So it seemed we were right and that it was the Grandparents' housemove that unsettled CY. Once they had moved and he had had a sleepover he was fine and has been attending his school unit every day for the all of this half term. Not only that, but he threw us a curve ball and decided to join Air Cadets! None of his friends were joining, he just researched it himself and decided to go. He's had all his hair cut off (yes, even went to a hairdresser for only the second time ever.) It hadn't been cut for almost 18 months! He loves it and is very happy.
On Saturday we received a letter from his Ed Welfare Officer inviting us to an attendance meeting to 'explain the irregularity in his attendance and what we have done to help.' Very p****d off!! He's been in every day since Feb half term. The irregularity started precisely because they tried to make him go back to his regular high school and it completely threw him. As for what we have done about it??!! They bloody know he has Asperger's, are we expected to cure it??
I rang the EWO to express that OH and I were not at all pleased with the tone of the letter and she couldn't understand why 'because all the usual legal bits had been left out'. So now we are supposed to be grateful that they are not trying to sue us. O. M. G. I know that all she wants to do is cover her back becasue she wants to make sure that they have done everything to ensure Joe has what he needs educationally but why oh bloody why can't they just take our word and CY's word. They seem to think that if he refuses, it is because the provision isn't right - it has nothing to do with that, it is entirely to do with how 'high' (what we call it when his AS is at its most intrusive) he is. When things are going well, he goes in. When he's anxious, he doesn't. Trying to make hime go to a different school is counter productive. he loves his Unit and his teachers there.
I have now asked CY to write a statement about how he feels about his educational provision so I can take it to this meeting. He has agreed to do it, though he sagely pointed out that' you do know they'll just accuse you of forging my signature, don't you, Mum..!' Just love Aspie bluntness and honesty :D
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
CY still school refusing and he's getting very frustrated and upset by it as he has no idea why he can't go in. Even when he really wants something he can't go in to earn it so we have gone backwards quite a bit. he has only attended 2 days since they returned in January.
Ed Welfare and School Attendance officer were supposed to come this morning for a meeting but didn't show. Have lost a morning of exam marking time for no reason.
Have to go back through the GP for a referral to CAMHS due to new system. Grrr. What a waste of time, the doctor's and mine.
Ed Welfare and School Attendance officer were supposed to come this morning for a meeting but didn't show. Have lost a morning of exam marking time for no reason.
Have to go back through the GP for a referral to CAMHS due to new system. Grrr. What a waste of time, the doctor's and mine.
Tuesday, 11 January 2011
Ok, so it's been a while since I posted anything on here. Of course, Asperger's hasn't been cured in that time and I'm not sure I'd want it to be except on days like today. CY hasn't returned to school since term started last week and I'm not even sure that he knows why - that is probably the most frustrating thing about AS - you get the reaction but often have no bloody clue what the trigger was. So he stays in bed during his school hours (9.30 - 11.30) but otherwise is good - we, fortunately, haven't returned to the old days of meltdowns.
So what's triggering the school refusal this time? Could be one of a few things. Christmas excitement always throws him a little but usually he only refuses for one or two days at the start of a term. His cousins from Canada visited and returned at the end of December but again this didn't seem to throw him too much. Number one suspect at the moment is the impending house move of Gran and Gang (Grandad). CY has only ever known them living at one house and to make matters worse they don't have another house lined up yet so to CY and his lack of being able to process abstract things, I imagine this has become a massive focus for uncertainty. Of course, when you ask him why he's refusing he genuinely has no clue. The way I reason it, whenever he feels uncertain he tries to make himself 'safe' and to CY that means staying in bed.
Of course, understanding this does not make living with it any easier.
Nor does it make you feel any less of a failure when you have another school meeting to attend.
And no matter how many times you do it, making that phone call to school to let them know that, once again, he can't be persuaded to come in, still makes you feel crap.
So what's triggering the school refusal this time? Could be one of a few things. Christmas excitement always throws him a little but usually he only refuses for one or two days at the start of a term. His cousins from Canada visited and returned at the end of December but again this didn't seem to throw him too much. Number one suspect at the moment is the impending house move of Gran and Gang (Grandad). CY has only ever known them living at one house and to make matters worse they don't have another house lined up yet so to CY and his lack of being able to process abstract things, I imagine this has become a massive focus for uncertainty. Of course, when you ask him why he's refusing he genuinely has no clue. The way I reason it, whenever he feels uncertain he tries to make himself 'safe' and to CY that means staying in bed.
Of course, understanding this does not make living with it any easier.
Nor does it make you feel any less of a failure when you have another school meeting to attend.
And no matter how many times you do it, making that phone call to school to let them know that, once again, he can't be persuaded to come in, still makes you feel crap.
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Almost Christmas!
Cy has been attending the Vulnerable Pupil group without much incident for a few weeks :)
He missed a couple of days becasue he was upset over something (when he feels upset the emotions confuse him and he just tries to get control back so he feels 'safe'. One of the ways he does this is by staying at home.) We had taken a rescue greyhound out for the day one Sunday and when we got back to the kennels we were locked out so brought her home with us for the night. CY knew she had a home lined up, and that we weren't in a position to keep her but it threw him a little and he missed a couple of days.
Yesterday and today he has refused again :( There seem to be a few things at play. Firstly, the teacher he has bonded with at the group is leaving after Christmas so that will throw him. I just phoned the teacher and she said they'd noticed he's been unhappy the last couple of days, and unco-operative in a way they haven't seen before. She's put it down to the fact that his school have sent work, and the teachers at the unit have been told they have to do a certain amount of maths, English etc with the students in the unit each week. I can see where the directors are coming from but you don't get school refusers/ school phobics and Aspies to do work by making it obvious that it's school work!!! D'oh! CY is not happy about any work from school and has been reluctant to do it, even for Yvonne (his group teacher.) She is going to reformat it so he doesn't know it's from school. He still has to get his head around the fact she's leaving, though.
He also refused to put his hands in the pastry to make mince pies, which the teacher thought was him being awkward but I told her that's an Aspie 'texture' thing - he hates the feels of anything like that on his hands, and he hates washing his hands as well! She said he was reluctant to join in a couple of games as well - again we know him well enough to realise that he never joins in games straight away as his fear of embarrassment means he has to be 100% sure of the rules before he will attempt anything. I asked whether he joined in after ten minutes and she said 'yes' - this is his usual 'adjustment' time to get used to something new.
On the positive side, she said he has produced good work, he's doing GCSE level Maths and he is really tickling them all with his dry sense of humour which he's revealing now he feels comfortable there. CY has also been going in on Mondays as well, at his own request.
Hopefully, he will go back into the pupil group before the Christmas hols (ahh Christmas, another excitement that the rest of us love but Aspies often don't, that could be throwing him as well as he hates surprises/being the focus of attention/possibly having photos taken!). If he refuses up til Christmas he will have built it into a massive thing by New Year and we'll be back where we started.
The teachers are really good but have confessed they need to read up on Asperger's. Might lend them a couple of books. She said they thought he was being rude the other day then realised he was being funny - don't even think they know about the Asperger ''inappropriate'' tendency...!
He missed a couple of days becasue he was upset over something (when he feels upset the emotions confuse him and he just tries to get control back so he feels 'safe'. One of the ways he does this is by staying at home.) We had taken a rescue greyhound out for the day one Sunday and when we got back to the kennels we were locked out so brought her home with us for the night. CY knew she had a home lined up, and that we weren't in a position to keep her but it threw him a little and he missed a couple of days.
Yesterday and today he has refused again :( There seem to be a few things at play. Firstly, the teacher he has bonded with at the group is leaving after Christmas so that will throw him. I just phoned the teacher and she said they'd noticed he's been unhappy the last couple of days, and unco-operative in a way they haven't seen before. She's put it down to the fact that his school have sent work, and the teachers at the unit have been told they have to do a certain amount of maths, English etc with the students in the unit each week. I can see where the directors are coming from but you don't get school refusers/ school phobics and Aspies to do work by making it obvious that it's school work!!! D'oh! CY is not happy about any work from school and has been reluctant to do it, even for Yvonne (his group teacher.) She is going to reformat it so he doesn't know it's from school. He still has to get his head around the fact she's leaving, though.
He also refused to put his hands in the pastry to make mince pies, which the teacher thought was him being awkward but I told her that's an Aspie 'texture' thing - he hates the feels of anything like that on his hands, and he hates washing his hands as well! She said he was reluctant to join in a couple of games as well - again we know him well enough to realise that he never joins in games straight away as his fear of embarrassment means he has to be 100% sure of the rules before he will attempt anything. I asked whether he joined in after ten minutes and she said 'yes' - this is his usual 'adjustment' time to get used to something new.
On the positive side, she said he has produced good work, he's doing GCSE level Maths and he is really tickling them all with his dry sense of humour which he's revealing now he feels comfortable there. CY has also been going in on Mondays as well, at his own request.
Hopefully, he will go back into the pupil group before the Christmas hols (ahh Christmas, another excitement that the rest of us love but Aspies often don't, that could be throwing him as well as he hates surprises/being the focus of attention/possibly having photos taken!). If he refuses up til Christmas he will have built it into a massive thing by New Year and we'll be back where we started.
The teachers are really good but have confessed they need to read up on Asperger's. Might lend them a couple of books. She said they thought he was being rude the other day then realised he was being funny - don't even think they know about the Asperger ''inappropriate'' tendency...!
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Unit
I rang the afternoon after the meeting about CY's place in the Vulnerable Pupil Unit as we didn't hear about the decision either on the day of the panel hearing or the day after, when we has been assured we would. I was told that his place had been approved and to wait for further details. After a week I hadn't heard from anyone re: CY's place at the Vulnerable Pupil Unit so rang the Ed.Welfare Dept myself. I spoke to CS's line manager and politely said, "Hello, this is CY's Mum, I'm just ringing to see how things are progressing with his place at the **** school." The lady in question very rudely said, " Yes CS is going to speak to Steve ok." and put the phone down on me!! I had no idea who Steve was/is! So I waited another few days and still didn't hear anything so rang the school myself and asked to speak to 'Steve' and finally got through to a very nice bloke who invited Joe over to the school to have a look around.
We went over the following day and were made very welcome by V and Y, two of the teachers in the unit. They showed us around, reassured Joe, and chatted for a while. They said he could go for a trial morning the following day which he did!! He actually went to school! Yay! Steve asked me to fill some forms in and as we did it became clear that he hadn't been informed of the decsision to accept CY - he thought we were waiting for the NEXT panel meeting! So, if I hadn't have rang him directly, we would still be waiting, presumably, because he didn't know anything about us.
Anyway, once they knew that the decision had been made already, they were very happy to have CY join them and he's been going three days a week since. He loves it, it's a very small group (one other boy with Asperger's and two girls with school phobia/ bullying problems) and seems much happier in himself. So his attendance has gone up from 0% to 60% (because he's in three days out of five). He is supposed to do Accipio on the computer on the other days but it is DIRE and doesn't appeal to him at all. Like all kids with AS he has to be interested to do something, he won't do it just to keep the peace or get higher attendance so I don't go to jail! And he just hates it, so he won't do it.
Today, I had a phone call from his school mentor to see how he's doing. As he's dual registered at his mainstream school and the Unit, she said he can only get his attendance mark for mainstream school if he does Accippio on those two days he's not in the Unit. But he won't, so for those two days they will mark him as TRUANT(!) apparently!! Now, it can't be 'truant' because that is misleading - I know he's not in, so by definition he's not 'truanting' and I won't have that word on his records. He's refusing to work because it has no relevance/ interest and doesn't address his learning needs. I asked if he could complete other work and have that count but she said unfortunately not because it wouldn't count as a lesson - even though I am a teacher and could do a 'lesson' for him and give them the work. They said it has to be Accippio or it doesn't count. Never mind that the Accippio lessons I've seen are so dull they wouldn't pass OFSTED... I asked if MyMaths work would count but apparently that wouldn't either. I've explained it all to CY who said, 'Tell them I'd do it if it wasn't bullshit...'. And I'm not putting too much pressure on because the next thing would be he's refuse to go to the Unit as well, which would be a tragedy as he's doing so well there - he's doing GCSE level maths, some English (which he normally won't do) Art and Science. I'm not risking his great progress just to get 100% attendance.
We have a meeting soon with CS et al to discuss attendance, among other things, during which we are also going to have to refuse to accept the last minutes, so this will make us even less popular. The last meeting was so patronising I could have cried.
So, again, we go from being really pleased with his progress to being brought right back down again because no matter what he does it's never good enough for Ed.Welfare. We can't just pull him from the system because then he would lose his place at the Unit so we are stuck at their mercy should they decide that 60% attendance is not good enough and take us to court. Very depressing when we should be feeling really happy that he's found something that works for him.
We went over the following day and were made very welcome by V and Y, two of the teachers in the unit. They showed us around, reassured Joe, and chatted for a while. They said he could go for a trial morning the following day which he did!! He actually went to school! Yay! Steve asked me to fill some forms in and as we did it became clear that he hadn't been informed of the decsision to accept CY - he thought we were waiting for the NEXT panel meeting! So, if I hadn't have rang him directly, we would still be waiting, presumably, because he didn't know anything about us.
Anyway, once they knew that the decision had been made already, they were very happy to have CY join them and he's been going three days a week since. He loves it, it's a very small group (one other boy with Asperger's and two girls with school phobia/ bullying problems) and seems much happier in himself. So his attendance has gone up from 0% to 60% (because he's in three days out of five). He is supposed to do Accipio on the computer on the other days but it is DIRE and doesn't appeal to him at all. Like all kids with AS he has to be interested to do something, he won't do it just to keep the peace or get higher attendance so I don't go to jail! And he just hates it, so he won't do it.
Today, I had a phone call from his school mentor to see how he's doing. As he's dual registered at his mainstream school and the Unit, she said he can only get his attendance mark for mainstream school if he does Accippio on those two days he's not in the Unit. But he won't, so for those two days they will mark him as TRUANT(!) apparently!! Now, it can't be 'truant' because that is misleading - I know he's not in, so by definition he's not 'truanting' and I won't have that word on his records. He's refusing to work because it has no relevance/ interest and doesn't address his learning needs. I asked if he could complete other work and have that count but she said unfortunately not because it wouldn't count as a lesson - even though I am a teacher and could do a 'lesson' for him and give them the work. They said it has to be Accippio or it doesn't count. Never mind that the Accippio lessons I've seen are so dull they wouldn't pass OFSTED... I asked if MyMaths work would count but apparently that wouldn't either. I've explained it all to CY who said, 'Tell them I'd do it if it wasn't bullshit...'. And I'm not putting too much pressure on because the next thing would be he's refuse to go to the Unit as well, which would be a tragedy as he's doing so well there - he's doing GCSE level maths, some English (which he normally won't do) Art and Science. I'm not risking his great progress just to get 100% attendance.
We have a meeting soon with CS et al to discuss attendance, among other things, during which we are also going to have to refuse to accept the last minutes, so this will make us even less popular. The last meeting was so patronising I could have cried.
So, again, we go from being really pleased with his progress to being brought right back down again because no matter what he does it's never good enough for Ed.Welfare. We can't just pull him from the system because then he would lose his place at the Unit so we are stuck at their mercy should they decide that 60% attendance is not good enough and take us to court. Very depressing when we should be feeling really happy that he's found something that works for him.
Monday, 28 September 2009
After a few days of trying to get CY into school, we have had no success. They have done all they can, I think, in terms of getting him a private room, meeting him at home , setting up siutable work etc. We have done all we can in terms of seeling the idea to him as a good one.Perhaps now the LEA will get their finger out and sort out some kind of home tuition?
DF (new mentor) has been in contact a couple of times a week to check whether he's going in, but he just won't, and alongside the refusal we get his feeling of failure because he hasn't managedit, with the subsequent high behaviour at home. All we are doing, I think, is setting him up to fail.
Last Thursday there was meeting to decide if he has a place at the Vulnerable Pupil Unit, or whatever it's called this week. No-one contacted me last week to tell me the outcome, even though they know we are waiting for the verdict. Rang the Ed.Welfare dept today to be told CS isn't in and that the manager might get back to me today if she knows the information.
Waiting, waiting, waiting.
Still haven't had a letter from CAMHS confirming that they are underwriting the Psych report.
DF (new mentor) has been in contact a couple of times a week to check whether he's going in, but he just won't, and alongside the refusal we get his feeling of failure because he hasn't managedit, with the subsequent high behaviour at home. All we are doing, I think, is setting him up to fail.
Last Thursday there was meeting to decide if he has a place at the Vulnerable Pupil Unit, or whatever it's called this week. No-one contacted me last week to tell me the outcome, even though they know we are waiting for the verdict. Rang the Ed.Welfare dept today to be told CS isn't in and that the manager might get back to me today if she knows the information.
Waiting, waiting, waiting.
Still haven't had a letter from CAMHS confirming that they are underwriting the Psych report.
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