Not knowing – Weds 24th Feb 2016
By Jeannette | February 24, 2016
D moved into the secondary area of her SN school and, ever since September, the focus has changed to encourage more independence.
Parents aren’t allowed to accompany their children up the stairs to their classrooms and the notes in home-school diaries are very infrequent because D told me they’ve been told that they should be remembering what they’ve been told to pass on.
Fair enough, if there aren’t anxieties chucked into the autism mix.
Don’t get me wrong, I would love it if D could have more independence. We walk past a mainstream primary and near to a mainstream secondary school every day and the pupils swoop out – running or laughing with their mates – they don’t seem to notice if someone walks closely by them or if a car whizzes by, they’re just being the children that they are.
Unfortunately with D, she has zero road safety awareness and quite often ignores us as she rushes out of a busy reception area, getting to the place outside (a wall) where she curls up and waits for a cuddle, where she’ll tell us she just wants to go home, where then it can take hours (or days) for her to tell us what’s wrong.
And then we have the attempt at (almost) dissecting her day, trying to ask questions in such a way that prompts any answer apart from “yes” or “no”.
Such are her anxieties at times, that we have no idea which lessons she’d had, whether there are any messages she’d been relied on to bring home or what exactly had been the trigger for her stony face at the end of the day.
It’s difficult. I feel for her as she is being more and more overtaken by worries, worries that – if I’d had a bit of knowledge about them – might be eased sooner.
Every children – especially within an SN environment – is individual and should be treated as such. “Yes”, our girl has an autism “label”, “yes” she has those very recognisable traits, “no” she might not “look” autistic but she shouldn’t be compartmentalised.
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