Please help. Feel I’m failing son with ASD

[ConfusedSENmum]

My son is 7 and has a diagnosis of ASD and ADHD. He’s extremely bright and articulate, but falling behind academically.

He doesn’t have any one-to-one support at school and really struggles to focus on tasks, follow instructions, or persevere and finish anything. He particularly dislikes writing and at the last parent’s evening, his English book was practically empty - a couple of sentences on a page at most, difficult to decipher. The school SENCO has set targets like finishing 3 out of 5 tasks set in English per week and a couple of other things but I haven’t really seen any progress with them this year and I’m so worried. He loves learning about all sorts of things, has a very sophisticated vocabulary and enjoys school but my worry is that his inability to actually produce any work (and therefore practice skills like writing etc) mean he’ll fall further behind and it just doesn’t sit well with me because I know he’s bright enough to be flying through things and instead he’s just about scraping through. Which possibly sounds arrogant or a bit delusional but he had a Cognition and Learning assessment and they said he had the highest intelligence they’d ever come across. Again that sounds ridiculous but that was the comment passed on by his teacher verbatim.

At home he’s lovely and so good natured but it’s impossible to get him to do anything he doesn’t feel like doing. He’s always been like this and any battle of wills or attempts at incentivising him or taking away privileges just emphatically do not work. He will just dig his heels in to the point where it becomes ridiculous. So I’m pretty limited in what I can do to help - if it doesn’t seem immediately interesting he’ll just switch off.

He loves being active and doing practical things so maybe I need to focus on that more? But then I also think he finds keeping a lid on things and dealing with the social and sensory challenges at school really hard and home is his sanctuary from all that so I also try to let him have plenty of down time, when he will usually choose to play minecraft or similar.

I know I sound really intense but I just want to give him the right support so he can access his own abilities if that makes sense? But without stressing him out. Where do I even start though??

I haven’t even mentioned the social side of things which also concerns me. He has one very close friend with quite similar traits and that’s great but they get really upset with each other on a semi regular basis. A couple of things he’s said to me recently about other children have made me wonder if there’s a bit of an issue too. One boy apparently says “NO, stop!” anytime he looks at him, and another got really annoyed with him for breathing loudly (he has a ‘tic’ where he’ll exhale very loudly and quickly a lot). Can’t even remember the last time he was invited to any birthday party. But nonetheless he seems generally happy and confident, within his own comfort zone so maybe I shouldn’t be too upset about that.

He doesn’t have an EHCP and isn’t on any medication but perhaps I need to go down that road?

It sounds like you need to push the school to step up and get a proper support plan in place.

Have you contacted your local Sendiass service for free advice? They can often accompany you to a school meeting and you need to lay out all these questions and concerns with the school and get a support plan.

It doesn't sound intense of you, it sounds like your son needs support but isn't getting it, maybe because he's not causing the school any trouble?

Thanks. I'm just not sure if he's eligible for much extra support without an EHCP?

It sounds to me like he needs some level of 1:1 support in order to focus on tasks and complete them. My nearly 7 year old loathes writing, he has an EHCP with 1:1 support, his 1:1 scribes for him in all non-handwriting work. The school’s aim is to get him on to a laptop eventually, but he doesn’t have the patience for it at the moment.

What support has your Senco actually put in place to help him reach that target of 3 out of 5 tasks completed? Unfortunately in my experience you have to be the pushy parent to get adequate support. No taking things on face value or hoping the school knows best. Just a constant prodding and pushing and demanding that your child be allowed to access a full education.

I would put in an EHCP request, if the Senco is being obstructive do a parental one. If the request for an assessment is turned down, appeal it, you’ll win. Then you will get proper professional assessments of his support needs.

You are not failing your son, the school is.

The SENCO sounds bloody useless. What is the point of setting targets for something he finds difficult/impossible without putting some support in place to help him?

He is not making progress and this is not acceptable. The school has a legal duty to support children and young people with special educational needs.

www.ipsea.org.uk/how-your-nursery-school-or-college-should-help

Under section 66 of the Children and Families Act 2014, they have to use their best endeavours to ensure special educational provision is made.

Because your son has a disability, under the Equality Act, the school also has a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments. A reasonable adjustment here might be putting a scribe in place or allowing him to use a laptop.

If they can't meet his needs, you can request an EHC Needs assessment.

www.ipsea.org.uk/ehc-needs-assessments

You need an Ehcp

It's a legal document of agreed things the school HAS to provide

My 7 year old ds who has asd and adhd sounds similar to your son in some ways. Very articulate, can hold a conversation really well etc but we suspect he's dyslexic and he's left handed too, so when it comes to putting anything down on paper he really struggles the point he has in the past refused point blank to do it and become v distressed

With an EHCP you can have things on it that would help your son. 1:1 support, you may ask for additional writing tasks , some children can even have use of a tablet/iPad for some lessons so they don't need to be using a pencil. (Although he definitely needs to learn to write, it could be done at his own pace with additional support)

Keep on at the school. You will get no help unless you made your voice heard

I should add... you need an EHCP as the School can (happened to me) tell you they don't have the additional funding / cannot accommodate your child needs. Be it 1:1 support, tablets etc

If your school says they cannot meet his needs they are not obliged to accommodate him And they will no longer have to educate him. You will then have to go through the council to find him somewhere suitable.

Feel free to pm me if you wish but you absolutely must push for an EHCP if you feel your child need the extra support. Getting an EHCP isn't easy and can take months. You will need the back up to say he does need this extra support to be granted an EHCP. But keep at the school op, don't let them carry on not supporting him adequately

As everyone has said - its not you its the school. Lots of good ideas above.
In the mean time, this info from an outreach team is useful - thrrecare some tips on struggling to write for instance
freemantlesoutreach.org.uk/Resources/Independence-and-Learning/

This week he came out of school really upset because the teacher (not his usual class teacher) put his name on on the 'thinking cloud' because he didn't complete the handwriting task. I went to speak to her and she just repeated that he had to do it. She claimed he was refusing but he says it took him a while to get his pencil out (he can take ages to do things and get settled with a task), she didn't give him a chance and put him straight on the 'thinking cloud', he was very upset and then didn't take part in the rest of the afternoon's activities. The class teaching assistant wasn't in the room at the time so didn't know exactly what had happened. When we went back to speak to the teacher, he was trying to explain and said (tearfully) that "it all just went a bit wrong in his brain" - she continued to say that the teacher had left the handwriting task and he had to do it. I was very upset for him. Didn't show it as I didn't want to undermine his relationships in the school etc. Spoke to his class teacher the following day who was very nice but said he 'probably' had warnings etc beforehand and the 'thinking cloud' isn't meant to be a horrible punishment or anything. Not really the point in my view. Clearly it's meant to be a discipline method. He just doesn't respond well to things like that and the fact that he was too upset to take part in the afternoon's activities meant they completely failed to deescalate the situation. He said everyone was looking at him and he didn't like it. Totally unacceptable to take a punitive approach to something he has a recognised difficulty with!

I attended a workshop at my ds's school yesterday for adhd and it was enlightening. It's a shame teachers don't do more things like this, be more proactive to a situation where a Needs help.

Sounds to me the school have no clue how to deal with your dc. If your ds is given a task he struggles with (writing) and he knows he struggles with it, he's going to feel he can't do it and he'll put minimal effort in. And that's the same for most children but particularly with children with ADHD.

Is your dc currently under CYPS? Have you started the EHCP process? Would you consider changing his school?

I have a similar son who just turned 8. We are in Scotland so things are different but he has 2 hours of 1:1 a day and one of the things they do is scribe for him in English, otherwise he wouldn't be able to join in with tasks like "write a poem". He is also allowed to draw whilst the teacher is talking as he struggles to sit still - a small adjustment that makes life easier for everyone.

This school sounds awful OP. I'd start looking for a more supportive school before this one destroys him completely.