Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello
its my first time on here, i really need some advice, my 9 year old son doesn’t want to go to school. We have a huge meltdown every morning and it’s getting worse and worse. I know he’s ok at school and not struggling but just hates it! He’s only been diagnosed a few months so it’s all very new. Thank you.
Hi Ann,
My first time on here today, and I came on this site because I was wondering if I might find posts like yours. Firstly, thank you for posting and hang in there as there are things you can try.
I have a 9 year old boy too, our problems with going to school hit a crisis point last April. Cutting a long story short, we're in a much better place now but it's taken alot of work with a local BEHMS team, the School SENCO, teachers and ourselves adapting at home and developing our own knowledge and understanding. We are currently under a Paediatrition for an assessment process but it's unlikely that our son is at the threshold for a diagnosis.
My son wasn't even on the radar with the teachers and had effectively masked his difficulties until he properly crashed. It was quite distressing for him.
We had quite a rigid approach to getting him to school and it did get physical. It didn't feel nice though. The head teacher came out twice to our home and collected him personally. We only did this because when he was there it was fine and will say he's had a good day. I think the thought of school is just overwhelming for him.
At times it still isn't pretty (especially Monday mornings) and we still don't know if we are doing the right thing. On a bad day, one of us will take our daughter to school first and then come home to help the other with getting our son to school.
The message I suppose we want to give is that you are going to school but we'll do anything we can to make that experience as good and as easy as possible. We then cut him slack at home but it can be hard.
We are learning too and now understand just how overwhelming the school day is for him. The curriculum is so packed, it's so fast paced, it's a really big school (5 classes per year), the sheer amount of people/kids and he has job share teachers and they also stream children for maths (so another different teacher for that subject), plus three lots of homework every week. He's utterly shattered by the time he gets home.
Essentially our little boy looks like any other kid, he's bright academically so therefore he's held to and judge against the same standards as any other child in the school.
What we have in place with the school now has been driven by us and they're really obvious (no cost) measures which have helped immensely. We've also done alot with our little fella around understanding his emotions so that we can work together more.
It's probably me being naive but the school seemed to be lacking in knowledge/strategies in how to help us at first but they were extremely willing to work with us and I'm really grateful for that.
Explore as much as you can about how your little boy feels about school. What are his likes, dislikes, what is happening at dinner time, is he getting into trouble at all, which teachers does he like (what style of teaching suits him), does he need shorter periods of concentration, has anything happened to upset him (an event from a while ago?).
The school SENCO and an independent BEHMS worker did some observations on our little boy to build a better picture of his school day. We were then able to put more of a plan together.
Not sure what we can do next as we have other little challenges too but we're making small steps. Finding a smaller secondary school with good SENCO provision is a hope.
All the best.
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