Reception auties 2018/19 - thread 2

[openupmyeagereyes]

Thanks to LightTripper for the thread title. This is the continuation of the thread for parents and carers of dc with autism in their reception year at school. Please join us if you can or, if you have dc due to start reception in 2019, feel free to drop by and ask us questions.

Thread 1

Ds won’t eat lollies (or almost anything else)

Having had several weeks of disturbed sleep (awake 10+ times a night, with as little as three hours sleep a night) DD is on night 3 of sleeping relatively well. This swing from ok sleep to total rubbish and back again seems to be her normal. Does anyone else notice this with their DC? I count myself as fortunate that this isn't every night and I feel for all who are surviving on broken nights. Hope tonight is going to be good for all!

Open ds wont eat ice lollies or ice cream or anything either, no candy floss or rock or doughnuts at the beach. He deffo doesn't take after me on that front!!

Be back on soon, just getting my little terror ready for and delivered to school

Danni...ditto with the candy floss. DD calls it "silly fluff"...all the more for me 🥳

That sounds like a lovely day jeb!

Loving silly fluff furrycat.

I think ds will pretty much only eat things with sugar in open!

Annoyingly dd has chicken pox for the second time so we will be pretty much house bound over half term. I'm not sure whether ds actually had it last time. If he did it was pretty mild so I imagine he'll probably get it at some point too.

It will definitely be an ice lollies in the garden week

Oh no, second dose of pox is very unfair! At least this time hopefully that should really be IT. I hope it's mild at least.

DD is doing well though we've had some more problems with poo. I think partly as we've all had a bit of a virus, and partly just classic end of (half) term tiredness.

Yes hopefully this will really be it with the pox!

Sorry about the virus light. Hopefully half term will sort everyone out.

Hi everyone, it’s been a very long time since I posted but I do lurk sometimes to hear how all the DCs are getting along. DS has been happy at school as far as I can work out, despite his favourite 1:1 (job share) going off sick and having a range of replacements which he has coped with really well. We have our EHCP review meeting coming up soon and I am really nervous. We had a draft report from them today and it says he’s not making expected progress in cognition and learning or in speech and communication so I am worried about what this is going to mean and will they be suggesting a different setting for him. He has coped really well in mainstream I think but the class sizes are huge and he can get overwhelmed. His speech is still hugely delayed but he has started joining two or even three words together since September which has been so amazing to see. Sorry for the rant, just needing a bit of a hand hold and to say hi

Hi hurricane! We've got our review coming up in July, so totally understand the worry.
Would you be happy for ds to go to a different setting? My ds is going to repeat reception again next year before we make a decision about whether we move him or not. Maybe they are telling you to try and get more funding/support on his EHCP.

Hi **Liv, lovely to hear from you. I didn’t realise they could repeat reception. That sounds like a good option. When did you agree to that? My DS already has 90-100% 1:1 so I don’t suppose they could get more support, but I don’t know how it works.

Hurricane good to hear from you. We have a date in July for our annual review too, I can understand your nervousness. Great that your ds has coped so well despite changes in his support. It couldn’t hurt to float the idea of him repeating reception. I don’t know how common it is in practice though.

liv sorry your dd has the dreaded chicken pox again. Hopefully she’ll only have a mild case but what a pain for half term.

Light I hope you’re all better soon. Great your dd is doing well.

Ds's school do a mid term review for all the SEN register kids in the second term. Not an official review but just making sure what targets are being met and what needs more work.

There's a little boy in ds's class with Down syndrome, who is repeating reception this year, so I thought I would float the idea in the meeting. The SENCO and teacher thought it was a good idea to give ds another year before moving him to Y1. The Headmistress has to agree to it.

Yes it's going to be quite annoying I think open!

Hurricane good to hear from you. Didn't you start the original thread that brought us all together? That sounds really good progress on speech - rather than saying he needs more 1:1 could it be that they think he needs more SALT? Or that they are trying to ensure that funding is not cut? We have had our annual review and there was quite a big difference between what had been said at parents evening and the EHC documentation e.g. verbally (throughout the year) reading ability is 'average' whereas in the report it states emerging 40-60 months.

Light and Liv bad luck with the illnesses.

We broke up for half term today. Left school earlier to go to the opticians as DS failed visual screening. TA thought it might have been because he was v distracted unfortunately though he does need glasses. The appointment was exhausting - I'm amazed that the ophthalmologist managed to get the drops in. We had watched a Topsy and Tim episode about getting glasses - was rather different to our experience. I don't know how I'm going to get him to wear the glasses

dimples that sounds exhausting! Well done for getting through it. I guess it will just be patience and consistency and hopefully he’ll get used to them quickly. I’ve no idea when ds’s visual screening is, hopefully he has inherited dh’s eyes rather than mine!

I’ve not had the best day. Ds’s class were doing a little show today, just for the class. Ds had said to me that he didn’t want to take part though I think the teacher was hoping they would all do something. She impressed on me that it was just low key and intended to be fun. Anyway, I was walking ds through the playground to his line when he suddenly refused to go any further and said he wanted to go home. It then took about an hour to get him inside and for me to leave. He was upset when I left but calmed after about 10 mins and was apparently a star all day. Not the greatest start but turned out ok though I’m not sure the teacher (who has been lovely so far) fully understands how something like this can make ds anxious even though it’s supposed to be fun and low key.

Anyway, after school the teacher wanted to have a chat about the intimate care plan and the SENco joined. I think I managed to offend the SENco by saying (via email) that I think the school should have done more to help ds last week. She maintains he doesn’t need a plan as he doesn’t have a daily requirement for one. Illness or one offs are not covered by a plan and he was given the same care as any other child. My point is that a child with autism and developmental delay needs more help than the average child. Anyway, we will need to discuss it as part of his EHCP review. EHCP states he will receive help with toileting, SENco says that’s what he got. IMO it wasn’t enough (it wouldn’t need to be specified in the EHCP if only ‘normal’ help was required) and EHCP needs to be more specific.

I’m probably massively over reacting but I’m feeling a bit down about it all. I’m glad there’s a half term break coming up.

Chicken pox twice?! I thought it was a one time deal! That’s really rough on both you and your dd. We haven’t had it yet, I keep thinking I’ll take them along to a pox play date but my friends kids never have it at convenient times!

With regards to assessments I think schools always play down children’s progress and the kid has to be very secure at the skill before they’ll say for sure they’re doing it. We found that nursery rated him much lower than we thought and questioned it, but they just said they have to be sure. The cynic in me thinks they do it to get the funding and being too positive won’t get them the support.

@hurricane it sounds like your ds’s speech is coming on really well. Progress is always positive, he’ll be chatting the house down before you know it. Is he still seen by a SALT?

FurryCat1978 ds’s sleep is up and down. Currently he’s mostly awake at 5 with an earlier start, or two, a week (4 today). Previously we’ve been through longer periods of rubbish sleep followed by a better one. There seems no rhyme or reason to it but we’ve always thought it was developmental. He tends to come out of tricky periods with new skills or just more maturity.

Half term has started here. It will be nice to have no school run.

I hope everyone is having a good bh weekend. Ds is going to the birthday party of a child in his class today so I’m quite nervous about how it will go.

He had a lengthy tantrum about the iPad early this morning but otherwise has been pretty good this weekend so far.

Yesterday afternoon we went back to the SEN session at the soft play that we attended last month. It was pretty quiet due to the bh but ds enjoyed it anyway. He did really well at initiating interaction with other children. It wasn’t always reciprocated as the other children were largely ASC too but he played with one girl for a while before she left. He seems to have turned into Mr health and safely, warning the children about climbing the slide or the netting

Oh, and he’s been waking at 4-4:30 the last 4 or 5 days, so that’s fun!

@open how did the party go? He sounds like a safety Officer in the making!

I’ve lost all control of my ds, he ran away in Tescos today and I had all the staff looking for him. He had no idea when I found him and why I was so angry. Urgh. Just exhausted!

Yes hope the party went well open. Very jealous of the SEN soft play session, it sounds great.

Ugh I feel for you Jeb. That happing Constanta seems why we ended up getting the SEN buggy.

All seems ok here. Dd is spotty but not itching too much. Ds seems fairly relaxed and happy that we are housebound. He's just discovered StoryBots on Netflix, which he LOVES. And it's pretty educational, so that's good.

This article is pretty interesting. Makes me feel less guilty about ds watching TV!
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/subtitles-on-children-s-tv-boost-reading-skills-qmxk08fcp?shareToken=801ef87e0ca717b4395e5d87622867d1

@liv that’s really interesting - weirdly my ds already asks “to put the words on” and he has one of those strange memories where he looks at a word once, is told what it is, and then that’s it, he can read it. Today he randomly read a destination on a bus which he couldn’t have known beforehand. He can’t blend AT all, and nursery are trying to get us to teach him, but frankly I’ve got enough battles on my plate and if can learn to read through his own methods then that’s fine by me. He’ll crash and burn in the y1 phonics test but that’s a load of bull anyway!

Mind you, most of the time all he wants to watch are YouTube videos of level crossings...I kid you not, just loves watching the lights and gates. He can repeat (echolalia) pitch perfect a whole series of sirens from his favourite Czech video. If he doesn’t get his diagnosis I’ll be amazed!! I’m often heard to be saying “no - we’re watching something with talking on it” in a bid to at least teach him some language!

Jeb initially ds only really liked watching things with no speaking or films/TV where the language wasn't really language (like minions). I think he felt more comfortable without proper language.

Now he's really into songs (he hated all forms of Singing and refused to listen to at all until about 6 months ago) and more wide ranging stuff. Although we do have to watch certain parts of things over and over again.