End of Primary – Weds 22nd July 2015

  
Here’s D at the end of school today, her last day in the Primary section.  She’s got an ice cream for two reasons – one, it was injection time this morning, which wasn’t popular and two, it was an end of term treat.

One happy girl.

Time has passed so quickly, it doesn’t seem that long ago that she was a teeny little D, transferring over to SN after a term in mainstream year one.  She wasn’t coping, the environment was too much for her system and she rarely made it into the classroom, let alone participating or actively learning.

We had a choice, as her parents.  Do we continue in mainstream, hope that she’ll improve and that she’ll be tolerated by the others in her class (an overwhelmed SN child in a mainstream class is not easy on the fellow pupils) or, opt for a smaller class size/higher staff ratio? An environment in where she’d hopefully be more comfortable but it wouldn’t lead to qualifications? The emphasis being on life skills and social skills.  We opted for the latter, there really wasn’t a choice when it came down to it …. and hoped.

D entered the SN class with stilted speech, unable to read and she was able to write her name with difficulty.  She refused to learn to read phonetically, preferring to memorise (much like her number skills, mainstream refused to believe she could count from 1-50 at age 3, until they heard her) words instead, which mainstream couldn’t adapt to.

Fast forward to now and she reads, she loves to read, it is a joy to go and choose Rainbow Magic books from the library for her.  Writing has improved but it’s very much on her terms, she finds it “tiring” and that makes a little message in a card all the more special.  Her confidence has increased and we’ll walk into school arm-in-arm with her saying “morning” to the staff.  She does have problems with telling a child who may be being unkind to her in the playground to stop, because she’s afraid that teachers will tell her off, she then bottles up all that emotion until she sees me (which can mean a bolt) but she will eventually tell me what’s wrong.  Eventually could mean hour or days later.

Secondary fortunately for D won’t mean a change of school, it’s a move to the other side of the corridor.  We have a social story with the staff and fellow pupils and she is over the moon to be back with a TA that she is very familar with.

For now though, it’s relief that she’s happy and comfortable in her environment.  Another teacher told her that she was “a lovely, lovely girl” yesterday and she is.  She just happens to be autistic too.  

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