Lorne

Hi Penny, glad you had a successfull day! You must be so proud of D Sounds like you've got a great teacher there! Puffin, proving it is the hard part though. As for the full time, well, last time I tried pushing for extra days, I the following comment from his teacher. "The law doesn't require him to attend full time until the new school year after his fifth birthday." His 5th birthday was in May, so that would mean next September. Read into that what you will. I know what *I* read into it! Rest assured, I'm keep a damn close eye on the school at the moment. It's all well them mouthing platitudes and saying they'll do this or that, but it's all in what *actually* happens. As the end of the school year is so close now, there's no point in pushing them anymore, but come September, I AM going to Mr Pushy Parent, cause they'll have no cause for excluding him from anything anymore as he'll be legally entitled to full time education then. I've discussed this with my mother-in-law, who is a teacher herself, though a secondary school one, and she says I need to start pushing too! She was NOT amused when I told her about the above comment either!

Hi Helen, We don't have an "official" DX yet as we are still waiting for the appointment from the Join Communications Clinic to turn up, the psych we've seen has given a preliminary DX of ADHD, Social Communication Disorder, and elements of Aspergers. Definately on the autistic spectrum. He's also hyperlexic, and the brightest kid in the class, which doesn't help really as he spends most of the day bored. He already has the reading & writing level of a 7 year old so essentially he's being held back. I've not written the letter to the school yet as I didn't want to do it whilst I'm still angry Generally the school "seem" to want to help him, but a mixture of him STILL only attending 2 full days a week, and the rest half days, in combination with this episode, make me think the opposite. The ADHD nurse, on the other hand, is VERY supportive and proactive and is going to be contacting the school to push for an extra full day. TBH, seeing as he started last September, and the school year is almost over, he really should be full time by now...

We had our first brush with sports day yesterday, and TBH, I'm still quite annoyed at the school. My wife dropped our DS off as usual in the morning, and asked his teacher if he would be taking part as we hadn't had any confirmation from the school. She just said they didn't think he would cope so no! My wife rang me at work when she got back about it so I immediately rang up the school & spoke to the headmistress, who was VERY curt with me. In the end they said he could take part but ONLY if one of us was with him at all times AND we had to take him away as the slightest sign of him being a problem! Well, come mid morning, my wife had to collect him for our monthly visit with the ADHD nurse, and we asked him if he still wanted to go to sports day (up until now he'd really been looking forward to it, and even winning some of the practice races), and his EXACT reply was "No thank you, I don't think I could cope with it. I won't be able to handle it". Please note the very adult use of language here, completely out of character for him. Now, either he'd been coached by the school to say that, or they were talking about him within his earshot knowing full well that he always picks up on it when people are talking about him. So, end result, my DS has had his self-confidence knocked just cause the damn school didn't want their sports day disrupting, whilst actually saying it would be "cruel" to subject him to the stresses of sports day My DS has a social communication problem. The ONLY way to help with that is to expose him to a varied range of social activities, and sports day is a very good one. He doesn't have problems with crowds, he doesn't have problems with loud noises (except the school fire bell). As long as my wife or I were nearby and told him what was going to happen at each step, he'd have been fine. Instead, the blasted school have taken away a chance for him to be able to prove he can cope. At the moment, I feel there's one way I'd LIKE to respond to the school over this ( ), but instead I'll guess I'll just write another letter instead.