KarenT

I could write volumes on this subject but will restrain myself All I will say is that there is a batch of reports and letters from professionals in my area which collectively gives a completely inaccurate account of my family and particularly my son's difficulties and needs. Each one contains misinformation, inaccurate conclusions, misunderstanding of other reports that haven't been read properly, assumptions of 'lowest common denominator' parenting, and occasionally downright lies. Actually, the odd bits that are true are so vague that they'd probably be skim-read and ignored. I've lost count of the number of conversations I've had with professionals that confirm concerns about his various difficulties but have later been contradicted in official correspondence. Not only is it confusing but it's detrimental to the child's care and development, and it makes us as parents come across as liars and cheats. It seems to be pervasive throughout the mainstream system (although I appreciate there are the occasional few who have more positive experiences), which is why we've now elected to home educate and are going for professional advice wherever we can afford it. Sorry for joining in the rant. I did a pile of filing a few days ago and made the stupid mistake of re-reading old reports. It still burns Karen x

You might find some useful stuff on here: http://www.primaryresources.co.uk/index.htm to go over the skills he struggles with. IIRC it's a free resource. For KS3 this is quite a good one http://www.parentsintouch.co.uk/, though you will have to register and pay a small subscription to access all the worksheets (some are free though). Karen x

You might want to have a look at Shakespeare 4 Kidz website (if you can drag yourself past the hideous textspeak of the name) a they have some excellent teacher resources for first introductions to the plays. The ones that are covered are broken down into chapter synopsis with simple explanations of what happens in each section, with written comprehensions for your child to do. They also have online penalty shoot out quizzes which are great fun. S4K are doing Macbeth this autumn but as they're fairly dumned down your lad might not take to them as he's been able to sit through a 'proper' version of Hamlet! The animated tales are good too, as is these books: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shakespeare-Storie...4173&sr=1-1 Karen x

My GP has started doing online bookings now, so you can make our own appointment when it's convenient to you rather than trying to get through on the phone. 'Tis the way of modern things. Perhaps you could suggest your surgery looks into it too? Karen x

Sounds like overall good news How is she doing emotionally? It must be hard for her coping with this. Karen x

I don't know about it being common practice but it's certainly not unusual, in this area anyway. J's first school had a reputation (not only with SN children) that once your kids were across the threshhold they were none of the parents' business. I found out so little about what was going on there, and much of what I did find out came from other children and parents by the back door. Even when asked for clarification teachers would lie to keep my knowledge to a minimum. I'm not exaggerating - the extent of deceit and lying was atrocious. Things were no better at the school he moved on to, from where I deregistered him home educate. Although I know I have every right to his school records and work books I've had practically nothing, which is particularly concerning from a Home Ed point of view as I have absolutely no idea what he covered in the year and a bit he was there, nor what his ability level was. I have seen no written work whatsoever and consequently no comments from teachers other than the bland stream of positives they're obliged to give on end of year reports. Don't get me wrong, I know there are good schools and good teachers out there and that we've been particularly unfortunate in our own experience, but in answer to the opening post - yes I do believe it's commonplace for schools to withhold information from parents about their children. I and many others have plenty of evidence to support it. Karen x

If you pm me with an email address I'll send it to you. Karen x

We've got a very visual social story about Causing Offence, if anyone's interested. It's obviously very personal to J but it's helped him to understand the complexities of politeness and rudeness, and how it's different for everyone. Karen x

I use SMART targets with J. I set them out in the form of a social story with a table insert, and we have regular progress meetings to see how he's getting on with the individual goals, look at how I can help him achieve them and remind him of why they're important. We build in lots of reward opportunities along the way as we run in six month periods, which can be a long time for a child not to see any benefit for his efforts, however experience has taught me that we need to be working on individual goals for at least that long before we see improvements, and often they're carried over to the next period. We have a core of about six goals that lead to a specific prize (usually Lego as that motivates J the most), with some lesser, additional ones for minor prizes. I don't have experience of SMART targets with children as young as your son (J is 10), not sure if it's a high expectation for someone of his age, but clearly you'd have to tailor the targets to his age and ability and perhaps give longer for him to achieve them. Remember what SMART stands for (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic/Reward-driven/Relevant (depending on the source you read), Time-limited) and this will help you set them. If you want to see our example of how I use SMART with J, PM me an email address and I'll send them on. Karen x

Very sorry Smiley. Look after yourself. Karen x

I've sent you a PM. Karen x

Chuffed to bits for you. That's a real achievement Karen x

Hello my darling! Lovely to see you back here - hope you stick around. Love Karen x

Me too Jaded. I don't half get on people's nerves with it! Karen x

I've just been reading this. Isn't she a beautiful girl? Karen x

Mumble, that's exactly what I meant when I was saying something similar in the thread about not writing yesterday. Comprehension is one of the hardest tasks in Literacy for our children, partly because it can be so inconsistent. Sometimes you do get the old style comprehensions of looking for factual information but it's more often the type you mention where children have to give their opinions. I remember one instance when J had to do an exercise on a story extract about an Indian princess whose handmaiden was supposed to be looking after her valuable necklace when it was stolen by a crow. The question was "How do you think the handmaiden felt when the crow took the necklace?" and J's response (in furious frustration) was "How do I know how she felt? I've never been an Indian princess's handmaiden!". And that initial frustration and anxiety was enough to unsettle him to a degree that he couldn't focus on the task in hand AT ALL. It's theory of mind, plain and simple. How can we acknowledge that autistic children have difficulties with theory of mind then not accept that they'll struggle with this kind of work? The mind doth boggle Karen x

Totally agree with this about fear of making mistakes. With factual subjects like eg Science or Maths, there's an obvious right and wrong answer which our children can accept because the distinction is clear. Creativity is very emotional and vague, there's no certainty about how to get it right, and it can be too daunting to even try. The same can be said about subjects like History and RE, where questions often ask for opinions about why certain events happened or why people feel or believe a certain thing. Very challenging where there's a limited theory of mind. Karen x

Mandapanda, that sounds very similar to my son. He too has good ideas for creative writing/literacy but struggles to juggle all the components, especially when handwriting is added to the mix. He finds it quite stressful to put his thoughts in order, and to remember punctuation, capitals, paragraphs AND keep his handwriting legible, and the strain of this affects his ability to think clearly with the outcome that the effort is so great that he ends up not producing much at all. However, since he's been home educated he's been using story writing software and the change in his ability has been astonishing. By being given the freedom to write in a way he feels comfortable, in whichever order he likes (he prefers to write the exciting end part first and work backwards) the stress is removed and he does some good work. It also helps that he can type quite well, as his output matches the speed of his thinking, which has always been a problem in the past. J is also very visual and likes to use objects and pictures to inspire him. Right now he's on the computer working on a story for his creative writing group, and he's just gone up to his room looking for a rifle to describe as he needs a weapon in his story. He has been searching Google Images for landscapes too - he wouldn't get that kind of flexibility in school but he seems to need it to produce creatively. As far as imagination is concerned, I think there's little doubt that autistic children do have imagination and some are very vivid, but the concern is with flexibility of thought rather than imagination itself. This would mean a child could write for hours on a subject of his own choosing but would struggle to focus sufficiently on something that didn't interest him, which would obviously affect output. However, I think that by encouraging him to write about his own interests you'd help him learn the basic principles of creative writing and that's a good start. With that under his belt he can then learn how to write about subjects that are given to him rather than his own choice. Although I agree that there are no actual impediments to the OP's son's ability towards literacy, I do feel it's possible that the combination of skills required in his literacy work might be too stressful for him and causing him a problem that isn't there at the start of the task, iykwim. I know my own son can wind himself up into such a tizz in his anxiety to avoid something he finds challenging, and that in turn affects his ability to self-control and makes it harder to do it at all. He certainly makes a rod for his own back and although we're working on this it's very much a work in progress, there's no quick fix. If he's finding it this difficult at ten I'd imagine it's even harder for the OP's son to have that level of self-awareness and control at six. Karen x

Oh poor you. The school do seem to be trying very hard to accommodate him but they're just not managing, are they? Do you think they can manage with him in the long term, or is it time to look elsewhere? But then, I guess your options are limited until the statement is finalised. Try to keep your chin up, it's a tough time just now but at least the system seems to be doing their best for him at the moment. Karen xx

You could use Cerebra's online guide (google Cerebra, then from the homepage search DLA Guide), which gives step by step guidance for how to fill in the form. Karen x

Well, I've got to agree with that - it's the main reason J no longer goes to school. I got sick of being polite, reasonable and proactive with school staff who paid lip service to giving support then did nothing. I later found out that another dissatisfied mother with an AS boy in J's class had gone in to see the teacher, really gone hell for leather at her and demanded X, Y and Z for him, and got it. They now have a good working relationship and the boy is doing well in her class. Being cooperative, open and trying to engage in a positive parent/school relationship wasn't the right approach as it got us nowhere, but I couldn't bring myself to be the shouty, rude and demanding person I'd have had to be to get results at that school. To me it was just wrong and could easily have backfired. However, I still maintain that generally you're more likely to get a positive response from being reasonable and staying calm than if you let yourself lose your temper and shout at people, however irritated they may be making you. And like Baddad, I'm far from perfect and have lost my patience many, many times but have always made matters worse and have always regretted it. It's certainly not something I'm proud of afterwards. As far as relationships with other parents are concerned, I've always found that apart from a small handful who appreciated the efforts I was making to teach J right from wrong, social skills and how to behave appropriately, most of them disliked me for the bad parent they assumed me to be and disliked J because he was just a horrible kid in their eyes. When people have that attitude they can rarely be swayed and they're always looking for proof for their opinions. Demonstrating anti-social behaviour myself would just have added fuel their fire that J had 'got it from the parents' so I felt it was in my best interests to demonstrate my parenting ability to counter their arguments. I don't think anyone is saying it's easy to be patient all the time, and I don't know anyone who can achieve that consistently, nor is anyone saying we should tolerate negativity towards our children. It's just that there are good and bad ways of dealing with such situations, and many of us have learned that from personal experience. Karen x

Sweet God in Heaven, I think I've just agreed with every word that Baddad has said How very strange and unexpected Off to have a large gin and a lie down now, I think I need it. Karen x

J never got the time-out step either, it just made matters horribly worse and we stopped it. Once J gets to meltdown there's nothing you can do but let it run its course, and our best action is to not let it get that far in the first place. Prevention, in our experience, is far more effective than dealing with the aftermath. Personally, I think you have to make a judgement as to whether the child is winding you up or is genuinely distressed about something. The first needs disciplinary measures to teach them it's not appropriate (consequences etc) and the second needs support and reassurance. But it can take years to work out the difference as our children can be very manipulative. We looked at triggers that set him off and made plans to work around them, then teach him how to cope with them, and strategies for calming down if he does lose control. Every child is different and although time-out is the recommended first step strategy, there are no guarantees that it will work for everyone. You just have to find out what's best for your child, and there are no overnight solutions, I'm afraid! Karen x

I have to say one of the biggest surprises since Home Edding is J's attitude towards work generally. Homework used to be an absolute nightmare, and whole weekends would disappear in our efforts to get it done with an elaborate reward and consequence structure to encourage him. But he would have tantrums and meltdowns constantly because he simply couldn't cope with it. Now I look back I can see it was largely because he didn't really understand what he was expected to do for homework as the instructions he got from school were so vague and poorly explained, and of course he couldn't get any guidance from me because I didn't know either, and my attempts to help him only made matters worse Now, because I'm the one setting the work, I know exactly what he has to do and can explain it to him in a way he understands, so he can do it. And if it's hard for him or he's distracted/unsettled or whatever, he can have a ten minute Lego break or jump around the garden, and come back to it when he's calmer. Just knowing that makes it easier for him. He's always wanted to learn but other obstacles have got in the way. I must admit we've done a lot of work with J over the years to help him understand why structure is so important to him, so this hasn't come to him instinctively. It's been more about a post-mortem approach when things have gone awry that's encouraged him to see why he needs it Karen x

I deregistered my son in October and was applying for statutory assessment around the same time. The week before I took him out he was off sick, with a note from the doctor giving the reason as 'extreme emotional distress'. I quoted this to the assessment panel but it made no difference whatsoever to their decision not to assess, as the school assured them that J was receiving adequate support (he had none at all) and that he was doing well, when in fact he'd regressed 18 months in five weeks. Having a GP on board can certainly add something to your armoury when you push your case for a statement but it's no guarantee. Karen x