Hi all,
New to the community, apologies if this has been asked elsewhere but I couldn't see anything in my brief search.
We have had issues with our 7 year old Sons school for a few years concerning his behaviour and how they deal with him when he exhibits certain behaviours. Normally after meetings with the school we see improvements for short periods but usually this deteriorates after a short period and we get a return to negative consequences to things outside of his control, resulting in him being immensely unhappy and frequent cases of after school restraint collapse.
For a long while we have been of the opinion that he exhibits enough traits that he may be midly autistic, albeit very high functioning. He obsessed over certain objects, shows repetitive behaviours in stressful situations, has automatic responses to questions, focuses on certain activities - to the point that he doesn't even flinch when you shout his name from two feet away (not that we purposefully do that). Over the course of the lockdowns last year we had the opportunity to observe how he responds to formal education situations and in the end it resulted in us completely ignoring the schools guidance and taught the same subjects in a manner that kept him engaged. Through which we saw massive gains in his attainment when it came to assessment.
Following the return to school we have arranged meetings with school to discuss the situation and try to get them on board in getting him assessed through our local CAMHS. We first went through our GP, only to be told that the CAMHS service will only accept a referral through the school.
The school, whom admit he is 'quirky', say they see no issues with him at school and because he is not falling behind in his education, that they will not action a referral. Furthermore they attribute his afterschool meltdowns to our parenting skills -.pointing us in the direction of resources we already use to manage some of his behaviours and offering to put us on parenting courses. We have four other children, 3 of which have either been through the school or are in the school now, whom are all high performers and are generally considered by the school as exemplary students, so although I'm willing to accept going on the course, I do feel it is just a case of the school deflecting from the issue at hand.
As parents we are getting to a breaking point where we are considering removing him from the school system so that we can get the CAMHs referral through the GP and moving him to a different school afterwards. However that would also remove him from the few friends he has in our village. The school has been brilliant with our other children and we have no issue with the education provision. We are just disappointed that they seem to be ignoring his mental health and general wellbeing....really looking for advice on getting a private assessment and would that be recognised by the school... we are in the Greater Manchester area.
