Saying hello

[Greg F]

Hiya all

 

I'm Greg, husband to one, father to three.

 

5 year old son is diagnosed AS, I reckon he got it from me as I have most of the classic Asperger's traits too. It was never a problem for me as the school I attended was more than happy to just let me sit in a corner and read to my heart's content.

 

I love my family but hate the feeling of helplessness when it comes to my son's educational needs - his teacher has stated that he has learned absolutely nothing in this academic year - he knows less today than the day he started school thanks to their help :/

 

My son at 18 months knew every letter of the alphabet (thanks Carol Vorderman!) and could read them perfectly, he could also read numbers up to 100 (thanks again Carol!)

 

At school he was forced to unlearn it as he needed to know the lowercase pronunciations ('a' rather than 'A') - he knew that a and A were the same letter but would say the uppercase version rather than the 'standard' lowercase version. Rather than expand his knowledge he was forced to stop using uppercase pronunciation and the teacher didn't even know he could count until 6 months of his first year had gone by and we told her in a parent's evening.

 

Is this too much for a "hello I'm Greg" first post?

[something_different]

hi greg, nice to meet you, sorry to hear your son is having difficulties with school.

[call me jaded]

Hi Greg!

 

I have a Countdown kid too. I don't think she learned very much to start off with, although she had an extremely talented teacher who recognised her ability from day one. We looked to work on weaknesses (she was very shy and would not speak out in class for instance). The headteacher came to her first parents evening and has been a source of reassurance throughout. It hasn't always been easy, but we looked on her early years as socialisation rather than education and continued to extend her ourselves at home. Gradually the NC picks up and our roles have now reversed - school educates and we socialise.

 

We chose to 'work with' the school as we had no intention of moving her - the logistics of our life are complicated enough as it is, we need the three of them in the same school.

 

Could you put your comment about your son not learning anything in the academic year in context? What else was said?

[Greg F]

The conversation went like this:

 

Me: Is this the right school for him?

Her: (no reply)

Me: Well has he learned anything at all this year?

Her: I was actually thinking about this over the weekend, he has not made any progress at all.

Me: So how is him being in this school actually benefiting him?

Her: (no reply)

 

I have spoken with the headteacher about this, and she is rather good at avoiding the difficult answers too which doesn't help:

Me: I want what's best for my son. Is your school the best place for him?

Her: I want to do everything I can for him.

Me: In the almost 2 years he has been here he has not achieved anything, how are you providing for his needs?

Her: We spend over £180 per week from our own budget - which is meant for other things - to provide a classroom assistant for him.

Me: And you send him home almost every day because his teacher and teaching assistant can't cope with him.

Her: It is not as bad as that.

Me: He has never completed a full week of school without being sent home since starting, he is still on part time that even though the educational psychologist has told you he should have been in full time a long time ago.

Her: We are doing all we can for him.

Me: is "all you can" enough?

Her: I hate to see a child fail, I take it as a personal failing.

 

I like the headteacher but I do see that she is using non-committal responses when answering questions that she doesn't like.

 

His teacher I detest - she never gave Nathaniel a chance - she kicked him of school out on the second day he was in her class and still does it regularly every chance she gets.

 

I have a couple of questions:

My son has just turned 5, which is the legal age for him to be in full time education.

Can I

1) Refuse to collect him when they call me and force them to live up to their educational responsibilities?

2) Use the law to force them to give him the education that the law states he should be receiving?

Edited July 5, 2009 by Greg F

[bid]

Does your son have a Statement?

 

This would seem to be the next logical step.

 

Good luck...IPSEA or ACE are very good places to gather information and advice about applying for a Statutory Assessment, which is the first step towards getting a Statement. Also, sending him home constitutes a form of illegal exclusion, and the school is simply not allowed to do this by law.

 

Bid

Edited July 5, 2009 by bid

[Greg F]

We (his parents) applied for a statutory assessment about a month or so ago.

 

We were advised to by the Parent Partnership.

 

We had a progress meeting with school, ed. psy. etc on Thursday, the headteacher actually said in the meeting we shouldn't have applied ourselves as they were considering doing it themselves that day.

 

I thought that the school sending him home was inappropriate (which reminds me of something - see below), is it illegal before the age of 5?

 

The see below bit:

Last Friday my son was sent home because he bit the classroom assistant.

 

I asked him what had happened and he told me the following:

"I had gone into the nursery outdoor area and was playing with the cones. I should not have been there. *redacted* found me and grabbed my wrist very hard like this (he then clamped onto his wrist so tightly his knuckles went white) and was pulling me back. I bit her to stop her hurting me."

 

He repeated the story to his grandmother later that day.

 

As you can imaging I was rather concerned. This Monday morning when I took him to school I was going to talk to the headteacher about the event but it so happened that the deputy head was on playground duty. I took her to one side and said what my son had told me.

 

Her response was "That is very inappropriate, leave it with me."

 

In the meeting this week we were told that the teaching assistant would no longer be working with my son as their relationship had deteriorated too far.

 

The next question put to the ed. psy. by the headteacher was "There has been an issue with restraint, is there a course we can send staff on to know the correct restraint technique?"

 

The ed. psy. and the early years coordinator both looked at each other. "We don't advocate restraint training - it tends to become the standard way of dealing with a child after that point. There is one such course available but it actually focuses on alternate methods. Restraint is a small part of the very last session of the course."

 

Surprisingly enough the parents don't advocate restraint either.

[call me jaded]

I have a couple of questions:

My son has just turned 5, which is the legal age for him to be in full time education.

Can I

1) Refuse to collect him when they call me and force them to live up to their educational responsibilities?

 

Yes. Now that he has turned 5 he is entiteld to a full-time education. You could ask for a meeting with the Senco (SEN Co-ordinator). Quite often in primary the Head and the Senco are the same person. You could open it with a question about what is needed to ensure that he receives full-time education, the HT can't pass off direct questions like that.

 

 

2) Use the law to force them to give him the education that the law states he should be receiving?

 

Well... he is merely entiteld to an 'adequate' education, not the best or most appropriate one. But, on the basis of what the teacher has said 'no progress in the last year' and the number of informal exclusions then you would fly through on putting in your own (parental) request to assess for a statement of SEN. The thing is, you do have to know what it is that you want to achieve with a statement and I suggest you go and have a look at other provision, say a unit in a mainstream, etc to compare what you would get. It could be that a change of teacher will make a huge difference, though.

 

Your Parent Partnership Service should be able to tell you what's available locally. And you need to get familiar with the SEN Code of Practice, the ASD Good Practice Guidance and all other things education related.

 

Good luck.

 

[call me jaded]

We cross-posted. You are already a fair bit further down the line.

 

Sometimes a school is just not that ASD-friendly. If you could catch the ed-psych one-to-one and ask if there are other schools you could go and look at you might get a more forth-coming answer than if you ask the question formally.

[thomastank]

Hiya all

 

I'm Greg, husband to one, father to three.

 

5 year old son is diagnosed AS, I reckon he got it from me as I have most of the classic Asperger's traits too. It was never a problem for me as the school I attended was more than happy to just let me sit in a corner and read to my heart's content.

 

I love my family but hate the feeling of helplessness when it comes to my son's educational needs - his teacher has stated that he has learned absolutely nothing in this academic year - he knows less today than the day he started school thanks to their help :/

 

My son at 18 months knew every letter of the alphabet (thanks Carol Vorderman!) and could read them perfectly, he could also read numbers up to 100 (thanks again Carol!)

 

At school he was forced to unlearn it as he needed to know the lowercase pronunciations ('a' rather than 'A') - he knew that a and A were the same letter but would say the uppercase version rather than the 'standard' lowercase version. Rather than expand his knowledge he was forced to stop using uppercase pronunciation and the teacher didn't even know he could count until 6 months of his first year had gone by and we told her in a parent's evening.

 

Is this too much for a "hello I'm Greg" first post?

 

Hi, welcome. My son will be 5 next week and has been in school for a year. He is also in mainstream and the first ASD (diagnosed) child they have had. This week is his first full time week but it has been a very gradual and well supported build up. I agree with someone else's post, the school don't seem to be very ASD friendly to say the least. When my son bit his teacher, she said it was her fault because she held him wrong/mishandled the situation, that is the difference. She then called in Inclusion Support who advised us parents and her as a teacher about different strategies.

 

If you get on with the head and assuming your son will be with a different teacher next year (?) would it be possible to speak to her about sending some teachers/TA/head on some ASD training and work with them to learn more? There is a huge amount available, my head got someone in to speak to the whole staff including lunchtime staff. We have someone coming in this afternoon to teach us how to do 'social stories' etc. We are waiting for a place on the Early Bird plus course too (NAS). We haven't got a statement, we are going to apply for a SA next term.

 

Otherwise I would enquire about other schools in your area and hopefully there will be people more willing to learn and help your son. I hope I don't come across in the wrong way, I totally sympathise with you, I just want to say that there are schools out there who can help and I hope you find the right ones or at least the right teachers in your current one that can support you and your son.

 

Good luck x

 

 

 

[Greg F]

Hi, welcome. My son will be 5 next week and has been in school for a year. He is also in mainstream and the first ASD (diagnosed) child they have had. This week is his first full time week but it has been a very gradual and well supported build up. I agree with someone else's post, the school don't seem to be very ASD friendly to say the least. When my son bit his teacher, she said it was her fault because she held him wrong/mishandled the situation, that is the difference. She then called in Inclusion Support who advised us parents and her as a teacher about different strategies.

 

If you get on with the head and assuming your son will be with a different teacher next year (?) would it be possible to speak to her about sending some teachers/TA/head on some ASD training and work with them to learn more? There is a huge amount available, my head got someone in to speak to the whole staff including lunchtime staff. We have someone coming in this afternoon to teach us how to do 'social stories' etc. We are waiting for a place on the Early Bird plus course too (NAS). We haven't got a statement, we are going to apply for a SA next term.

 

Otherwise I would enquire about other schools in your area and hopefully there will be people more willing to learn and help your son. I hope I don't come across in the wrong way, I totally sympathise with you, I just want to say that there are schools out there who can help and I hope you find the right ones or at least the right teachers in your current one that can support you and your son.

 

Good luck x

Thanks

 

My biggest frustration is that the school are failing him academically - I don't mind in the slightest that he prefers working alone and avoids social contact at the moment.

 

I really do need to find out about better provisioned schools in the area.

 

Our concern as parents are fairly straightforward:

• We want a decent education for our child(ren)
• We didn't want our son 'labelled' thus giving him the ultimate excuse to do what he wants when he wants: "oh don't worry about what he does he's the AS kid everyone talks about"
• Sending our son to a "special school" has a stigma attached - children can and do use it as an excuse to bully children. We genuinely want the best for our child and if that means a special school then so be it. I'll send my son to karate lessons and boxing if any bullying occurs. (is that the wrong way to look at that particular aspect of it?)

[bluefish]

Hi,

My son had lots of problems when he started reception in september, he is a bright lad and not only learnt nothing but went back as far as his learning was concerned, He had a statement of 15hours and yet was still failed by the school! it got to the point that he was so distressed at home(apparently fine in school..)that I removed him in early december. He started at a new school late feburary and we have not looked back. He is once again the happy little boy he was and is learning fast and well he is very clever but really struggles with the every day stuff, which this school seem to understand and embrace.

 

If it looks like you are banging your head against a brick wall with school...... my advice would be change school! It is the best thing I have ever done.

I am just a normal parent now I drop my son off and I pick him up, with none of the worry or stress I had at the last school.

 

Good luck