heleno

Thank you all for sharing your ideas, Karen - we seems to be in a very similar place with our children! I have now spoken to school and we have decided that the remaining dets will be on file till the end of term but if he doesn't get another card he will not have to complete them. i think this is an excellent idea as it gives him ownership of what will happen to him but shows willing on schools part to consider him and in turn i expect him to recognize that they are considering him as a person. I am now going home to sew all his shirts into the front of his trousers! x

I do take your point about him knowing before choosing but in truth his decision was based on where the other children from his primary where going not an acceptance of their rules and regulations. For him it was either that school or no school - his preference now! My point is that I take a very active role in working with the school to maintain him in education, the staff i liase with are progressing hugely with becoming a more inclusive school, something they had a dire reputaion for previously. However they are not the ones administering and enforcing this policy, i believe if they were they would allow some leeway in how ridgidly they use it with him. I want them to work with me and in being so strict they are working agaist me. nearly all the infringments are for having his shirt untucked. sometimes they don't even speak to the child they just write them up as a yellow card, they are not given the choice of tucking it in as an alternative to punishment. I would love to know how many other boys - and it is always boys as they girls uniform has a blouse that is allowed to be untucked - have had as many yellows as my son. My son is also partially sighted and unlike the other chn who when they see a teacher have the sense to tuck theirs in, he neither see's the teacher coming nor seems to have the ability to anticipate sorting it out before he gets a card.

I would like to ask other peoples thoughts on how far a school should enforce a uniform policy if the punishments don't seem to be working (in my opinion!) My son is 13 and the school he attends has a very strict uniform policy. Before he went I explained this to him and he still wanted to go there and for the most part he has managed to cope with having his tie knotted exactly right and having it the correct length (I did say it was strict!) but the bit he can't won't do is tuck in the front of his shirt. In winter it’s hidden as he wears a jumper but in summer he has it out on the way to school and tucks it in - sort of - as he goes in. However it obviously doesn't stay in. The school gives out yellow cards every time a member of staff see's a child with any infringement and 2 yellow cards mean a detention. So far he has had 13 yellows and has done 5 detentions with 2 more pending and to be honest it’s getting me down. Sometimes they don't even tell them they have done wrong they just write it down and I find that really negative - surely a quiet word is better than punish punish punish. Twice he has been reported on the same day and the head - who obviously has no idea who he is - noted that he was a very rude boy when he gave him a card and my son answered him back! Pitch this against what I am trying to cope with and that is a child who despises school, who refuses almost on a daily basis to go and who I have to coax, threaten, bribe and cry at just to get him through the doors. He is so depressed he threatens suicide weekly and see's no point in being alive. Should I argue for him with the senior managers of the school or should I just accept what they say, I feel they are missing the bigger picture here and working in a detrimental way when I am trying to get my son through school and they aren't helping. Surely it’s better to have him in school with his shirt occasionally out - and by all means remind him - than not in school at all. How do other children cope with rigidity of thinking from such an establishment!

Our day was excellent. Last Christmas was very tragic for us as my sister was very ill (she died on Boxing day) this year we had 10 people at ours and everything went swimmingly and the man reason things are better with my son I put down to having created a space especially for him. In April we took the plunge and had the garage converted into a usable room just for him, its amazingly cheap compared to extending or building and we have been able to give him a bedroom/sitting room that is furnished with his needs in mind and on the ground floor. He is able to be in there and comfortable whilst still near us. One of us usually goes and sits with him to watch TV or play on the PS and the whole set up have meant a much calmer and happier household. He disappeared in there with his cousin after lunch and he was calm - which meant we were calm!! Its only been possible to create this as we got DLA for him and the financial squeeze eased! I realise it isn't possible for everyone to have this sort of area but it really has made a difference to our family and how my son copes with life. I guess when you lose someone you love it focuses you on what is important and how very fragile and short life is so any thing that makes it better is worth sharing.

The charge is according to the amount of pages and it follows that a child with special needs has far more pages than one without, hence a higher price! fair?

Just wondered if anyone has asked their school for a copy of their children's school records and if so were you charged and how much? I did this in primary and there was no cost - it showed me some very surprising tracking they had in place that involved recording all my son's misdemeanours but none of his success's. I've asked again in secondary and they are charging me £10, don't think they really wanted to show me but they have to. They suggested i sat in a room with a member of staff and looked through it, at no cost, but i wanted my own copy. So, what have you been charged ??

I thought Doc Martin was the one with AS???

We solved the laces on larger shoe sizes problem by replacing normal laces with elasticated ones designed for triathalon shoes. Available from ebay they aren't cheap but work a treat on trainers, especially when they have to get them on for school PE in a short time. If he had to tie them he would miss the lesson each week.

How ironic, I've just come down from putting my son to bed and having a long chat, whilst watching him get more and more depressed about the upcoming return to school. He also finds this place a hell-hole but rather than becoming invisible he is a very high profile child who is still being failed by a system that refuses - despite legal obligations - to make appropriate allowances for children with special needs. I say appropriate because they do make allowances as they see fit, they put in support, but refuse to see that it needs to be the correct support not just a 'body' in the classroom. He wants to achieve but has no idea how to dance to their tune. We are killing ourselves trying to get all the staff on side only to have some individuals refuse to see they need to adapt their way of handling some children. Then when situations kick off, often due to miss handling more than my son's behaviour, they impose detentions and isolations as thats what their railroad behaviour policy says. Why can their not be somewhere our children can get a high class education that is suited to their own learning needs? I despair

I think you should be making arrangements to see the school SENCO - every school has one and it is they who arrange special needs provision. Every child with special needs has the legal right to expect the school to make reasonable adjustment to the provision they would make for a 'normal child'. what reasonable adjustment have these people made to allow your daughter to access inclusive education in a mainstream school? We have a child who is thriving and achieving in our school who in a previous school was left to sit in his own mess on newspaper till his mother came and cleaned him. We repaired the damage and provided the correct support for him to be truly included, and he is lovely and happy. There are schools who can be inclusive and those that need to learn more. We have to keep fighting to educate the educators.

a few years ago women couldn't become doctors, thank goodness that all changed, maybe this lady should look back at the history of her sex and profession before she states 'things cannot get better'

My Aspergers son started secondary school last September. He is on school action plus and has support from the Autism transition team. The school he is at has not got a great reputation for special needs but is academically brilliant and as he is a very bright child I choose to send him but I was fully aware that it would be a struggle to force the school to accept their responsibilities to my child. I am passionate that all schools should be genuinely inclusive and not just pay lip service to it whilst quietly forcing difficult children out in case it lowers their published academic achievements. He has now had 2 separate isolations for incidents in school, the first when he asked for help in a test and was shouted at for being so stupid as to ask for help during a test, not surprisingly he lost his temper and the punishment was for that, not controlling himself. The second one was again connected with a test but it was as he got the results and he disputed an answer, or rather he tried to but the teacher wouldn't let him speak, he put his hand up toward the teachers face to try and stop her speaking so he could speak and touched her face - its not hard to figure what happened after that. He was told after each punishment that a line was drawn under it and we moved on, which is as it should be. However I have been called into the deputy head for a 'meeting' I have meetings with school at school every two weeks but he says he wishes to discuss 'different' things with me. I work in a school, i know exactly why he wants to see me, its because their policy probably says - after 1st isolation, write to parents, after second call parents in and tell them what will happen if this behaviour continues. i.e next incident will be temp exclusion and may progress onto perm after that. But do they have the right to apply that to a child who will clearly continue to have incidents in school? Thats like asking him to stop being Aspergers and knowing that as a child with a special need, he will, on occasions loose control and in doing so will put himself at risk of exclusion, are they not failing to make the reasonable adjustment he has a legal right to? Sorry this is so long! If anyone knows what the legal position is please share the info with me. I could do with a bit of ammo when facing this chap on Monday morning (this is the same teacher who, on the very first occasion he spoke to me on the phone, corrected my English when I mixed up atypical and typical, thats told me!) Thanks

Firstly, you can ring your doctor and ask to be referred to the local community paediatrician, explain you need an urgent appointment. Explain to the paed about the sleeping problem and ask to try Melotonin in capsule form. My son has always had a drink of warm chocolate milk and i simply open the capsules into his milk and mix it in - it doesn't change the taste. He is fully aware he has this in his milk. We took all this action when his behaviour at school deteriorated and lack of sleep was, by his own admission, part of the problem. He now has his milk about half an hour before i want him to go to sleep and takes himself upstairs when he starts to feel sleepy. It has made a huge difference to our lives and I now have an evening! all be it from about 9.30! Good Luck

I can beat that one!! When D had just started school he was invited to a child's b'day party at the child's house. There were about 20 kids there and the mum, who I knew, had got a local entertainer in to amuse the chn for an hour. It was a fancy dress party and being from the midlands my son had gone as Robin Hood. The entertainer arrived and was setting up as the children did their usual riot around him, he told them to sit down - yeh like that was going to work! and then he bent over to sort out his equipment - mistake - presented with a large backside, D decided to give it a smack. The entertainer then preceded to pick up his stuff and leave. The distraught mother ran after him and begged him to return as she had no idea how to keep twenty 5 year olds occupied for an hour. He finally agreed but with the condition "either Peter Pan leaves or I do!" I can laugh about it now 7 years later but at the time I was mortified. How could anyone not realise it was a Robin Hood outfit! Only joking. Needless to say, Peter/Robin was duly removed, and never invited again and I made sure everyone locally knew what a ###### the entertainer was, obviously unable to cope with children! surely a prerequisite of being a children's entertainer!

it doesn't bother me so much - i'll love him come rain or muck! but i worry what others say to him - he's already finding it very hard at school to cope with the horrid comments made by supposdly educated young people. May i ask another question of you, did you or anyone working with you talk to your classmates about your aspergers and if so did it change their attitude to you and how you reacted to things? has anyone else any experience of this? we are not sure what the best course of action is. whether to tell the other chn - and possibly give them extra ammo - or not.