• Replies 3 replies
  • Subscribers 29 subscribers
  • Views 2124 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related
Hints and tips
  • To quote someone's message, first select/highlight the relevant text, and then use the Quote button that appears
  • To "mention" someone, type @ followed by the start of the forum name, and choose from the list; that person will get a notification of being mentioned

Is the use of Team Teach beneficial or damaging?

Mindreadingmum

My daughter is 11 and as yet without a diagnosis. We are part way through the assessment process but have been advised to use ASD strategies to support her in school. 
School refusal became an issue about 18 months ago resulting in her not attending school from Nov 2019 at all. However, she has now started a new school (secondary) and desperately wants to go but finds its extremely difficult to cope. Since the start of term,3rd Sept, she has attended for 5.5 days but her anxiety towards school is increasing again. 
At her primary school the approach was get her in there by any means necessary which we all found traumatic so I refused to physically drag her there kicking and screaming when she was so distraught and in my opinion terrified. The plan at secondary was for her to start the day in nurture to ease into the day. Yesterday was day one and she was more settled after the day than previous days. 
This morning though  I managed to get her to the school car park but she refused to get out of the car. The sendco and lady from nurture met us in the car park and tried to coax her in  this wasn’t successful after half an hour so they used Team Teach to get her into school  she was as you can imagine incredibly distressed and I hated having to leave her there like that. 
the sendco called a short time later to tell me she had settled down to her activities in nurture. She then asked if I was ok with the way they got her into school and if I’m honest I’m don’t feel happy about it. I don’t know whether it has destroyed the trust she was forming with the nurture teacher and school and I worry about the long term impact of her being taken into school this way.

i would appreciate advice from anyone who has had experience with this as the best way to move forward. Whether using Team Teach will, as the sendco believes, break the cycle of school refusal and help her feel safe or as I believe cause more damage as she is dragged away from me in a state of distress.

thanks   

Parents

  • There are many autistic adults here who would probably suggest you write your thoughts down on this and when you feel you have confidence in what you're conveying, be brutally honest. Safety - matters of trust, emotional safety, psychological safety,  has to be first. There is still a serious lack of understanding of Autism in the education system and just looking at Nurture, they don't have it down. Let's be honest, for most of civilisation, humans aren't required to detach, separate, live in isolation from their home unless sold into slavery or as a wife. 

    Forcing someone into an environment they don't feel safe in, is not humane. Autistics don't feel safe in schools, they are not designed for children who cannot dull their senses. They are intensely impacting and can be the same as being forced into a torture cell. But it's important you write down all the issues your daughter feel overwhelmed and under-protected by to create a case. She may not be able to express everything, so as a parent, we need to really help them identify - not their emotions, but What they're experiencing. 

    Autistics can better tap into Function or dysfunction/ malfunction rather than 'Emotion', which is an Outcome of What is Happening around me plus how I'm impacted or prohibited, in context of expectation. The result of this summary will then produce a set of emotions (never just one). And as an autistic, we are severely impacted by our surroundings and internal self. Identifying all those emotions will never fix the problem. Fix these functions impacting me and then I'm not bothered trying to ID an onslaught of emotion. 

Reply

  • There are many autistic adults here who would probably suggest you write your thoughts down on this and when you feel you have confidence in what you're conveying, be brutally honest. Safety - matters of trust, emotional safety, psychological safety,  has to be first. There is still a serious lack of understanding of Autism in the education system and just looking at Nurture, they don't have it down. Let's be honest, for most of civilisation, humans aren't required to detach, separate, live in isolation from their home unless sold into slavery or as a wife. 

    Forcing someone into an environment they don't feel safe in, is not humane. Autistics don't feel safe in schools, they are not designed for children who cannot dull their senses. They are intensely impacting and can be the same as being forced into a torture cell. But it's important you write down all the issues your daughter feel overwhelmed and under-protected by to create a case. She may not be able to express everything, so as a parent, we need to really help them identify - not their emotions, but What they're experiencing. 

    Autistics can better tap into Function or dysfunction/ malfunction rather than 'Emotion', which is an Outcome of What is Happening around me plus how I'm impacted or prohibited, in context of expectation. The result of this summary will then produce a set of emotions (never just one). And as an autistic, we are severely impacted by our surroundings and internal self. Identifying all those emotions will never fix the problem. Fix these functions impacting me and then I'm not bothered trying to ID an onslaught of emotion. 

Children
No Data