught?!!

Sorry to rant on but as an example DS is top set for french but he's never learned the verbs to be or to have. Or the difference between tu and vous.

I would complain tbh, or at least request a meeting with the senco. It shouldn't be that the teachers aren't aware of his SEN and the support he needs and that he doesn't have adequate resources to revise from - if they were asked to provide slides (that ought to be adequate to revise from) etc but haven't then that's a failing on their/ the school's part.

If it's the case that they've not provided any of their class with adequate teaching / resources to deal with forthcoming exams, then that's still a failing on their part and I'd still complain.

From what the teachers said at parent's night, it seems that they don't pay much attention to the SENCO i.e. she tells them stuff but they don't get round to reading it.

Maybe I should email the individual teachers? Give them a chance to reply / do something? Then if that doesn't start making an immediate difference, I should contact their heads of departments? It is possible that they are teaching the stuff in the exams and DS just isn't taking it in or writing it down. I bet they will say that he has to ask them at the end of every lesson for the slides, rather than they remember to give it to him. However, that will take us back to my OP where DS doesn't want to draw attention to his SEN.

Can I just say that very rarely post on the SN section but its been really good having people who understand to talk it through with? I really appreciate all your help.

Glad it's useful :)

I was also thinking to ask if they could put any slides / other resources on the website, or maybe somewhere on the school computer network that pupils can access. I can imagine it would be quite tiresome (as well as embarrassing) both for your DS and his teachers for him to have to ask every week.

Maybe if you have get in contact with whoever seems the most helpful, you could go with simple suggestions that aren't onerous for them and discreet for your son.

From what I describe, you'd never guess that DS's school gets great results and OFSTED gives it outstanding ratings in every category! It makes me think that I must be missing something.

Maybe NQTs get put in year 8 because its a relatively unimportant year?

The other issue that's come up, since he started preparing for the exams, is that he has very little to actually study from

My dd the same, despite the fact that she is happy enough to type in class. So I got the school to provide a full set of notes and give her copies of the text books to have at home.

Yes, I did find a MASSIVE gap between the SENCO having told the teachers and the teachers actually knowing/remembering.

And yes, after giving the SENCO a good chance, I did email each teacher direct politely reminding them that they had to provide a photocopy of a full set of the years notes in good time for revision as they were such nice people they would not want to break the law, and I was SO grateful etc etc.

I had to clock each subject in and chase some teachers.

Actually dd is pretty happy with some of the online resources like BBC Bitesize (I hope I have that right).

And I got some of the text books myself off ebay.

The school calls DS and the small handful of special needs kids out of the main hall and send them to a small room on their own to do exams.

I totally agree that a) telling the school how anxious the 'calling out' makes dc and b) asking that dc just go directly to the exam room makes all the sense in the world.

dc being anxious about being different
They need to be aware of this, both SENCO and each teacher. There will be two strands to consider

1. getting dc less anxious about being different so that as an adult he can confidently say 'I have dysgraphia so use technology more than most people'.
2. produce some techniques to help dc in the mean time such as emailing the power points/notes as they are created, and trying to minimise the attention that is drawn to him whilst quietly encouraging him when he is brave enough to eg use his laptop when he should.

Finally, the GP may have some thoughts on the anxiety. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy is mentioned occasionally on these boards, and there is something in the back of my mind about nutritional supplements. My dd was never persuaded by these.

Keep it up. If you don't ask for what dc needs, you probably won't get it. SEN in secondary school is a whole lot trickier than it is in primary, and SENCOs being ignored is par for the course.

Good Luck

Today, I've emailed the teachers of the two subjects that DS was struggling with revising most. I've asked for text book recommendations so he can do work at home and for DS to be regularly emailed the slides from lessons so that he's got something to revise from in future.

The emails were difficult to phrase without sounding accusatory because DS swears blind that he hasn't been taught some of the stuff that was in the exams, and he's neither a daydreamer nor given to lying so he may well be right.

I'll give them until next Wednesday or Thursday to respond and then escalate it to the heads of department if we aren't getting anywhere.

Then, once the dust has settled on the stuff he really struggled with, I'll email all the other teachers asking them directly to send the slides etc to DS. Maybe I am just paranoid, but I imagine the teachers are bitching to each other in the staff room if they all get emails from me at the same time!

That sounds like a sensible start, I can imagine that was a tricky one to get just right. Did you mention his dysgraphia at all?

yes I offered it as a possible reason why DS doesn't have a word in his notes about whole topics that were in the exam.
Then I said that clearly he needs the teacher to email the slides after each class (without prompting). I managed to work in a reference about how I can look at Ds's email too.

They can mutter all they like - if they don't like obeying the law, they should not be in the job.

But I never say that, I do lots of 'thank you so much' and thankyou cards, and boxes of chocolates etc etc.

It makes it harder to refuse when I ask them in my nicey nicey way whilst quietly referring to the law as in:-
'I know there are more and more of these SEN legal requirements and it must be hard to keep up, but I know you would want dd's exams to reflect his ability not his disability'

That kind of thing

Keep it up, you are doing great