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redleaf68

~ musings about autism, parenthood and whatever else is on my mind.

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Tag Archives: school

Saturday

26 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by redleaf68 in ASD, autism, school, SEN, Uncategorized

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autism, school

Saturday was a good day. They said it wasn’t possible. They said it could never happen. But it did.

One of SonOne’s new friends in secondary school not only wanted to meet up with him at the weekend, but wanted mum to meet me too! I was told this virtually never happens and that I just had to accept it.

I feel very proud of my son for choosing such a nice kid as a friend. After all, he has been with the same children around him for seven years in primary, apart from one or two who joined his class along the way. I am not saying he will never encounter horrible people or misjudge some but I am proud of how he is managing this maze of social interactions.

I am also incredibly excited to have made an unexpected new friend in the mum, who is warm and approachable and I feel like she will be someone I will enjoy getting to know more and more over the coming years.

Transition is going so much better than I feared it would, largely thanks to a LOT of preparation behind the scenes in handing him over from primary to secondary. When something goes badly at school we are quick to notice and set blame and complain. When something goes well, it is all too easy to wave it away and for people to say ‘see, I don’t know what you were worried about, he is fine’. But the invisible background effort is essential and ongoing and so very worth it.

Saturday really was a good day.

T-time

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by redleaf68 in anxiety, ASD, autism, school, SEN

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anxiety, school

It’s T-time again.
No, not time for a cuppa.

T is for Transition. For an autistic child, transition happens so often and is so painful. Experience is forgotten as sheer terror grips him, and all those past events which were successfully negotiated now count for nothing.

Transition can be on Saturday morning, a change of routine from the weekdays.

Transition can be on Sunday evening, the dreaded return to school.

Transition can happen on the eve of a holiday, or on the eve of the return trip.

Transition is bad enough at the end of the school year, and as if things couldn’t get more stressful, transition is at its worst in the lead up to the new school year. So many unknowns. You just can’t prepare for every eventuality.

In January, we have the transition from holidays into spring term. People will be asking ‘How was Christmas?’, ‘How was your birthday?’, ‘Ready and raring to go?’ and saying ‘You’ve grown, young man’, and ‘Nice to see you again’. All these things are usually said in passing, not really requiring an actual answer. So, why ask them, an autistic person may be justified in asking? Welcome to social conventions. It is a minefield. Most of us pick up the rules by observation and practise as we grow up, we adapt to expectations fairly easily, we learn to fit in with our ‘correct’ and quick responses. It doesn’t come as easily to everyone though.

It is usually only when we try to learn a new language that we realise how complicated our own one is. And so it is watching an autistic child try to learn responses, recall them fast enough, remember to smile or use a correct facial expression depending on the situation. If you sat down to draw some sort of fancy diagram of all the phrases which might crop up in a simple conversation exchange, you would be hard-pressed to make it clear. The problem is of course that the other person isn’t reciting from a script, so you can very well learn a whole range of suitable responses, but none of them may be quite apt in that moment in the real world.

So, tomorrow I will put out the bags and sports kits after he is in bed, I will not mention school all day.

Tomorrow he will be buried in his iPad with headphones on. He will eat popcorn and toast and not be challenged in any way.

This way he will (I hope) preserve some energy for the ordeal which is the morning of the first day back at school.

 

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