Being Quiet Is Okay, Isn’t It?
By Jeannette | October 23, 2018
I know I haven’t blogged much about school life for D and T recently but something said at D’s parents evening at her SN school last week has stuck with me.
Our girl is doing okay, more than okay at the moment, she’s started a GCSE course (we are so proud) in a subject which she enjoys (more of that in another post) and is coping – on the whole – with the challenges this new school year has brought.
D is kind and polite in school, she will happily say “Good Morning” as she goes in after our walk and has been described as a “role model” by her Head Teacher, which is wonderful! She is most definitely in the right setting for her.
Monday’s though, present a challenge as the curriculum has a “carousel”, which according to D means they go into different classes and it’s all a bit unexpected. She doesn’t look forward to Mondays and my hand is always gripped soooooooo tight on the walk but it’s part of preparing her for beyond school, I guess.
Back to the parents evening, it was all going really well until we came to this point:
This was raised as an issue, as during “choosing time” (which means they can CHOOSE what they’d like to do), D prefers to read a book and not socialise.
They also said that they would like D not to read during “Choosing Time” but talk to her classmates.
Well, apart from the fact that D has chosen to read and enjoys reading, it calms her and I don’t feel anyone should be discouraged from reading, there is the very obvious point that why should she be forced to make conversation when she’s meant to be self-regulating?
What is wrong with being quiet? She’s not a “hello, I’m here!” person, nor am I but, she will sing on stage after gentle encouragement and preparation.
Why be forced outside her comfort zone and start a conversation (and they didn’t have an answer for this) when it is very likely that any response to her questions would be “closed” answers? (her classmates are all SN too)
I know she has to be prepared for life beyond school but FGS if she is in a period of “choosing time” and she chooses to spend that time reading and self-regulating, let her!!
Today, being Tuesday, was crochet group for me. I asked D if we could go and she answered politely whenever spoken to. She was the lovely polite young teen that she is, when she wanted to, she choose to sit and read and that was fine by me.
It meant that she could tolerate being in a library where there were quite a few crying children.
It meant she tolerated the bus journey home with various smells that she very quickly picked up on, there was no way I was going to force her to start conversations if it meant she wasn’t comfortable.
So, just what is wrong with choosing to be quiet? Wouldn’t life be boring and really quite exhausting if we were all extrovert?
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