Navigating another new school year and a huge educational next step. #SENPARENTING #ASD #EHCP
Today is bittersweet. My child who has long struggled in the classroom, amongst his peers, and with the demands of traditional schooling has moved into a specialist unit. It’s an SEMH (Social, emotional and mental health) unit which means it specialises in children who need help with any of the above. My goodness we are lucky to have such a unit, such a place for those children who don’t quite fit, giant stars unable to minimise. Children whose edges are too jagged, too spikey, those who are irregularly shaped. Many have been pushed, squashed, squeezed and folded in attempts to fit them into mainstream schooling. Stars being put in tiny square boxes.
This move is bittersweet, there is always the hope that one day he will ‘conform’, will cope. That one day he will be able to navigate a classroom setting, open a book and read the contents even if it doesn’t interest or excite him. A hope that one day he will access the educational system independently. Yet, I know he won’t. So here is a grief, a grief that he won’t experience all the ‘norms’ all the milestones his peers will. I question: Will he take part in the end of school show? Will he go on his first residential trip, sharing a room with friends and sneaking in sweets for a midnight feast? Will he ever bring home a workbook full of activities and work he has produced and is proud of? Will he one day excitedly rip open his exam results? And now, from his unit will he miss the all-class party invites? the unplanned afterschool playdates? This sadness on my part exists for what I expected, for the hopes I had for his future.
Yet this grief is not always present, I have learnt how to celebrate and appreciate the smaller less obvious or ambitious milestones that he has fulfilled. His ability to remember animal and insect facts, his ability to find joy the simplest and most basic of objects. He can spend hours climbing on rocks, or collecting and organising stones, he makes the most elaborate animal-monsters from lego. His laughter is infectious, his passions and obsessions, a mind so creative that he creates the most intricate and detailed worlds within his head. And he can remember moments and places in exquisite detail as if he is watching them on a screen in his mind.
So, to move into this newly commissioned and newly refurbished unit is a great opportunity for him to be able to thrive in a way only he can. An opportunity for him to grow in a safe secure environment, one supported by professionals who understand the complexities of the neurodiverse mind. Professionals who understand him. He will have a tailored education; he will learn Maths at a level he understands.
‘Mummy, I’m a maths genius’
He will read books that don’t overwhelm or bore, with subjects of his interest.
‘Mummy, the story is not even real; cyclops don’t even exist.’
He will study books on Ants and animals, comic books and fact-filled encyclopaedias containing facts he will remember, regurgitate and recall often. He will continue to learn to touch-type and use technology as currently holding a pen between his nimble fingers remains to mammoth a task. He will learn, yes, he will learn. It won’t be in the linier way that the national curriculum demands, he may not be assessed with formal SATS or sit/pass exams or tests, but he will learn.
So when the words on the paper start to move and squirm, each letter becoming a little ant, his brain unable to process any meaning, he shall play outside in the mud kitchen or play basketball. When the numbers he is sorting become annoying and tiresome he shall dance to the music the unit is able to play. When he can no longer tolerate academic subjects, he will learn to cook and bake. He will paint pictures, build lego, he will lie in a sensory room if he needs distraction or is becoming angry, sad or dysregulated. When the walls start to close in, the room gets smaller or too noisy, or just too much, he will run freely into a contained safe outdoor space. He will learn in a way only he can.
So today is bittersweet, my son will always be the boy who doesn’t quite fit, his edges too sharp too irregular for the mainstream. But today he has been given a space where he will no longer be crushed, or squashed, he has room to grow, to move. A place where he can become bigger, better, more able. He is a giant star able to shine vividly, not dimmed, not muted. He has been given an opportunity to become all he can be. So, he may not be where his peers are, he may not be able to achieve what I once wanted or thought he would. But it is sugary sweet to believe that today as I watch him smile, laugh, talk to his teachers, place his belongings in his new tray, that today he is exactly who he should be and, is exactly where he should be. He has a space he can finally fit into, not perfectly but almost.
NURSEMUMNATURE 