Primary school auties: summer and the new academic year - thread 7

[openupmyeagereyes]

New thread.

This is the continuation of the thread for parents / carers of autistic children / children with additional needs. Most of us are parents of children in year 1 / year 2.

Links to old threads

Thread 1 - www.mumsnet.com/Talk/special_needs/3080753-DS-with-ASD-starting-school-Sept-2018-I-am-feeling-overwhelmed

Thread 2 - www.mumsnet.com/Talk/special_needs/3451020-Reception-auties-2018-19-thread-2

Thread 3 - www.mumsnet.com/Talk/special_needs/3628263-Auties-transition-to-Year-1-thread-3

Thread 4 - www.mumsnet.com/Talk/special_needs/3748449-Primary-school-Auties-into-2020-thread-4

Thread 5 - www.mumsnet.com/Talk/special_needs/3953023-Primary-school-auties-summer-and-beyond-thread-5?pg=1

Thread 6 - www.mumsnet.com/Talk/special_needs/4166833-Primary-school-auties-spring-2021-and-beyond-thread-6?pg=1

There are some lovely PDA fb groups too.

Ds got star of the week and brought home a certificate 😍

Woohoo @danni0509!!! Go your DS!!!
My last day at work in current job, went in to clear out desk and had zoom farewell party ha, start new job on Monday eek!

danni that’s FABULOUS!!!! Well done ds

Magrat I hope it was nice to see everyone, even if on Zoom.

Ds went in for two hours today and had a ‘great’ morning apparently. Such a nice way to end the week.

Brilliant news danni!!! So pleased for you and ds.

Great that he had a good morning open.

Good luck with the new job magrat.

Ds has forest school and yoga today, so I'm interested in how he's going to be when he gets home. He seems super happy to go to school so I'm hoping this continues for a while! Must be something in the air with all this good behaviour.

Forest school and yoga sounds like a fab Friday liv, how was he?

danni was ds proud of his certificate? Did you get any more feedback from his teacher?

Apparently he was pretty unsure about the forest school open but I'm sure he will get used to it as they are now doing it every Friday.

We had a 4.50am start today, ds does seem to wake up at about 5am everyday now.

I just read a fiction book called 'can you see me' about a girl with PDA. It was coauthored by a writer and an autistic woman who based her part of the book on diary entries she wrote when she was younger. I thought it was really interesting having a first person description of PDA behaviours.

I also just watched the film of 'the reason I jump' which was very beautiful. There was a scene with one of the boys running through these light corridors. We managed to find it on Google and apparently it's a touring thing. Hoping to take ds one day as I think he would love it! www.architects-of-air.com/

Oh no to another early riser liv. It’s something I wish I could desperately change about ds! I hope he gets out of the habit for you.

Open one of his class teachers emailed Friday afternoon and said that Monday & Tuesday wasn’t great (he kept turning the taps on and trying to climb into the sink etc - I personally wouldn’t say that was the worst behaviour tbh especially in a special school but hey ho, also throwing objects which I agree that’s not acceptable) but Wednesday / Thursday / Friday she said he was better / calmer and did approx 20 minutes work each day and she put a smiley face (which obviously by that they were thrilled about it, me.. not so much, 20 minutes? Is that a really high standard?! Because I’m not overly impressed)

Ds hasn’t been very well behaved this weekend, we went for a walk today (in the rain) ds see a really BIG puddle and decided to jump in it, fine, not the end of the world, until he laid down in it and rolled around so he was SOAKING wet through and then wouldn’t not get up out of the puddle, me and Dh were so embarrassed everyone driving past staring and we couldn’t get him up, he soaked me too, i had to strip him off and practically put him in his car seat naked to drive him home.

On a positive note I’ve just done a reading book with him (from that recent set we got open) he chose a gold level 9, ‘The sleepover’ and he read it really really well.

Great reading danni, we haven’t started on the gold level yet, I still have the purple ones in the trug that I keep his reading books in. The puddle debacle sounds excruciating. At the moment ds hates getting even a drop of water on his clothes and there have been a number of times he’s insisted on taking his top off when he gets in the car. And his shoes… 🙄

Re the 20 mins, I’m assuming that it’s more than he’s been doing to date so is progress?

liv thanks for the reminder about the reason I jump film. Was it sad at all?

Good work on the reading danni. Sorry about the puddle!

There were a couple of bits I found sad open but it's generally a very positive film.

We had an ok weekend, another early start today.

We are still reading purple open, ds just chose a gold one last night so thought I’d let him try it.

Ds hasn’t had a very good morning at school, he flipped a table over and was being aggressive and they said he had lost his suprise tomorrow, the assistant head told him this then complained to the taxi driver about him (why carry it on into a new day? Instant sanctions / consequences! Plus he doesn’t like ‘suprises’ he doesn’t know what they are so if it’s not something he’s thinking of then your suprise is shit to him, he doesn’t know your suprise isn’t the same as the suprise he has in his mind! So always causes trouble so we don’t use the word suprise if we can help it)

The driver said the assistant head was moaning about ds in ear shot of ds. Why moan to a taxi, why not ring me? The taxi drops the school in it all the time…….

danni I agree. Any punishment, if at all, should be immediate and each day should be a fresh start. Really poor to give him a consequence the next day, especially one he won’t really understand.

liv glad you had a good weekend.

Ds is still in two hours this week, at my request. He went out for play time but otherwise was in the library with the TA reading and doing play doh. So although he’s in, he’s not in the classroom much. I wonder if we’ll hear from the new school in a couple of weeks?

Can I ask a question that’s been playing on my mind.. feel free not to answer if you don’t want to…

When I looked round a SS the Head said ‘there are children here who will never speak and who will never be able to write their name’. In contrast in a Unit we looked around the Head said ‘we have many children who join us who are not speaking but none of them have left (aged 11) not been able to speak…’. She then relayed some positive stories but qualified it with ‘I’m never saying never but it hasn’t happened yet.’

Would this put you off sending your DC to a SS like the first? Our DC are obviously all quite young at the moment and call me a fool but given that he’s only the age he is I have to think that he will one day he will do all of these things and never want him to be in a place where the staff just assume/ take for granted that he won’t? And then stop trying.

Do you think the same about your DC in the areas where they currently have challenges (as in that they can overcome them) or would you be happy for someone to make the statement based on how they are now at 6/7/8 that they will ‘never’ be like that? This is where I’m nervous about a SS where he’s just lumped in with a group of children who are assumed to never be able to do x as they aren’t doing it at present (as opposed to the school applying a million strategies to get them there and always believing that they will?).

Sorry I’ve not said that very well…..

Carrie I was massively put off by a ss, that everyone raves about, because the headteacher told me that as long as the children can communicate and swim by the time they leave then they've done a good job (it goes up to 19). I know with support that Ds has a ton of potential so that wasn't enough for me.

When I found the ss he's in now I was bowled over by how much they expect their children to achieve and because it is autism specific it is catered completely towards his needs rather than for a range of diagnoses. The ambition they have for the children was the main selling point for me.

carrie without any other context that statement alone would not necessarily put me off. The children who are able to attend a ms unit will have very different needs to some of those attending a special school which, as liv says, caters for a wide range of children, some of whom that may well be the case for if they have significant learning disabilities? I would be asking what methods the school uses with the children to encourage communication and to make sure that each child reaches their potential, and then see what I thought about their ethos and approach.

I personally think my ds absolutely has the ability to overcome some of his current challenges and to learn coping strategies for others, because he's changed so much already. I'm also aware that other challenges will surface as he grows and that progress isn't always linear.

I understood what you meant Carrie.

Ds school have quite a lot of non verbal children, there are 2 x 9 year old children in ds class who are completely non verbal and they communicate by signing. Ds says they don’t love him because they don’t speak to him, but obviously he doesn’t understand. I was wondering to begin with if it was right to put a very verbal child amongst children who were non verbal because selfishly of me i thought that would hold ds back, but then now I realise, they may learn skills off ds but ds will likely learn more from them, for starters they are all better behaved than ds, they can all use sign language which they are teaching ds, they all play nicely together something else ds can learn and they are just like ds in that they are different and none of them give a shit about it. When I did that 2 initial weeks dropping him off and picking him up his class were in the yard that you walk past and I could hear those autistic sounding noises and I literally couldn’t tell which one was ds they were all doing the same! So he’s deffo in the right place in those respects.

The only thing is, and I can’t speak for all special schools when I say this, but for ds’ they don’t seem to ‘stretch’ him iyswim. He gets really easy work and I know he’s so much more capable. I see pictures they send home of things he’s been doing and it’s counting in 1’s, 2’s, he’s been able to do all that for a long time..

What I don’t know is if he’s showing his potential at school. I don’t know what he’s like in school.

The other thing that put me off a bit is on there ofsted i can’t quite remember exactly now because it was a while ago I looked, but it said something like by the end of year 6 ‘most’ children can count in 2’s & 5’s or it quite possibly could of been end of year 11. Ds was at that level year 2.

Each child’s work is tailored to them but if that’s the case why is ds doing work he already knows? But then like I said, he may not be showing his potential, hard to guess and they have him for such a short amount of time they don’t really see him enough.. I genuinely don’t know if ds is in the right school, as long as he’s happy for now then that’s what matters but i often think I’ve made the wrong decision but what I do know is he should of never of been in a mainstream school so at least that’s out the way with.

Ds made a friend at school yesterday, he joined ds in ds little classroom or cage as me and Dh call it with ds and ds 1-1.

They did their work together, then they shared snack together & at break time was both digging for worms. How sweet. I was trying to ask ds some questions last night about it and he said ‘stop questioning me I don’t like it when you always ask me’ Ok ds, noted! 😂

liv what an inadequate expectation for a head teacher to have. Are they still at the school?

What sort of things do you think your ds' school does differently to ms? I'm curious to know in practice what the learning might look like at this new school should he go.

I had a protracted 30 minute drop off this morning but in the end ds was happy to let me go. He did spend some time in the classroom yesterday but I just don't feel like he is part of the class given how much he's been out of it over the last 18 months.

danni ds rarely answers questions about what happened at school. It's like trying to get blood out of a stone!

That's lovely about ds's friend danni! Ds never tells me about school but to be fair neither does NT dd!

I'm not sure if she's still there open. It was actually an out of borough school, but highly recommended. It just definitely wasn't the right fit for ds.

Open Last year Ds was in a class that mainly focussed on attention autism and emotional well-being. This year he's moved classes to a more academic timetable. So in a week he does: performing arts, ICT, forest school, rhse, maths, English, science, pe, a focus on communication skills and one enrichment afternoon (where they do things like yoga).
So I think the main difference from ms is the additional time spent on emotional well-being and communication.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences that’s so helpful. DSs Head (who I love so much) asked if he could speak with one of DSs therapists and I said ok. The therapist later said the Head had called him and asked what he thought DS could achieve. The therapist responded (didn’t tell me what he said) but the Head poo pood what he said and apparently laughed. The therapist was annoyed and said to me, why ask my professional opinion if he is going to immediately discredit it?? It just made my heart sink that the Head has such a now set in stone belief about my poor little DS who has only just turned 6 and has so much potential. It would kill me to send him somewhere where they continued to think that about him rather than believing with the right input he could change/ improve.

But danni has a very good point. If I am seeing child A and they (school) are seeing child B then can you do anything about that?? Is that purely because he’s at the wrong school? Sometimes in my darker days I think that actually I’m thinking too highly of DS and expecting too much as I’ve just got used to how he is and if you gave me a ‘typical’ 6 year old I’d get the shock of my life.

I find it quite depressing to read on here (not this thread but MN) of children who have challenges but otherwise sound very able in many ways and their parents write things like ‘I know he will never live independently’. It makes me question if I’m just in a bubble with DS? I hope not.

I do think as a few of you have said and danni I think this from what you have said for DS that at the moment there’s so many core life skills I would love school to focus on with DS, including emotional well-being. Because if he can’t sit, can’t listen, can’t focus, can’t join in happily etc then the whole experience of school pointless. Academics he’s shown (at home) but what do they matter if he’s just not happy and engaged with what is going on at school? So for him that has to be the focus.

And DD who is NT tells me nothing about school too!!

How brilliant Liv/ Magrat and others have got their DC into the right places for them! I take your stories as inspiration tho I do think it depends on what schools are around you 🙂

I am struggling today. Everything just seems like hard work. Work in particular is driving me mad. I reduced my hours for a year from 1st September as I have been struggling for a while and DS had funding approved from Adoption Support Fund for specialist therapy. However, when the workload was published in my dept a few weeks ago I discovered that I had the heaviest workload in the dept and in fact when corrected I am over hours. I complained 2 weeks ago and nothing.

The provider of the therapy is v inflexible on dates and times. They have given me 2 options, 1 is a total non-starter with work and the other would be hugely disruptive of DS's school and my work day as it is at 11:30 and their offices are 40 mins drive away.
I have just received amended EHCP (AR in April) absolutely nothing incorporated from the OT report from April

DS is actually on pretty good form at the moment but I'm feeling rather alone in my struggles for him at the moment and my Mum/sister's household have covid and so the help that they provide with childcare is much trickier.

So sorry dimples

Dimples that is a lot to deal with. I'm sorry about the EHCP provision in the EHCP, will you appeal it?

Thanks both

I am going to email the caseworker this evening but if I don't get a satisfactory response then I will appeal. My DS and DN would not even have EHCPs if I had not appealed so I have no confidence in the LA doing the right thing.

Having said DS was on good form we had a nightmare walk home from school. I was trying to be cheerful but maybe he picked up on my stress.