New School Year - Eeek
Alas the holidays draw to a close. Next Tuesday I'll be sending my cutie pie back into the lions den. New teacher, new to the school entirely so we've no idea what to expect and it fills me with apprehension.
So far school wise he has had 2 years of nursery and 2 years of school so he is going in to 'Primary 3' as it is called in this neck of the woods. It's a good school, I was told, mainstream with a base unit for children with learning difficulties not that Stephen is deemed to have learning difficulties but he is considered to have special needs or 'additional support needs' which is the new term being used here. It has been good in some ways and yet their lack of knowledge concerning autistic spectrum disorders is scary I dread to think of how a 'bad' school copes.
During his first year at school Stephen had many supply teachers which didn't seem to bother him so much, surprisingly. He was fairly disturbed at lining up and entering the school at mornings and lunch times and would often run off and hide. He didn't stay in school for lunch as I didn't think he would cope, the staff didn't think they would cope and wanted warned in advance if he was going to try 'school dinners' one day and he has an extremely limited diet - I'll do a current food list shortly. Anyway overall just as he seemed to be settling in things went haywire and over a period of 2 or 3 weeks he was very aggressive with pupils and staff alike leading to warning from the deputy head that he was this (thumb and finger a millimeter apart) close to being excluded. I'll need to write up my opinion on that whole conversation with the school staff another time!
At this point I phoned in the autistic outreach teacher (AOT), whom the school thought was to busy to be consulted on Stephen after all they didn't view the aggression as autism related at all (yeah go figure?!). This wonderful lady has been marvelous and started a social group for Stephen once a week within the school. The school, they do try once you get them to listen, utilised someone from their base unit to do some anger management strategies with him too. Both these things helped and he settled back down fairly well. After all this though and the fact he was missing out on a valuable social time by not staying in school for lunch I asked if they could apply for a one to one support worker for him. The infant deputy head said they had applied at the beginning of Primary one and been refused (though he did get the shared use of another lads auxiliary) and nothing had changed so they wouldn't reapply. I spoke to our lovely AOT who said I could go straight to the educational psychologist and ask her to apply for one. So I did and she applied without much fuss and low and behold he was granted 15hrs support covering the period from just before playtime till a bit after lunch.
I can't tell you what a luxury this has been for me this last school year, not having to break up the day to fetch him for lunch has given me much more time to do much needed stuff around the house.
We live a 10 minute drive away from the school, I choose to put him there rather than the local one, initially because it is next to my parents house and they were caring for him after nursery while I was at work. This didn't last however as my mum found she couldn't cope with Stephen as he basically needed dragged to and from school and a 1 min walk to there house often turned into 15mins with my dad having to come out to see where they were (if he was awake as he works nights). Anyway not long after his diagnosis I stopped work and we got Disability Living Allowance (eek needs renewing next year, I'll need to set aside a few weeks for form filling;)) etc and are probably better off now financially than before. Oops I think I went off on one of my many tangents.
This year has definitely been a much better year for Stephen in terms of his behaviour and his relationship with his classmates. He had a teacher whose classroom organisation suited Stephen down to the ground, Stephen said he's been the best teacher so far as he speaks very clearly and he can understand him well. I think the main thing is that this teacher is very strict but tries to be fair too and he keeps the class very quite in the mornings whilst doing set lessons which helped Stephen immensely in terms of less distractions etc I had different feelings about him, though I would've loved it if he had this teacher next year, I did disagree with a few things he did such as punishing Stephen by removing his 'golden time' (reward system - 30mins to play on Friday time can be removed in blocks of 5mins for talking and such like) because Stephen destroyed some of his work which in my opinion is part of his ASD as he gets so cross with himself if things aren't perfect and he already hates doing writing and drawing because of deficits in his fine motor control. I suppose that's another issue though, he still needs to learn not to destroy his work but I think the sanction didn't fit the crime as he's already punishing himself by destroying the work in the first place - I hate to imagine what he is feeling inside when these things happen:(
Anyway I think I've digressed enough needless to say I'm very apprehensive about the coming year, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we fall lucky with this new teacher and she has a good understanding of autistic spectrum disorders. I'll be sure to let you know thats for certain :)
So far school wise he has had 2 years of nursery and 2 years of school so he is going in to 'Primary 3' as it is called in this neck of the woods. It's a good school, I was told, mainstream with a base unit for children with learning difficulties not that Stephen is deemed to have learning difficulties but he is considered to have special needs or 'additional support needs' which is the new term being used here. It has been good in some ways and yet their lack of knowledge concerning autistic spectrum disorders is scary I dread to think of how a 'bad' school copes.
During his first year at school Stephen had many supply teachers which didn't seem to bother him so much, surprisingly. He was fairly disturbed at lining up and entering the school at mornings and lunch times and would often run off and hide. He didn't stay in school for lunch as I didn't think he would cope, the staff didn't think they would cope and wanted warned in advance if he was going to try 'school dinners' one day and he has an extremely limited diet - I'll do a current food list shortly. Anyway overall just as he seemed to be settling in things went haywire and over a period of 2 or 3 weeks he was very aggressive with pupils and staff alike leading to warning from the deputy head that he was this (thumb and finger a millimeter apart) close to being excluded. I'll need to write up my opinion on that whole conversation with the school staff another time!
At this point I phoned in the autistic outreach teacher (AOT), whom the school thought was to busy to be consulted on Stephen after all they didn't view the aggression as autism related at all (yeah go figure?!). This wonderful lady has been marvelous and started a social group for Stephen once a week within the school. The school, they do try once you get them to listen, utilised someone from their base unit to do some anger management strategies with him too. Both these things helped and he settled back down fairly well. After all this though and the fact he was missing out on a valuable social time by not staying in school for lunch I asked if they could apply for a one to one support worker for him. The infant deputy head said they had applied at the beginning of Primary one and been refused (though he did get the shared use of another lads auxiliary) and nothing had changed so they wouldn't reapply. I spoke to our lovely AOT who said I could go straight to the educational psychologist and ask her to apply for one. So I did and she applied without much fuss and low and behold he was granted 15hrs support covering the period from just before playtime till a bit after lunch.
I can't tell you what a luxury this has been for me this last school year, not having to break up the day to fetch him for lunch has given me much more time to do much needed stuff around the house.
We live a 10 minute drive away from the school, I choose to put him there rather than the local one, initially because it is next to my parents house and they were caring for him after nursery while I was at work. This didn't last however as my mum found she couldn't cope with Stephen as he basically needed dragged to and from school and a 1 min walk to there house often turned into 15mins with my dad having to come out to see where they were (if he was awake as he works nights). Anyway not long after his diagnosis I stopped work and we got Disability Living Allowance (eek needs renewing next year, I'll need to set aside a few weeks for form filling;)) etc and are probably better off now financially than before. Oops I think I went off on one of my many tangents.
This year has definitely been a much better year for Stephen in terms of his behaviour and his relationship with his classmates. He had a teacher whose classroom organisation suited Stephen down to the ground, Stephen said he's been the best teacher so far as he speaks very clearly and he can understand him well. I think the main thing is that this teacher is very strict but tries to be fair too and he keeps the class very quite in the mornings whilst doing set lessons which helped Stephen immensely in terms of less distractions etc I had different feelings about him, though I would've loved it if he had this teacher next year, I did disagree with a few things he did such as punishing Stephen by removing his 'golden time' (reward system - 30mins to play on Friday time can be removed in blocks of 5mins for talking and such like) because Stephen destroyed some of his work which in my opinion is part of his ASD as he gets so cross with himself if things aren't perfect and he already hates doing writing and drawing because of deficits in his fine motor control. I suppose that's another issue though, he still needs to learn not to destroy his work but I think the sanction didn't fit the crime as he's already punishing himself by destroying the work in the first place - I hate to imagine what he is feeling inside when these things happen:(
Anyway I think I've digressed enough needless to say I'm very apprehensive about the coming year, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we fall lucky with this new teacher and she has a good understanding of autistic spectrum disorders. I'll be sure to let you know thats for certain :)
posted by Bramblebrae at
2:19 PM
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