Just need to ramble about it to people who understand!
DD is 10, she has an ASC (with many, many, many PDA traits) and ADHD (although I'm not sure about the ADHD...)
She is highly anxious and very very affected by sensory issues (clothing, smells and noise being her main triggers). She also gets a lot of joint pain.
She HATES school. It's noisy and smelly. The uniform drives her bonkers (so we got a 'reasonable adjustment' and she wears summer uniform most of the year with a polo shirt instead of a proper shirt if she wants to be warmer) and she is emotionally so far behind her peers that she really struggles.
I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of mornings she has gone in happily this half term. We go in early through the front door so she doesn't have to deal with the crowds in the cloakroom and most mornings she tries to stop me leaving. If I just walk away she will run after me crying. The HT has asked that I settle her as she settles faster for me and has a reasonable day.
I have had meetings with the class teacher (who also happens to be the SENCO which is worrying as I have had to do a lot of explaining about children with ASD being younger emotionally, how anxiety and meltdowns may present differently in differnt children and how DD is in sensory overload most of the time)
Last year the TA in her class was amazing. She would greet and engage DD straight away, distraction with jobs, or looking at something DD had taken in with her etc. She was proactive rather than reactive. This year the class TA is very standoffish, she will only step in if DD is already in distress and she looks at me as if I am the worst mother in the world. Her idea of 'helping' is to tell DD that she's being unkind to me, or to tell her off for growling at me.
We had the Working Together Team in last week (used to be Autism Outreach) and the caseworker was fab with DD, used drawings etc to try to get to the bottom of what DD needs to make it easier to come to school. The conclusion we came to is that there is nothing we can do (other than crappy TA being less crap) that we are not already doing. Then the WTT worker talked to me about how she was concerned that DD would not cope with Secondary school (she's currently Y5)
DD often says she wishes she didn't have to go to school and I'd love to pull her out and HE her BUT whenever she has homework and I try to help she just screams and shouts at me that she doesn't understand so I'm not sure how well we would work together.
I really just don't know what to do for the best. Underneath it all she is actually a very social little person (as long as it is all on her terms...) and I know she'd miss her friends.
Ramble over!