This is a rant!

aurea · Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 7:09 pm Post subject:

Hi all,
I am a very angry, sad and frustrated mum at the moment. I haven't posted anything here in a little while. Today I need to get my frustrations off my chest. (sorry all)

As some of you may or may not know I have been having an on going battle with my 9 year old son J's school. J was diagnosed aspergers late last year, his team of docs (yes team not 1 doc or even 2 docs but 3 docs) held a meeting early this year to hand down their diagnoses and offer support and ideas for accomadations for J for this year. J's school have been extremely resistant in even at the start using the aspergers/autism word. It took months for the school to call in the autism resource worker, even then I believe they did this just to try to prove to me that he is coping just fine ( the vp even said to me at one stage "he is fine, do you want him to have problems?".

Anyway the school eventually held an ILP meeting with myself, the resource worker (who backed me up on quite a few points) and themselves. Telling me at the time that they didn't have to have this meeting but they were doing me a favour. By the end of the meeting, the vp had acknowledge that J what was being discribed by myself WAS aspergers, so he supposedly is ment to be getting a tiny bit of extra accomedations and support. Yay. I then heard nothing more.

J also started attending a full day program (respite type thing) every Wednesday. He started this program earlier in the year, the program is run by our local autism school and it is a small group held just for kids in mainstream primary school with aspergers. J loves this group and his teachers are great and he is finally feeling like he fits in some where. We got him into this program by bypassing the vp at his current school.

Any way my current rant is we had parent teacher interviews yesterday, reports were given out late last week. According to J's report he is exactly where he should be in every subject except writing and interpersonal development(these are just a little behind) If I was to give this report to someone who didn't know J they would assume he is anNT student doing pretty well, no struggles at all apart from those two things. Yay not really. J I know is having struggles because he has told me, he finds the teacher talks to much and he gets confussed, he has asked why can't she just give him the book to read or a handout to read himself. I have talked to the teacher about this, she tells me the push is to do more talking less handouts then addmitted that this probably doesn't take into account all kids. Der!!!!

I asked his teacher what exactly was interpersonal development? Ummm she doesn't know!!! Shocked

She thinks this is the way he interacts with his environment and the others in the class room and school. She then goes on to tell me that J is not the same boy he was at the start of the school year. She tried to say that it's been since he started at his Wednesday program.
What exactly does she mean. Well she can now see (with a look of great concern on her face) that J spends a lot of time Ummmm "not with us". He is displaying more and more autistic tendancies. Evil or Very Mad

Hmmmmm. I tell her yeah his teacher at Wednesday group is noticing more and more aswell, as he gets to know him. She again says that its been ever since he started at Wednesday group. (Well your not taking this away from him, I'm thinking) I tell her, I believe that this is because he is finally letting his gaurd down and is comfortable with the teachers and kids at Wednesday group. He talks about this group all week, even when he is sick he still wants to go to Wednesday group. This is what gets him thru his mainstream school week, knowing he only has to go to normal school two days either side of Wednesday. I tell her he is not having his massivemeltdowns at home at the moment, he still says he doesn't want to go to school from time to time, but he isn't clinging to the fence any more. Oh well at least thats something, she says. I then ask her about the autism resource worker. The resource worker apparently went out to the school a couple of weeks ago and rang me to let me know what her abservations were and to let me know she wanted to see J in a class he wasnt doing as well in, namely maths. I asked his teacher so what is going on with his maths, ( According to his report he is right on target) His teacher tells me he gets really confused and is all over the shop when ever they start talking about big numbers or double numbers. This is not reflected in his report!!!!! I tell her I know he has no understanding about the value of money. She tells me they haven't even gone there with him. She tells me her biggest concern is his writing, he avoids it at all costs.

I am really angry. It has taken six months of J's school year for his teacher to recognise some of J's struggles and to even say she can see some signs of Autism. She is now looking concerned. She is telling me nothing I didn't already know. His report however reflects none of this, his report is very positive. What is she going to do about it? I don't know. I will speak with J's autism workers and see what they suggest, then maybe I can get his teacher to sit down and talk with me, longer than 10 minutes.

Don't get me wrong I am happy that she can now see some of what I have been saying to them for the last however many years. But I sat at home and cried because, do I have to do this every year? Things could have been done earlier had the teacher just listened and trusted me not to be a paranoid mother. J's aspergers is not going to go away, for her and each of his teachers they only have to plan for each school year, I need to look forward to the rest of his life.

Sorry this was so long, I am just so frustrated.