I'm after a little advice from people who have trodden this path before me. In case I forget to mention this later, I am in Scotland, so all the exams and subjects are SQA.
My daughter is diagnosed with dyspraxia and a non-specific "learning disability" which I have heard is a medical nonsense, as you have to have an intellectual disability (she comes close but doesn't meet the criteria, some of her assessments were really poor but others were above the magical 'line') or a specific learning disability e.g. dyslexia. We think she has ASD but they won't assess for it because her 'learning difficulty explains everything'. Not sure it explains things like she cannot let me ride a bike with a luggage rack unless I go get a bag to put in it, the rack requires a bag, it's not optional! She is highly anxious, shuts down in front of new people and needs to know literally everything about little routine changes. If we cannot get any formal name for it, we will have to go forward just based on the fact these are her needs.
Background set! So we are doing her subject choices at the moment. She wants to take 2 modern languages, but there isn't a hope in this world that she is going to go into a room with a possibly unfamiliar teacher and say anything at all. I know when I was at school I wasn't allowed to do mine with my own teacher, it had to be another member of staff from the department, but no idea if this is a requirement or just protocol. Are there any adjustments that can be requested for a modern language oral exam? She is verbal, she's really quite chatty under the right circumstances, but give her the wrong situation and she will stand in the doorway totally frozen and look at the wall until they dismiss her. Obviously, we don't want that to happen. If kids freak out or freeze up during an exam for whatever reason, what are the options to go back and try again? I need to start now gathering evidence if we need to apply for special dispensations. She also wants to take some design and tech classes but she really, really struggles to do things with her hands and she wants to take practical cooking but there are about a million foods that she refuses to touch because she doesn't like how they feel. She wants to take dance so long as she doesn't have to dance in front of any new people... it's exhausting me!
When you and your youngster were doing subject choices, to what extent did they choose subjects they like and just hope the process could accommodate them, or did you steer away from any subjects because of these kinds of difficulties? Do you know what kinds of special arrangements might be possible for her? She is very set in her mind about how things have to work, and if the routines don't go the way she expects, it all goes wrong. We've been told to think about their exam year and work back the way to subject choices, so that's what I'm doing.
There is no way in the world she will ever approach anyone to ask for anything, so I would be interested in any tips you have - simple things like making sure she already has enough paper at the start of any exam, because if she runs out she will NOT put her hand up for more (people might look at her, and the person with the paper will come towards her) she will just stop. She wouldn't be able to go back into the room if she left for any reason (people will turn their heads and look at her - danger of death at the very least).