My heartbreaks thinking of my eldest going to school

[Beeharris]

Hi,
My 4 year old has always been slower to develop. He's never ran that well, his speech is still difficult, he's always either constipated or leaking (though he's ok with weeing) his motor skills like getting dressed are really difficult. We've had him with a consultant who can't find anything physical, and speech and psysio therapy.

They don't seen to bother looking at special needs before school, (maybe there's nothing they can do before that)

But my heart breaks when I see him with other kids like yesterday when he was trying to chat to them (he luvs being with people) and they just didn't want to (not there fault I no)
At swimming he looks about 2 years behind the others he struggles to listen to the teacher, and he has loads of strange dislikes.. He won't walk on a floor in bare feet if there's "bits" (bathroom or swimming) he won't have buttons on his shirt, or a wet shirt in any way and various others.
I'm so worried about him, especially going to school and not really being able to control his pooing.

I’m confused by your sentence about not doing much about special needs before school. That hasn’t been our experience at all but we have had to really push for everything. We have a son aged nearly 6 with autism and learning disabilities. When he was 2.5 we applied for dla which enabled us to do more / buy more things to stimulate him. By 3 we had applied for an ehcp for him through our local council (applied ourselves as we knew he would need one) and we started to look at suitable schools for him. He now attends a specialist school for children with autism and is very happy there (it’s 25 miles away and he goes in a taxi with an escort there and back and seems really happy- he loves the escort).

When he was at nursery we made sure he would have 1-2-1 support (rang them and had a meeting and showed them the reports etc we had).

I think you really need to chase and push for all these things unfortunately.

www.ipsea.org.uk/what-you-need-to-know/ehc-plans

www.cerebra.org.uk/help-and-information/guides-for-parents/dla-guide/

Thank you.
I guess cos the consultant said he wouldn't be diagnosed before 5, and he's never had a problem being stimulated. It's like he's been so slightly out of step for his whole life, but nothing that would stand out as very worrying until recently when the other kids seem so much more ahead.
I guess if it had been more so I'd have pushed but it felt that what they'd been saying was right

I understand, I do think that if you are now noticing a definite gap between your child and others of the same age that now is the time to apply for an ehcp and get the ball rolling so that support is in place at school.

Have you had a chat with his new school's senco? It might help (hopefully) to make you feel more at ease.

My child was on the waiting list for diagnosis through reception and the school said diagnosis or not, their job was to differentiate to every child. And my dc had a great reception year. There will be a wide variety of kids there, and a wide variety of play based activities.

Sounds very very similar to my DD2... coordination, speech, constipation and some sensory problems. I was in your situation last year and in the end I actually changed her school choice at almost the last minute because I just couldn't see her ever fitting or having her needs met in the local school we were originally going to send her to.

She started at an out of catchment infant school, and I was absolutely bricking it about the soiling issues in particular... but the routine of school, coupled with us just hitting a sweet spot for her medication meant she's had minimal accidents at school to be honest - we've had periods before holidays usually when she's tired and ready for a break or bugs are lingering where she's regressed - but generally the structure of school has really helped in that regard. School were very on-board with it as well though - fine with changing her if needed, generally OK (I've had to remind gently a few times when they've got busy and complacent about it) with toilet sits at certain times of the day, and it honestly hasn't been the nightmare I thought it would be - especially after she contracted pneumonia this time last year (mid heatwave) which basically threw everything we'd achieved toileting wise back into nappies as she was bed bound on oxygen for a good week or so!

She's not fitted in amazingly socially in school - but I think the bulk of that has been the fact that the class she went into had very very cliquey girls who'd been to the school nursery together and all the incoming girls struggled with it - it's the one part I think school really did drop the ball on and possibly used her other problems as some kind of "justification" for her being left out and excluded slightly. She's been fine though - very much of the mindset that she'd love to play but if not... fuck it she'll go find a better offer bless her!

Our school is very very very good though - they've pestered for referrals from their end and once you've got the school flagging up concerns as well - people seem to take you a load more seriously. We're now pushing toward a diagnosis of dyspraxia, verbal dyspraxia to explain her speech articulation problems and some sensory problems in there too (touch seems to be particularly one where she's undersensitive to it). They've put in small group interventions for speech articulation with her and a few other kids (we're on the waiting list for SALT but it's bonkersly long here) and she's come on massively since she started - to the extent she flounced up the stairs having a right strop-on the other night and my thought was "fucking hell that complaining is bloody clearly spoken"

I don't think she'd have done as well in our local school she was originally heading towards - and I had the continence nurse out this morning and she knows the local schools very well and she was definitely of the same opinion that I'd hit the jackpot where we ended up sending her too. She loves it there - got the class award the first week there for her amazing attitude to everything and she's absolutely blossomed... still can trip over her feet in an empty room and falls off chairs on an hourly basis, but you can understand all her speech now, she's making headway with the friendship thing (I'm not unduly concerned - the school mix the classes up for September and there's lots more friendship skills support in Y1), and she's gone from being judged as nowhere near on track for expectations back in November (although she's deceptive - comes across as scatterbrained as anything but is incredibly sharp minded really) to being on track for almost everything and the stuff she's slightly under for (physical based stuff mainly) is intentionally being judged very harshly by her teacher to continue to reinforce to the professionals that there ARE these problems so bloody well take her seriously (I'm fine with this - I know full well why she's assessing her that way).

She is very very very loved by all the staff and older kids in the school as well I'll add - a real favourite of loads of them.

Have you applied for echp? If he has needs like soiling and needing changed he's going to need possibly a 1:1 and that kind of care detailed. You can apply yourself without a diagnosis