Long story, I’m sorry.
Ds is 6, ADHD and probable ASD but we need to calm the ADHD before we look at ASD according to the dr we saw last week.
He was bullied in his first school, wound up by the other kids so they could watch him react. Always in trouble, SENCO told me she didn’t know what to do with him, and they were aware of the other children being mean. I saw it for myself in the park one day, they were calling him names, offering him things then complaining he’d taken them.. really horrible stuff, and DS just didn’t know how to react and it was heartbreaking to watch.
Moved him sharpish to a school which focused on pastoral care, this was just after the first lockdown. He settled pretty well, made friends who accepted him and all was ok until recently. The head started getting loads of bad press on local fb pages and a lot of children left, I knew she could be aggressive and defensive with parents when they didn’t see eye to eye but assumed this was the other parents being argumentative. Until one day I picked my son up and he was distraught, pale faced and red eyed. His TA told me that he’d been rude - he didn’t want to share counters with another child and had said he wouldn’t do what the TA wanted if she wasn’t doing what he wanted. I said I’d have a word with him and let him know it’s not ok to be rude to adults. However, he had completely lost his voice and told me he couldn’t talk because he was too upset. Turned out that he’d been sent to year 4 for the afternoon and had sat and cried. I called the head to say that I was a bit uncomfortable with the fact he’d lost his voice - she said he needed a ‘short, sharp shock’. The head of the school where I work called me and told me she didn’t want to cause trouble, but her son works in DS’s school and was worried because he had seen DS sat in the corridor by himself crying. Transpired the head had shouted at him, along with the head of KS1, before he’d been sent to year 4 and they realised procedure hadn’t been followed and it had all got a bit out of hand (the TA’s words, to my heads son, not me - they told me he had at no point been distressed and they didn’t know how he had lost his voice - the TA was also really upset by what had happened)
I emailed the head and she was immediately on the defensive saying ADHD isn’t an excuse for rudeness and she won’t have DS trying to blackmail her staff. She said if her methods weren’t to my liking, maybe the school isn’t right for us.
I brought DS to look round my school, where we have a high level of SEND, and where DS 3 (complex SEND) is currently thriving - knows everyone, they all accept him, he is friends with everyone and he is supported in a way he never would be in another mainstream. He liked it and said he didn’t ever want to go back to his other school, so I moved him. It’s been a month or so now and he says he likes the school but misses his friends. He hasn’t slotted in as easily as DS3, he doesn’t always understand social rules and cues and thinks people are being mean if they don’t want to follow his game, for example. He’s doing better academically, almost instantly which is amazing but I’m really struggling with it all (I have anxiety so I can’t work out how much of a part this is playing) but for him to have left his mates, and now be in a much smaller school where I also work and so see everything, is hard on both of us. I know it’s not just me, we’ve had 4 applications from children in his old school to move, and I know it’s for reasons similar to mine - but -
I feel like I’ve ruined his life and have no clue what, if anything, I can or should do.
Please help.