My DD has been round and round the system like a carousel horse for years, and finally has started to come through with some of the official paperwork that will begin helping with her education. Her primary school has known and supported her for the last 7 years and we've been happy with their support, so we have never really had that much discussion with them, but we feel the transfer to high school is going to be more of a challenge for her.
I'm wondering if it's normal for the school not to be interested in meeting with parents. Her OT has been invited to go in to talk to them, they have been sent lots of paperwork and results by the paediatrician and reports from the primary school, but we aren't part of it at all! I don't need to meet with them if it has all been covered already, but we haven't even seen what is in half this stuff, so can't tell if it's thorough.
I want to make sure they are ready to support her with the transition. She takes vastly longer to warm to new people than her peers, and we hope her friend from primary will indeed go to the same high school - she may not. It takes her about half a term to speak to a new primary teacher and that's a full time contact every day, I am not sure how long it will take before she's prepared to speak to a teacher she sees less frequently. She will most likely need to take herself to the learning support base to get out of the chaos of school, so I want to be sure she fully understands how to do that, make sure she gets enough support with settling in and finding her way about at the new school, etc.
I don't want teachers to be "tutty" with her - "you should know by now..." (7 years of primary and she still isn't sure what time the bells go, how long break is, when lunch starts, etc. so taking herself to a given classroom in response to a bell and having to know what day it is, what period that bell signals, where you should be and what you should be carrying - it's a bit much!!) or telling her off for splitting hairs, but for her there is a complete distinction between an pen and a pencil, and a teacher describing it wrongly will genuinely confuse her. Once she does begin talking to new people, it can come over like backchat when she's saying "you said pen, this is a pencil" - she's just telling them why she had trouble. She's also likely to have some trouble with being the youngest class in the school, as she is socially less mature, and often just plays with younger children, but there aren't any left any more.
She's going to need some initial help with the school lunches too. Eventually she will fall into a habit and eat the same thing each day, but at first she will have to go up to the counter and make a decision between multiple items, and she's only got an hour to do it in!
I also want to ask if she can do her novel reading for English on a Kindle so she can change the fonts, size, layout, and discreetly press on words for a definition. This hasn't been covered in any of her reports because they are all from different people and we haven't come to a final diagnosis yet. Stuff in among dyspraxia, learning difficulty, sensory processing disorders (especially auditory), a mild hearing loss, sadly they decided against assessing for autism because she "made a friend" - ONE friend who took 5 years to make and she still has a very odd relationship with!
Just these odds and ends which are a top up to the main support needs, but mostly I am curious if it's usual for children with a spectrum of additional needs to have schools who are so uninterested in the parental input. It's a very small school, so they won't be having thousands of parents to see. Maybe they are waiting for us to ask to see them!