worn-thin

Just had the Inspectors report for my sons school and it says the school is failing and being put into special measures. This comes as no surprise to me nor a lot of other parents who have thought the standard of education extremely poor compared to other local schools. The school have been given 45 days to do something. My son and approx 5 of his classmates have been moved up to year 2. 1 of these is the kid who bullies him. The rest of the children will be from last years year 2 class. He doesn't know any of them. His best friend is being kept down, so effectively he is moving up to a year where he knows hardly anyone, 1 or 2 kids from a class of 28. Because my son is one of the bright ones we have now been ostracised from the local community. All the other parents are angry and my son is being looked on as one of the 'elite'. He can't help the fact he scored the highest on his tests! I was in tears today at a birthday party we went to. He has told me he wants to move schools. There is a lovely school 3 miles away that has a good reputation with Special Needs and educationally. But I am worried about the change, he has had a terrible last year, his teacher is a 'boot camp' General. The Head thinks all AS kids are the same??!! Can I keep him in this terrible school just so it is familiar? Will he cope with the transition to a new school without awful setbacks? I want the best for him and for him to be able to get a decent education in an understanding environment. What do I do? Anyone have experience of this?

Anywhere you can get them free entry to a Rudolf Steiner school.

My son has only just been diagnosed with AS. The school has been punishing him for spinning in assembly for a year now and refused to take him out of it previously. The consultant was shocked when he heard my son was being forced to attend assembly considering the behaviour he exhibits when there. Now he has a definite diagnosis can I insist he is left out of assembly even though the school won't receive the written report for a few weeks yet? I am so heartbroken that my son has been subjected to this and I just can't bear the thought of him having to suffer any more.

On the DLA form it has a question and I dont know what to tick, can anyone help? It asks - does your child have both a severe learning disability and severe behavioural problems . Do I tick yes or no? Is AS considered severe?

Well, we went to see the consultant yesterday: two and a half hour consult, he was brilliant, not only did he tell me my son is highly intelligent and has Asperger's, he also told my husband that he has it too and has referred hubby to specialist in diagnosing adult Asperger's! In a way I am relieved, because the doc tells me the school has to let my son avoid distressing situations. They have to teach him in a way that he can relate to. He is a visual learner, so the teacher waffling on for hours and then expecting him to recall what she said is a hopeless situation. As he has an advanced reading age, doc suggested giving him written work based on her lesson and letting him sit in a quiet place to do it. Son cannot abide assembly and spins there. too much noise, he says the singing and clapping explode his eardrums! I asked the school a year ago to excuse my son from assembly but the headmaster said ' all the kids have to do the same thing, so he can't be excused!' He was quite rude about it at the time because he thought my son was just innatentive and naughty. Doc siad he should not be made to go to assembly if it is distressing him so much he spins. This morning I was crying because it made me realise that the school have been punishing my child because he is disabled and it makes me so sad that he has been forced into terribly distressing situations in the schools attempt to 'beat it out of him'. The doc says it will be about 3-4 weks until he can get copies of his report out to the school, gp and ed psych. It will be the summer hols then so I can't expect much until next term now. He has given me name of a special ed psych who goes into schools to educate the staff about AS if the school are being particularly dense and obstructive. Doc says he thinks we can apply for some sort of carers allowance but I don't know who to contact about that. If anyone knows can you tell me please. Doc says because my son is very intelligent, with the right help he will compensate for his social incompatibilty and will go on to excel at school, as long as they give him the right help. That is the crunch though. I read of so many poor kids who are not getting the help that they need. I am going to push and push to get my sons needs met. The school already hate my guts so I have nothing to lose there! The last couple of years have been so stressful. What with son and my husbands increasingly wierd behaviour. To me it is now like having two kids to look after. My hubby doesn't know one day from the next, can't keep an appointment, will obsess a subject to exclusion of everything else etc etc, why I didn't see this before I will never know! Doc is putting us on his NHS list now and we see him again in 4 months. He was so supportive and helpful, even copying us a DVD from his PC to show us AS behaviours. My only hope now is that the school come up with the goods or I will be doing some serious Ass kicking there!

Just an update. We have been told it will be a year until the school can refer my son to the specialist but he won't be in school by then. It has been so bad recently. We rang the doctor and we now have an appointment this friday at the cost of �650. Arrgghh! Basically our Christmas money is now gone. We have taken the appointment as we cannot let the school get away with the terrible attitude towards my son anymore. There are no other schools he can attend locally. We live rurally and there aren't any more schools nearby with places. If he is diagnosed with AS then the school will have to do something positive. If not then the headmaster can stop calling my son 'rain man'. The consultants secretary said to me. 'Tell the school to give you a copy of his records to bring with you on friday, there is no time to send in the post.' I asked her what the legality of that was because I know how obstructive the school is and she said ' you have a legal right to obtain a copy of your sons records'. When I asked the headmaster yesterday for a copy of the records, guess what, he refused and said HE would have to contact the doctor personally. Well, it wasn't unexpected, I know what the school is like. One child was being severely bullied and when the father went to the school for the umpteenth time and finally got angry, the head called the police and had him removed and now he is banned from the school grounds. Cant even pick up his kid from school.When the poor guy told the LEA they told them no record of his complaint existed in his sons record. The school didn't even bother to write it down! I hear horror stories every day from various parents but nothing is ever done. Even the Ed psych didn't seem to have a good opinion of any school in the area. The Senco told me my son was very intelligent and just gets bored in class. She says he is a lovely boy who just has what are deemed 'naughty behaviours' due to boredom and a strong personality. So on Friday we are off to see the doc.

[i have just tried looking for that PIP thingy in my area but there appears not to be one. I cannot find a Main website for them. A lot of the other sites are for the rules in England only and just give links to the Education dept at my local council here in Wales. I have already talked to them til sick of their voices. For some reason most government websites only seem to cater for England. We do have different laws and school curriculum etc here in Wales though. I will keep looking my phone bill must be huge by now!

Have you contacted parent partnership or anyone like that? I am sorry I don't know what that is. We don't have any parent groups or anything at the school. It is a poor school from all aspects and had I known this prior to enrolling my son there he would not have gone to it. There are no local schools with any spaces. There are only 2 other within reasonable distance and one of them is a Welsh language school! There is a school a distance away that has a special class for kids with AS/APD but the child MUST have a statement to get there and a proper diagnosis. Also it is limited to six pupils a year. So not possible this year now.

The school are utter rubbish. They told me they knew there was something wrong when my son started school 3 years ago but they only refered him last October. First I saw a'behaviour support' woman. She gave me a half hour chat and said 'see you in a couple of weeks' I have not seen her since. The service is patchy. She came to the school to work with my son about 6 times since last October. thats about 6 hours. I asked my son what she did: 'we played bingo'. That was it. Then son is getting even worse in school. Head tell me he is behaving like 'rain man'. Nicely positive and constructive!!! Son has nightmares about school can't sleep. Wierd over reactive behaviour getting worse to sound, smells etc One day when I got called in by teacher because he had written 'poo' on the computer to make the other kids laugh, I said to her 'you do realise he is awaiting evaluation for AS as recommended by your Headmaster?' She looked at me blankly and obviously had no idea what was going on. She uses blocking body language to me and my son...crossed arms, looking away when I am trying to talk to her. I find her aggressive, the way she talks to the kids etc and other mums have mentioned it. My son hates her now...calls her Mrs Grumpy face.. because that is the only face she wears for my son...At least he can pick up that 'social cue'! The headmaster is abit of a wet fish.. he is good at placating irate parents and believe me there are enough at this school! Trouble is, he read a book once about child behaviour and now he is a keen diagnostician. Loves to label kids with all these acronyms. But then just treats them all the same...sit on the floor in his office while he eats his lunch or does some work. Not exactly helpful when concentration and application are difficult for most kids within any spectrum of behaviour disorder. The teachers think he is a buffoon and there is a complete break down of communication in the school generally. We tried one of those books where the teacher writes daily behaviour but she only did it for 3 days then lost the book and then couldn't be bothered as 'too busy'. She said to me...'I can't deal with the problems of one child as I have a class of 30 to consider' My son can't concentrate because of the noise the other kids make and he stood up in class and shouted ' everybody just shut up!'.......straight to headmaster. Son says he wants to sit on his own at a desk away from the noise...do his work in the quiet. Because the other kids annoy him. Teacher forces him into group scenarios, often with kids that pick on him at playtime and wonders why he plays up. We have just been told it is 1 year waiting list to see specialist on NHS or 3-4 weeks if seen privately by the same consultant. I don't think my son will last that long at school now without serious problems. I know I am heading for a breakdown and my husband has already been off work for nearly 4 months with severe clinical depression. Every day I walk round telling myself ' I must keep it together today'.

Hi, I am sorry if these things have been covered before but I am not very technically minded and so stressed at the moment I can't concentrate on looking through reams of posts! My son, who is 6, is suspected of having AS by both the school and the EdPsych. We are waiting to see a specialist Paediatrician to confirm/deny diagnosis. I never had a problem with him but school thinks he an absolute nightmare and for the last 3 years he just goes to school to be told off! He could speak in whole, coherent sentences and read by the age of 2. He now has a reading age of around 9 years, he is fascinated by maps, routes, numbers, statistics. He is also slightly obsessive about things...germs, things being in the right order. If anyone knows the TV series 'Monk' my son is a milder form of him! He has terrible trouble in school because, he says, 'children make too much noise' Teacher denies this, says her class is quiet but even quiet noises distract my son. He CANNOT make friends his own age, says the kids annoy him. Gets on great with adults and or people who can answer or show an interest in his perculiar questions. Not kids his own age because they are not interested in large number manipulation or geography! If he gets really bored and or stressed he may start spinning. He does this in assembly and the teachers just shout at him and tell him off. He sees no value in things like reward charts as he tells me he is unable to control his strange outbursts in school - I just get so angry inside, he says. He is bullied by a couple of kids and as he hates personal space invasion he can lash out. He shouts at his teacher now and has no respect for her. He keeps saying 'I don't know' when asked questions he obviously does know the answer to. When I asked why, he said ' My teacher told me to sit down and shut up' So thats what I do now'. The list is endless. He is academically bright, even the other parents see he is different but he has strange impulses and wierd behaviours that constantly annoy his teacher and every day she sends him to the Headmaster. The stress on us, as his parents, is beginning to take it's toll. We are so frustrated with the school, that they think he is AS but won't consider the way they are coping with his behaviour is wrong. He really cannot control his impulse to lie down on the floor in class, wander out of the classroom to the IT lab when bored etc. The school constantly complain til I am sick of hearing it! Spins in assembly blah blah, wiggles his feet in assembly etc. He told me, ' They force me to pray to Jesus and I don't believe in him,only God' When he voiced this he was.....sent to the headmaster. He says assembly is boring...to him it lasts for hours. I tried to give him a little plastic bracelet made of dice so he could fiddle with it and add the spots etc, just to distract him from spinning but another child tried to grab it and he.......got sent to the headmaster. It goes on. He needs some kind of tactile or sensory stimulus to keep him calm in assembly but the school refuse it now. I feel so, so sorry for him. At home he is the most loving, helpful, confident child. Bright talkative, will speak to adults politely. Please someone tell me what I should do? Yours in complete frustration