Auties transition to Year 1 - thread 3

[LightTripper]

This is the continuation of the thread for parents and carers of autistic children in reception year at school, going into Year 1 in the autumn. All welcome (also parents with older or younger children who want to ask questions or share their wisdom!)

Welcome!

openupmyeagereyes Whoop whoop to your DS being a few minutes early two days in a row! Those circuits must be a great carrot to get him in. Ouch at waking up at 2:30 though, hope he is ok at pick up and has a better night sleep tonight. Re pull ups, we find the Pampers the best out of the lot but usually still leaks a little bit unfortunately. Huggies are to narrow, Sainsbury's own brand used to be quite good but also seems too narrow somehow. Mamia have changed their design so no good for us. DD will only poo in pull up so we go through quite a few. We have even tried Co-ops own brand, ok, on par with Sainsbury's.

Harley the bit about the other parents being supportive almost brought a tear of happiness to my eye (sleep deprived and easily moved today). That is so lovely. Fantastic that DS got a party invite too! Hope your Ds has a good day and can change for PE with some help (they should help really!).

We've had some success with lunch support. Although they haven't got a 1:1 for DD, she is going to sit on a separate table with three Y1 boys who have 1:1 support at lunch. So there will be 4 children and 3 adults at the table. I am happy with this as it sounds like the boys are lovely, she will be under supervision and it will be nice for DD to know where she sits each day. So far she appears to have picked an empty table after collecting her lunch, and is then gradually joined by some of the older children. No idea why she hasn't been sitting with anyone from her own class. I think she just does her own thing!

Harley it’s great that your ds got a party invite and that other parents are being supportive. Hopefully you can soon make some headway with the school too.

Little that sounds like a good compromise for lunchtime. Hopefully it will be a nice social occasion for your dd too.

Ds slept for nearly an hour and a half across lunch (they did call to tell me he’d fallen asleep) and then spent the rest of the afternoon outside. A bit of a write-off of a day really. Hopefully he’ll sleep better tonight and stay awake tomorrow!

I got some Drynites today which I don’t think we’ve tried before. They claim to be the #1 nighttime pull up so we’ll see. My Tesco didn’t stock Pampers size 7 pull ups, only nappies and the size 7 nappies were for the same weight as the size 6 pull ups... amazon has size 7 pull ups so if the Drynites are no good we’ll have to try those.

I have read the first chapter of Uniquely Human and so far it’s great.

Not a good day. Ds said today he poos alot at school as being around people makes him nervous and going to school makes him feel like hes in prison.

Oh Harley that’s sad, your poor ds.

Do you have a meeting booked with school and SENDIASS yet?

A better night here, he slept until 5. The Drynites are a bit noisy (crunchy).

@openupmyeagereyes we are just awaing on the incontinence nurse for dates they can do.
Ds also said that his teacher said yesterday that he needs to stop taking his medication he said he might do to make her proud but school are still saying its him saying it not them.

They seem to not understand echolalia. Maybe they need some autism awareness training.

@openupmyeagereyes funnily enough hos incontinence nurse said the same thing.

Harley what is your GP like? Just thought that if they heard what effect the lack of support from school is having on his physical and his mental health, then they might have some suggestions on what to do next. If your DS is that unhappy then they might suggest that some major changes need to be made for him to be able to attend. I'm absolutely appalled by their treatment of him and telling him not to take his medication is extremely unprofessional of the teacher and should be brought up with the GP too. I think it's against teacher's code if conduct actually. I happen to be a (hospital) teacher (although be it very part time) and we have very strict guidelines on what we can make comments on re medical issues as we are not qualified to to so. and

What is your area like for schools? So... I'm just going to come out with this as a thought (last resort maybe) - are there other schools within a reasonable distance that may be able to support your DS better?

Openupmyeagereyes nice if the school to let him nap! Glad he had a better night and slightly less early morning. We haven't tried Dry Nights, light get some... Need to look up that book!

Forgot to update on DD, so the lunch plan has slightly changed... She's now not going to sit with the boys but apparently all the staff are now aware of the choking rusk and should keep an eye on her but not actually sitting with her. Not sure how I feel about this. DH was quite upset by all this last night and was wondering what the point of the transition meeting was when nothing has actually been put in place as a result of the information shared and discussed. Feel like I'm banging head against wall!

I'm really sorry to hear about DS too Harley. I know you can't always take what a 5yo says as gospel, but if the teacher really did tell him to stop taking his medication (or even imply it to be honest) that is shocking.

Have you already done EarlyBird or EarlyBird+? If you do it then you can get a place for somebody from school to go (though I guess that would rely on school releasing somebody!!). We are starting next week and one of DD's class TAs is going to come along, which I'm hoping will really help them to understand/manage her anxiety about things. It sounds like they could really benefit from some training (or just information). In our area it's a very long waiting list, but might be worth looking into whether there is anything available that the school could do - or just print off some info about e.g. encopresis and echolalia for the school (do a few copies so his teacher and TA and other staff can have a copy each).

e.g. maybe this page from ERIC (might be worth calling their helpline to see if there are materials they can send out?): www.eric.org.uk/healthy-bladders-and-bowels-at-school

and maybe this one or something similar on communication/echolalia (there is also some good stuff on the Hanen website): www.autism.org.uk/about/communication/communicating.aspx

I would second what open said about maybe looking at other schools. If you Google your local authority and look for "EYFS SENCO" or "KS1 SENCO" (sorry, I can't remember what year your DS is in!) hopefully they should have a local authority SENCO who might have ideas about what schools would be a good fit. Ours was very useful when we were looking into possible schools for DD. Hopefully DS's school will pull their socks up and get informed/educated about his needs, and start to be more supportive once they get input from the incontinence nurse and SENDIAS etc. but it may be worth having a Plan B or at least knowing what your options could be? Your DS sounds such a sweet boy and so eager to please, it's just heart breaking that they aren't supporting him better.

That's annoying LittleSwede - do you know why the plan has changed? It sounded quite neat if she was going to be sitting with kids a similar age who also have additional needs. In any case they shouldn't really propose one thing and then do another. Might be worth putting some of this in writing (not in a ranty way, but in a concerned way - and then you have a written record if needed later e.g. to support funding the provision of a dedicated TA).

Managed to get DD into school a bit earlier today and drop off went better, so I must get into the habit of doing that. She's such a sweetheart and does so well but she is just very anxious.

She's going on her first play date solo after school today, being picked up by her friend's mum. Her friend's mum is lovely and DD seems totally chilled about it but I am nervous!! I'm sure I wouldn't have wanted to do that at 5... I was very meek, DD is so much more outgoing in some ways - but then crumbles if she has to walk past the line-up for class in the morning if she's still dropping her bags in the classroom when the bell goes! Brains are funny old things.

@LittleSwede the gp i usually take ds to was brilliant but has retired now. I havent taken him to another one yet but will be doing soon.
Also i don't think the change for your dd sounds good if shes choking risk she needs a adult there when eating. Also we were the same with transition and the school doing none of what was talking about.

@LightTipper i have done both the early bird and early bird + and cygnet courses for my eldest ds who has autism adhd and anxiety. They wouldn't put me on them aagin for younger ds.

Ds is supposedly in the best mainatream school for sen in the area according to La Sendo and senco.

We today got given a intermit care plan as apparently last years was gotten rid of as he was fully toilet trained 🤦‍♀️.
It says
Area of need : Toileting support, Currently on medication to deal with compaction, Loose stools- 5-6 times a day, wetting 5-6 times a day, struggles with self car-cleaning himself afterwards, telling staff when he needs to go and recongise urge.

Frequancy of support: parents have provided a watch to build toilets breaks into school day. 11am, lunchtime and mid afternoon. As required.

Thing is they are still addiment its his medication when we did the actual decompaction he never sooled that much when he was on 12 sachets a day he was doing it 4 to 5 times from getting up tongo to bed not in 6 hours. He has had one wee accident at home, grannies house and the church clubs he attends once in 3 weeks. Pooing is usauuoy poo in pull up once up then clean till gettring to school ( i have this week checked him just before we have got to his classroom door). After school so from 3.15 till bed at 7.30 we have had one poo 2 yesterday. Weekend last Saturday 3 across the day sunday 2 and 1 poo in toilet. It all doesn't add up! I am confused.

@LightTipper i really hope your dd has such a wonderful time at her friends tonight and it all goes well.

Love the 'celery circuits' open. Hope they are making a difference to your ds.

Dimples I'm in awe, considering how difficult I find one ASD child and two fully functioning ankles! Hope it all goes ok. I agree with open, whatever bribery necessary.

Littleswede he had about three bites of the sandwich. Not sure marmalade is really his thing. He insists I make him a sandwich to have under his hat each evening.
That is frustrating about lunch. Did they give you anything in witting about it?

Hope your ds is feeling better Harley. This whole situation must be very confusing and stressful for him.

Hope your dd's play date goes well today light! I think the anxiety is the worst thing to witness for me. Poor ds was frantic this morning but then had a good day apparently once at school.

So ds has had his first ever whole week at school. He was pretty wound up last night and this morning. He has a different 1:1 on Friday who is also brilliant and she was really pleased with him today. Apparently he was telling her how box and bear were spelt, so she got him some chalk and he wrote the words on the playground floor (thanks 'word world'!).
Then I had a complete nightmare getting him home. So much so I had to get DH to come and help. When we got back I turned all the lights off, closed the curtains and after about 15mins under the weighted blanket he rallied and we had a nice evening.
It's getting much harder to explain to dd why sometimes ds needs to have things his way. She very kindly let him watch Paddington twice even though it was her turn to choose.

Harley why would the school tell a child to stop taking medication prescribed by (I presume) a doctor? The mind boggles.

Little this is the second time he’s fallen asleep at school after a bad night. They are very good. Why did the lunch plan change for your dd?

Light I hope your dd’s solo play date went well.

liv I’m glad you managed to calm ds down after school. It’s great your dh is close enough to help when you need it.

Word World sounds interesting. If anyone has any other good programmes or apps then please do share.

I think ds has had a decent week at school (yesterday aside). I haven’t seen his teacher for over a week as ds refuses to go in via the line and he’s always the first one out at the moment. He was in bed early tonight, almost fell asleep on the sofa.

@open the school are addiment they haven't but the way ds is saying it is too adult for it to come from him. Also when the head phoned me on tuesday she was going on about them having another child on decompaction who was loose because of the laxido ds isn't on a decompaction now that was all done over the summer. Hes now on his maintenance dose of 2 sachets a day. Plus the medication doesn't explain why hes wetting all the time.

Ds attacked a little girl today. Apparently she was being bossy and he got angry hes never done that at school before.

Harley How did the school handle it? I hope you’re ok.

@openupmyeagereyes when i picked him up they said he had a upset with a girl today got angry but they had calmed him down. We had my friends for tea and her little girl is in ds class ans she told me ds hurt little girl today ds hung his head in shame and said sorry mummy i did. Ds then said teacher told him its ok we get angry sometimes so not sure how much the school have actually done as they told me bare minimum as always.

Harley if it was serious I’m sure they would have asked you to come in and discuss it fully. I hope today goes better.

Another early start here, 3:20. Over the weekend he has stirred at similar times but then gone back to sleep, not today 😴

I’ve definitely noticed developments in his language this weekend. He also did really well with his writing homework which I modified for him. The task was to write some sentences with adjectives. I wrote the sentences and made the adjectives larger letters for him to trace and he did them so well, his pencil control has improved so much. To NT parents it might be a small thing, to me it’s huge.

That sounds stressful Harley but as the others said, and crap as they are with communication, I'm sure the school would have told you about it if they saw it as a serious problem. And moreover, doesn't it kind of prove the point that he needs more support at school, and this isn't "just" a toilet problem?

Sounds like DS did a great job on the homework open! When you look at the homeworks they set they are trying to do so much at once - e.g. fine motor skills, reading/phonics skills, problem solving skills: there is no reason why our kids can't do homework that reflects some of those elements just because they are struggling with others, but if the school won't differentiate I guess all we can do is try to do that ourselves.

It turns out DD's school is actually differentiating (which we found out because DD and her friend who came over on Thursday had different homework: DD's asked for 1 sentence and her friend's asked for 5!!) I'm cringing because my first (internal) reaction was a slightly huffy "why isn't DD getting the stretching homework?" even though I don't even believe in homework at primary school and when I use my rational brain I am pleased that DD is getting homework that's at a level she can do and enjoys doing! But still, there is a little lizard brain in there wanting to compare etc. It's eye-opening really, when you catch glimpses of your most ridiculous self!

Slightly tough but overall nice weekend here. A lovely old friend visiting who DD gets on very well with, so all good really, but DS still potty training and had several accidents, and DD quite highly strung/controlling (e.g. got in a tizzy about a little "seasons" project she had decided to do on Friday night and had a huge cry when we were trying to get her to just stop and go to sleep, and she wanted to keep going but was getting frustrated it wasn't going how she wanted it to). And then swimming she got quite frustrated and wouldn't try stuff she had happily done last weekend, and at the playground later she got quite obsessed with collecting bark chippings which she hasn't done for ages and I always think is a bit of a sign that she is a bit overloaded and needs some sensory input.

I think she was just massively overwhelmed from the week. Thinking about it she had something after school every night but one, which was just nuts really - parenting fail! And then I got her to do her reading book on Friday night to get it out of the way - parenting double-fail!! I think we just needed to step waaayyyy back and let her decompress. We had an early bedtime for them both last night and she slept in quite late this morning and then had a nice drop off, so hopefully that will have reset her week to a better place.

First Early Bird this Friday. Hope it's good!

DD's playdate was good although when I asked her if she had fun she said she did because her friend had good toys! Apparently her friend wanted to play tennis and DD didn't so I'm not sure how much they actually played together, but hey ho - at least she went and hopefully her friend had a nice time too. They said hello to each other this morning so no hard feelings it seems in any case! The one on Thursday sounded like it went a bit better (but maybe because her friend played what DD wanted to! Although apparently her friend also wanted to play mummies and daddies, which DD did - and she would never do that of her own volition normally - so does suggest she is willing to do her friends' ideas sometimes).

Anyway, sorry, that was a bit of a ramble. Hope everyone else had nice weekends and enjoyed the sunshine on Saturday.

I spoke to ds' 1-1 this morning about his homework. I just said, ds doesn't understand this and it's beyond his capability and she said yes I know. We just sent it home and thought you would do what you could (but since there had been no mention of this I assumed they expected it all to be competed - which wouldn't of at all been possible and they know this) hence why I mentioned it today as I was a bit confused.

He has 5 tasks to complete by half term, writing stories, making things etc etc that's on top of all the other stuff.

Anyway, whichever bits I leave is fine apparently, So that's all good.

I'm really shocked how much is expected of yr 1 though, not so much ds as it isn't really expected of him and if we complete any it's a bonus, and I've been told to just do as much as we can with him, but I'm talking about the other nt kids who don't get the choice.

Even ds has to read a reading book every night from his book bag, log on to the school reading scheme and read 1 book per night from there, do spellings and handwriting every night and then the half termly topics (5 topics this time and we have 3 weeks to get it in - although it's that we can pick and choose from for ds) then he has a phonics book to be done 3 times per week which is coming home tonight and that's all for a child with learning difficulties! So god knows what's expected of ordinary kids at his school

Some of these kids have only just turned 5. Too little in my eyes. School all day, then home to do homework when they are exhausted! they have to eat play have a bath etc etc.

I was speaking to my friend this morning her son is 10 in yr 5, she said it's ridiculous by the time they get in from school and have had tea and a bath he wants to go to sleep not sit doing homework all night and she was telling me some of the homework he has, even my friend doesn't understand it.

What happened to letting kids be kids? Wasn't like this when I was at school, I don't even remember doing homework really?

danni I agree, that level of homework is bonkers and there’s no way I’d be able to get ds to do it all, even if he was capable. I’m glad you’ve spoken to them about what is and isn’t expected but even so, it still seems a lot.

Light ds’ homework book wasn’t in his book bag on Friday so I did it based on the class sheet on the website and tried to fit it to something manageable, but relevant, to him. I added in a bit of colouring in for extra fine motor skills practice. It could be his book has a completely different activity when it comes back today! I just want to try and get it done over the weekend so it doesn’t interfere with the work I want to do with him during the week so I jumped the gun.

I do feel ours is a manageable level though we are not yet going to be working on spelling (I don’t think) and I’m sure that takes a fair bit of time.

With your dd’s class maybe each child has different homework? Easier to manage with a smaller class I’d have thought. Also, it’s possible the other girl needed more practice than your dd, hence more lines?

I think the other girl is a bit older, so was in the more advanced group in reception (they split them in 2, I think largely so the older ones didn't get bored while the younger ones caught up: as the older ones would have been doing phonics in pre-school for best part of a year).

So it could just be age. Or maybe they understand that although she's capable DD is super-tired by the end of the day? Actually it will be interesting to talk to the class TA at the Early Bird course as he may have some insight on that - if he's allowed to share it!

Our nanny actually said that DD and her friend were working at about the same speed, so I think she told DD's friend to just do one sentence too (not sure how that will have gone down with her parents ). But honestly in my rational mind I like having a little bit of homework so I know roughly what DD is doing, but that goal is just as much achieved if she brings home one sentence to do as 5 so I'm happy!

DD's spellings are so far very formulaic. So last week all the words had "ll" in. This week they all have "ss". So I think that makes it more manageable even though it's a long list. Maybe DD will learn to do her s's the right way round this week . You never know.

But I agree danni it seems a lot. And as you say, I worry more about when they get older: it is already something like half an hour a night if we did it all properly, and I wouldn't have thought kids should have more than that before they get to secondary - but I guess if they already have that at 5 maybe they do? Or maybe it just shifts from spellings and reading to bigger bits of work that address broader skills.... anyway we'll see.

I did overhear a parent in DD's class talking about all the sports that his son did in the week and asking to be given less and the school seemed very open to it (private schools for you), but it does go to show they can't think it's really that critical. I suspect in the private sector the volume of homework comes as much from demanding parents wanting their kids to be pushed as any belief from teachers that it really helps....

Argh! Typed up a long message then lost it!

We have a spelling list for the term today. There are 106 words on it which amounts to 7/8 per week between now and the end of term.

Since ds cannot yet read, nor write all letters, I am taking it as for information only at this point...