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Moving from Yr 2 to Yr 3

penslinger

Hello there,

I'm mum to a newly diagnosed, wonderful 7 yo boy. The last two years the transition between years has been a tough time for my son with challenging behavior (biting). Now we have the diagnosis we can be more prepared.

Any one have any tips?

What we've thought of so far...

  1. Making sure he is with at least one of his best buddies (this year he was separated from his 3 best friends.) 
  2. Meet the new teacher beforehand
  3. Check out the new room and where he is going to line up in the playground.
  4. Move his calm down stuff to the new room so he knows that is going to be there when he needs it. 
  5. Take some photos of the new room so we can look at them in the weeks running up to the new year started.
Thanks
Jen
  • in reply to CallMeBob

    Addendum:

    • If your child has anxiety about standing up in class to answer a question, talk to teacher about not doing this and instead have an assistant work with your son to check if he is following along with the learning task. This was very troublesome for me and led to negitively reinforced memories.

    Neuroptics may assume this inhibitory behaviour is due to shyness, but in my case it was due to introversion in feeling exposed to danger (bullies), and that I was overwhelmed by the direct tone and instistance of the teacher's voice to answer a question, to speak up and stop mumbling my words, to engage in participitory game activities, which required interacting with other students who I never spoke to, some of whom bullied me.

  • Find out if your child is likely to be bullied, or anxious about another students presence. This will create a disturbance to his learning, where he will not be paying attention to the work, but trying to cope with the situation. A sign to look out for is if the teacher reports your son is "daydreaming", or "sleeping". In my case I would pretend to sleep in order to block out the stressful triggers, or appear disassociative (can be misdiagnosed as being ADHD related).

    I remember that other students would steal my possessions, and that the teacher(s) never supported me, by telling off the other studens. This developed into feelings of rejection and repressed anger in later years. Ask your son if this is something that happens, and if so, how he feels about it?

    Autistics like to feel a sense of ownership and tend to be possesive, so when another student takes something, even if it is not theirs technically, but a shared item (shared materials for the task), this can induce anxiety and panic, which in some can lead to nasty behaviour, such as biting, kicking, hitting or spitting. As a child I also would bite, but very rarely, when I experienced overload of stress -- typically related to a loss of control.

    Also of note. If your child has a 'crush' on another student this may backfire, in that they, like many autistics can have trouble with being too needy, and invading another person's space. Not being able to recognise appropriate behaviour or cues (facial expression) when a situation requires a change of tact.

  • in reply to penslinger

    Right that explains it, although senior leadership team should take over as it is a requirement to have cover for senco. The extra visits really helped my daughter to settle in just hoping we do as well with the transition to yr4!

  • in reply to NAS39248

    Hi, yes in theory but the SENCO left shortly after diagnosis and they haven't got a replacement. The class teacher is ace though and I just need to chase her a bit. Thanks for the tips! 

  • Hi 

    My daughter had this last year (without the diagnosis)  we got her multiple visits to the new class so she could adjust, also making sure new teachers and support staff were aware of everything about her. Is his new class within the same school? If so school should have plans on place to support transition.