Starting secondary school

It's a pleasure, people have helped me out and it's the first time I've been able to help someone else. I was all at sea to start with but these forums are helpful, and it really helps to be at a school with good SENCO. 

We've just won another small battle today, but realising how lucky children are who parents who advocate tirelessly for them. It's so easy for children to slip through the cracks.

Like you say, helps to know you're not alone. Sometimes I think I'm too pushy but when I read stories on here I realise that you have to be 

PS. Thanks for the idea of the stress bucket, I'm going to give that a try :)

Sophie, thank you so much for taking the time to leave such a long and thoughtful comment. I've been trying to find the time to get back on here and reply!

There really sound like lots of similarities in our situations and it helps just to know you're not the only ones going through this stuff, doesn't it? 

My husband had our first face-to-face meeting with J's SENCO team this week which was really positive. Like you suggested they are reluctant for him to drop anything other than PE at the moment because he's young and may miss out on bits of subjects that he likes. 

We have come up with a list of subjects where he could do with support from a Learning Support Assistant and a list of those where he feels OK without one and as much as possible they are going to try and make someone available on that basis.

I just had a nice email from the depuity SENCO about his week and the positive points :)

It's great to hear that your son has made it through Year 7 and on to Year 8 it gives us hope!

Kate :)

Hi Kate, 

This was us last year, and I thought it would never get better.  I know how tough that transition is, my son only got a dignosis a few weeks before starting so there was nothing in place before he went. 

It's fantastic that you have such a good relationship with SENCO. I also had the email for his form tutor and if I felt he was unsettled going in, I would email her and ask her to just keep an eye on him. 

In the subjects that were triggers they gave him a teaching assistant and a time out card. Like your son early on he was scratching himself, stimming with his hands, and getting really upset in some subjects.  They introduced a teaching assitant to support him in those, full time in Maths (he hated it, now loves it), and then a time out card. Whenever he felt stress rising he just had to show the teacher the card discreetly and he would go stright to SENCO where they had a room where he could sit and read - similar to your nurture room. This worked really well, and over time he went to the room less and less. He is very rarely in there now. Personally I felt this was better than withdrawing him from lessons as he learned to recognise his trigger/stress rising and was able to use the tools he had been given to manage it. We felt that this was an important life skill he learned in those first few months - though I know others may approach this differently.

With games we made sure he was warm and we bought tight thermals to wear under his kit. This helped enourmously. But the school quickly worked out what he was ok with and now he does the rowing maching one lesson (rhythmic and non-competiative) and badminton another lesson. 

They were very inflexible in dropping lessons, but I think ultimately that it helped him as over the weeks his did settle down made a few friends and started to adapt. It took a couple of terms, but every week he was more settled. 

The way some classes are taught can be problematic as well. Languages for example are immersion (contextually based and very difficult for my son), and very fast timed tests which has been awful. So I've researched different approaches to this. If this is a trigger time out and assistants can help. 

At home I draw a stress bucket and ask him to tell me how full it is, what's filling it up,  (not just at school). Then we look at ways of emptying his stress bucket, removing triggers we can but also adding soothing methods to empty it - listening to a podcast, watching a film with me, having his best friend over etc. This technique is easy for him to understand and helps me to see where his triggers are and to put more things that soothe him in place. I'm a therapist and use in practice with children a lot - it's not for everyone but for us it's a good way of keeping communication open, it's visual, and being to see the accunulation of things is helpful. 

He is in year 8 now and we are going through different challeges at the moment, but more about the school and how blanket policies put him at a disadvantage. 

Feel free to ask me any more questions, though I'm not an expert just fresh to the experience! 

Sophie

Thanks for your kind words, Nellie and for the links, I'll take a look :)