The End of the SATS is Nigh!

I spoke with Miss B this morning because one of Picklepot’s classmates said to me that Picklepot was hurting him. This kid keeps coming to me and telling me, and I keep saying, “You need to tell the teacher, or a dinner lady, when it happens” Because he won’t, he’ll wait til he sees me which could be the day after or it could be three days after the event. Anyway, I know this kid has similar issues to Picklepot, so I know he’s obviously heard somebody at some point say “I’ll tell your mum!” and so he thinks that is the way to deal with it. I spoke with Picklepot, and he said that it was yesterday, during ICT, this kid kept telling him he’d done it wrong, and he said no I haven’t, but the kid insisted he had and kept going on about it so Picklepot got annoyed with him. I explained again that even when he gets annoyed he isn’t supposed to hit people, and that if the kid wouldn’t get out of his face and telling him he was wrong he needed to call over the teacher and let them know what was going on, not resort to hitting the kid. So I spoke with Miss B, and she said OK, we’ll have a chat about the right way to handle things, because not only does the kid keep telling me instead of the teachers when he feels that Picklepot has done something wrong, but also because Picklepot felt the best way to resolve the situation was to hit the kid, which obviously isn’t the thing to do.

While we were chatting she said the SATS would be finished tomorrow and she was hoping that once it was all out of the way things would calm down. It’s not just Picklepot who has been up in the air about it all – a lot of the other kids in his class are finding it tough too. I found out Picklepot has to go off alone and do his SATS away from the other kids, because not only does he chat to them when he shouldn’t, but also because of his constant narration of everything. I don’t know if that’s just him, or if it’s to do with the ASD? But I’ve noticed it at home, too, he doesn’t do anything silently – he’ll narrate it, just like they do on those YouTube videos he’s such a fan of, even if there’s nobody there to listen, I’ll hear him from the other room rambling on about whatever he’s doing. Anyway the oher day it was Mrs S, the headmasters wife (she’s also a teacher at the school) who took Picklepot off for one of his SATS and he was quite proudly telling her that his scores didn’t matter, that mummy & daddy loved him anyway, that the SATS weren’t to test him but to test that the school had taught him everything they should have done, to test that the teachers had been doing their job properly – all of which I’ve told him, and his dad has told him, and we’ve gone through time and time again at home. He then finishes off this explanation to Mrs S by saying, “If I fail, Miss B will get the sack!” Where on earth he has heard that I don’t know. It’s certainly not something I’ve said to him! Poor Miss B! Luckily Mrs S laughed about it, and told Miss B who laughed about it and she was laughing when she told me, but then I walked home with one of the other mums and she said her daughter had come out with the same thing the other day at home! So it seems the kids have heard it somewhere, it’s beyond me where they’ve heard it, but apparently all the year 2 class believe that if they fail their SATS then their teacher will get the sack!!

Anyway as it is the last day of SATS tomorrow I’m hoping that we can do something to mark the occasion, maybe go out for dinner as a family or something, my mum is visiting tomorrow and it was her birthday earlier in the week so it’d be nice to take her out with us too. No plans so far for Saturday but I think Daddy P had a couple of presents hidden away for Picklepot for after the SATS so he might get those. Then on Sunday we’re off to my in laws for dinner.

Today I went for a lovely walk in town with Sunshineface, met up with a friend and we went for coffee, then we took a walk alongside the river in the sunshine, it was lovely and just what I needed to lift my spirits this morning. I felt a bit blugh first thing, I’m not really sure why. Tonight I’m out with my team from work, we won the ICE award for the month for being so damn good at what we do so as a treat we’re going out for dinner. I’m looking forward to going out with the gang, and going out in general – I get so few hours off from being ‘mum’, it’ll be nice to be me for a while! 

Missing Tiger

Anyone who knows J will know he has a "thing" about tigers. It started when he was a baby - Grandma P brought him a tiger soft toy, because Daddy P had one when he was a child that went everywhere with him, and it became his constant companion and travelled everywhere with us. Sadly he lost it, and despite me buying an identical replacement he never took to that replacement as well as he took to the replacement tiger that Grandma P brought, which was a bit different but apparently preferable!

Well, due to his "thing" with tigers, he has amassed quite a few of them (the soft, cuddly kind, not the wild animal, roaring kind!) Grandma P brought him a special one on his first day of school, a small one to go in his book bag and keep him company during the day, and as he's got older "school tiger" (as he is affectionately known) has become a very calming influence on J. When he feels he is becoming overwhelmed ("whirly" as he calls it) he will go to his locker and fuss "school tiger" and it helps calm him down and ground him again, and he finds he can concentrate better again.

On Thursday, J decided that "school tiger" needed to guard the lockers. So instead of being safely inside his book bag, inside his locker, the tiger was left on top of the lockers. All the kids in his year and the year above troop through this room, all the lockers are in there, so needless to say it was only a matter of time before it went missing. At some point after lunch (when his teacher noticed it on top of the lockers and put it back into his locker) J put the tiger on top of the lockers again and it disappeared. After school Thursday he went looking for it and couldn't find it. I spoke with the SENCO on Friday morning and explained about the tiger disappearing, she said she'd let J's teacher know and they'd have a look about. On Friday afternoon his teacher called to say she'd pulled apart the locker room and the classroom and couldn't find it anywhere.

Needless to say this caused panic for me. How would he react. What would he do? How would he cope without being able to go to "school tiger" for reassurance during the day? He has countless others that he *could* take to school with him, but none of them are official "school tiger" that Grandma P had got him specially to take to school, so knowing J none of them would be quite the same as having "school tiger" there. As we were going to the circus on Friday evening, J was distracted enough that he didn't mention it when he got home from school. On Saturday I panicked quietly wondering what I could do to ensure the safe return of the tiger as quickly as possible. Eventually I put messages on local Facebook selling pages and my own page asking for help from any other parents of children at the school. People were understanding, helpful, asked their kids, but every response I got back was "no, sorry, no news" and I was Googling like crazy looking for images that showed the same type of tiger that "school tiger" is so I could post it to show people what we were looking for. I couldn't find anything.

Then, this morning, I got a message from my friend R. Her daughter, K, has been good friends with J since they started nursery school. The message soothed me immediately. "Tell him not to panic" it read "K found tiger and he's at home with us. I'll bring him into school tomorrow morning." Well, thank heavens for that. Thank heavens that, although a hard lesson to learn, maybe J now understands a bit better that he can't leave his property out in the open where anyone can see it and it can go missing. We've explained it a million times but it doesn't sink in. He's so innocent in that way - because he wouldn't move something that belonged to someone else, he doesn't understand why anyone else would. It doesn't occur to him that someone else might take a shine to it and take it home themselves; that someone else might find it funny to hide it or that someone else might just dump it in the bin because they could. Thank heavens that, despite the fact we didn't know until this morning, K had seen it and knew it belonged to J and had the sense to pick it up and take it home to keep it safe. We didn't see her on Thursday after school and I didn't see her on Friday at drop-off, then my mum went to pick-up.

Thank heavens that, due to the circus distraction and afterwards the exhaustion on Friday night, J didn't worry about it a lot. I was prepared for hysteria, tears, meltdowns - fortunately we avoided that. Now that we are getting "school tiger" back tomorrow, there won't be any hysteria, tears or meltdowns about his whereabouts in the future. I have made it abundantly clear to J that under no circumstances is "school tiger" allowed to sit on top of the lockers on guard duty.

Tomorrow when "school tiger" gets home from school, I am taking a photo of him ... Just in case he ever decides he fancies a weekend away again in the future!

“The Kindness of a Stranger”

22.05.15

We continue to wait for further news regarding the appointment for J’s full assessment, and while we wait Daddy P and I continue to muddle along as best we can, working hard to keep J’s routine in place, giving him a timer to help him understand limited amounts of time and what needs to be done within that time, making sure that even if he doesn’t feel the same himself that he understands why others might feel the way they do.

Something that we regularly have issues with is school drop-off. Some days, you’ll get there and the teachers have just opened the door – days like these tend to be easier, because then J will see the teachers and his classmates rushing in and he’ll grab his stuff and say goodbye and charge off eagerly to be with his friends. Some days, it’ll be a few minutes before the door opens and in those few minutes J gets bored with waiting, and distracted. I try to keep hold of him as I know that once he runs off and starts playing I won’t be able to call him back easily – it’ll take me ages calling him, trying to catch him, before I manage to get him and take him to the ramp that leads up to the door. Other days he’ll grab onto my leg when the door opens and refuse to let go – he’ll get upset about leaving me, says things like he wants to stay at home with me to make sure I’m OK.

Twice this week, I’ve had the running away experience. Earlier this week when he did it, I’d been holding his hand right til the last minute, and let go of him only to usher him up the ramp, and he turned round, dropped his things, and ran off in the opposite direction. As I stood there feeling deflated and wondering why he did these things, a young girl ran over to me and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll get him,” She then wandered over to him casually, held out her hand and said, “Come on J, walk in with me.” He stopped what he was doing and looked at her. I was stood there in disbelief, and he rushed over to her and grabbed her hand, and the pair of them walked over to me. She gathered his things from where he’d abandoned them in a pile at my feet, and handed them to him, took hold of his hand again and they walked in together.

This morning, it seemed we were waiting forever for the door to open and to start with, J was perfectly happy to stay close to me and run around me and one of his classmates mums, with his classmate, chasing one another. Then the door opened and his classmate ran off up the ramp without hesitation – J shot off in the opposite direction. I’d called him and waved at him to come back, but he was off to the play equipment (which he knows he’s not meant to play on) I followed him over there, with my strict mummy voice on, and told him to get off the equipment and hurry up into the school. At first he refused, then he came down the slide and ran toward the ramp as if he was going to go in without further issue – then he changed his mind again, ran past the end of the ramp and carried on playing. Just as I was standing there wondering what to do for the best, the same young girl came over to me and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll get him” for the second time this week, and she calmly walked over to him and held out her hand again. Once more she took him up the ramp and into the school. I made sure this time that I spoke with the teacher on the door, to tell her how impressed I was with this girl, because of her helpfulness and the fact that she is so willing to give me a hand getting J into school.

I was told that the same girl often keeps an eye on him in the playground, and despite the fact he’s younger than she is, she’ll let him play with her and her friends, and she’ll often help the teachers at the end of breaktime getting him back into school (it’s not just me who has issues with it then!)

It’s part of what I like about J’s school. It’s called a family school, and I wondered why that was to begin with, but they do have a strong family ethic of looking after one another. Older kids will play with younger kids, with understanding for the difference in their ages and compassion if the younger ones get injured in the playground (they escort younger ones to the first aid room) The older kids who do well are made into monitors who then spend an afternoon or two each week assisting in other classrooms – J has developed a bit of a thing for a year six girl who comes into his class on a Friday to sharpen the colouring pencils and who sits and does some reading and drawing with a couple of the children (normally including J!) The teacher on the door in the mornings isn’t a teacher who teaches J’s class - yet she knows his name and has done for some time. She’ll call him in the mornings when she sees him hurrying toward the ramp, he knows her and chats to her about his interests and what has happened and how he’s feeling. Today she was chatting to me about our plans for half term; she was saying to me that she’s found stickers work well for getting J into school after break time. It’s definitely motivation that works for J – since doing the sticker diary at home in the evenings he’s trying really hard to earn as many stickers as possible.

I don’t know anything about this girl apart from the fact that she doesn’t bat an eyelid at J throwing a wobbly and she remains calm and offers her hand for him to take when he’s not feeling co-operative. The kindness of strangers doesn’t have to be anything massive, but twice this week the same young girl has shown me how much of an effect a simple act of kindness has.

Peace & Love,

Mummy P

xxx

An Update on J

06.05.15

So far, J remains unlabelled and undiagnosed. We’ve been in discussions with the SENCO at his school now for some time and both she and the school are very supportive of J’s requirements and he was fortunate enough to have an evaluation quite early on from the child development psychologist who agreed that further investigation was required as some of J’s behavioural tendencies are not within the ‘standard’ parameters. For the most part, I couldn’t give a hoot – he’s still J, regardless of what label and diagnosis he may or may not end up with – but I want the support there for him, I want to know that everything was done to support him, and his learning and development.

Following the child development psychologist evaluation, I then took J to visit the GP as the school are unable to refer a child directly – it has to go through the GP. I took with me a letter from the SENCO recommending that further investigation was needed, as well as the report from the psychologist and my own folder which has a diary of sorts, noting down events or days that have been particularly good or particularly bad, for whetever reason, noting down things that have happened etc, just to see if we can find a pattern for the behaviour and also to show that there are times, listed and dated, when his behaviour is off the scale and I don’t know what to do.

The GP briefly read both reports, watched J play for 30 seconds and announced that she didn’t feel there was anything to be concerned with and what made me think there was any issue. I pushed my thick yellow folder of notes across the desk to her. “Do you have time to read it all?” I asked. I showed her a video, perhaps the quickest way of getting someone to stop and pay attention to what you’re saying – actual recording, documented proof of the behaviour described being played out. She watched it. “I’ll refer him,” she said, “But I warn you, it’ll be a long wait for an appointment.”

Within a couple of weeks the thick envelope came through from the unit regarding J’s recommendation and asking me a whole bunch of questions about him, his behaviour, everything. It was massive to fill in and took me ages, but it was worth it to get it all documented and get the wheels in motion so to speak. A second thick envelope was included for me to give to the school, which I addressed to the SENCO, and now we wait.

J’s behaviour, on the whole, has been a lot better in recent weeks. He has still had some moments, but generally speaking he has been really good. We’re doing a sticker diary now, so at bedtime we go through the days events and he gets stickers for things that he did well and we discuss the good and the not so good aspects of each day. Then he adds up how many stickers he got that day – if he gets a set amount of stickers (or more) within a week then he gets a special reward. His rewards so far have been simple, easy to accomplish requests – two weeks ago he wanted McDonalds for dinner, and to eat in rather than get take-away! Last week he asked for a new game – Daddy P got him Minecraft on the PS3 and he’s absolutely crazy about it.

Today he decided to be a pickle and he ran off around the playground at hometime with his best friend instead of walking nicely with me. It took 15 minutes until we left the playground. I made it clear why I wasn’t impressed with that, and he apologised and seemed to understand. I deliberately draw a line under things in a set amount of time so that he understands each ‘section’ of the day, otherwise each day is so long with no end in sight for him, so we break it down as much as possible, which I have found helps with his understanding of time as well as when we do the reward stickers in the diary each evening. So between school pick-up and getting home is one segment of time – once we were home, the next segment began, and since that point he has been really good again. I think sometimes he needs to just run off some steam with K. Maybe one night after school now the weather is getting better we can take both of them to the park or something for a picnic tea and let them run around for a while and wear themselves out. I might suggest it to K’s mum.

It’s been a while since I sent off the form for his assessment, but we’ll see what happens! Hopefully the SENCO has sent back her form, there was a warning on the letter that it had to be returned by a certain date or they’d discharge him with no further action so I might have to double check with her that the form was returned on time, though I’m sure it was. She must be used to this sort of thing in her position!

Time to go and cook my dinner now …

Peace, Love N Pizza,

Mummy P

xxxx

Christmas Jumper

Last year, I got J a special Christmas jumper. It was a beautiful soft knit from Sainsburys TU, £8, navy blue with Father Christmas on it featuring a soft fluffy white beard appliquè detail. I adored it. J adored it. It suited him down to the ground and he proudly wore it for Christmas Jumper Party at Nursery last year as well as to Boxing Day celebrations with Grandma and Grandad P, my SIL J, my brother in law D and my nephew A.

He wore it a few other times around Christmas too, but not as memorable days. I remember washing it one last time on New Years Eve and hanging it in his wardrobe (toward the end that all the rarely worn things live, because it's awkward to access) 

I'll be very honest - I was hoping that J would get some wear from that jumper this Christmas as well. When the email came from the school about the Christmas Jumper Day event for this year I thought yay, I can get out the Father Christmas jumper. I knew exactly where it was and didn't think about it again.

A few days later, at school pick up time, J and I walked back with his best friend K, and Mummy M, and we were discussing the event. This year J's year and two others are allowed to have family members as guests for dinner and we're all invited to wear a Christmas jumper to raise money for Save The Children. Mummy M commented about getting hers and K's Christmas jumpers sorted. I'd confidently got one for myself and said to Mummy M, "J has the one I got him last year that should still fit" To which J said to me, "No, mummy, its not in my wardrobe its gone"! Mummy M and I laughed and when I got home I went straight to his wardrobe and opened it to get his jumper and show him.

The jumper wasn't there. I have literally no clue where on earth it could have gone. I have turned J's room inside out, my wardrobe inside out, I've pulled everything out of the airing cupboard on a random chance it somehow got mixed up with the thick winter blankets we don't often use. The only remaining possible place it may be is the spare bedroom.

The spare bedroom frightens me at the moment. At one point a few months ago I spent three days sorting it all out and cleaning and rearranging and for some time after that it was fine. I had my ironing board set up in there, craft bits, a surface that I could craft on or put my laptop on ... it worked well and I quite enjoyed it. Then I wasn't well for a bit, then I went away for a bit, then I came back and was busy and here we are now.

The washing got backed up in there because while Daddy P will (eventually) take washing downstairs, sort it, put it in the machine (usually stuffed too full) and even go as far as hanging it up to dry afterwards (on a particularly good day) but he will not iron. I never used to but over the last year for some reason I have done more ironing than I did in the first 7 years we lived here. So anyway the washing pile drifts everywhere, boxes and old clothes to be sold or donated, the spare room looks like a scene from Walking Dead happened. Its trashed. The jumper may be in there. It shouldn't be - it wasn't a clean washing dumping ground last time I saw the jumper - but it could be. I'm too knackered and too pushed for time to be able to check right now.

I consulted with J about the situation and he calmly said, "thats ok mummy you can get me a new blue one". I said OK another Father Christmas one or something different?" He thought for a moment and then said "Pale blue Olaf" I asked if he was sure - he said yes. Doubly sure - absolutely yes. Thank heavens for E-Bay. After getting him to bed that evening I located a pale blue Olaf jumper in his size delivery free within the UK. I clicked order and waited,

Order was confirmed by e-mail the following day and within a couple of days the package arrived. I am so pleased. Its good quality, exactly as the E-Bay image looked, with a little 3D knitted carrot nose. As promised in the ad it was brand new with tags, in a plastic bag. When I opened it I noticed it smelled quite stale, like that bag had been closed for a while, so I've put the jumper through the wash. On a wool wash 40 degree machine cycle in my machine along with my own new Christmas jumper and a few others the Olaf jumper washed well, coming out soft and smelling lovely, no shrinkage or distortion to the shape at all.

The purpose of the Christmas jumpers for myself and for J (and for Grandma P ...) is the Christmas Jumper Christmas Dinner at J's school this week for Help The Children. Daddy P can't make it as he'll be working but Grandma P has confirmed that she has a special Christmas jumper for the occasion (described as optional by the school) and I have our tickets in my purse. My friend Mummy M will be there too, she ordered jumpers for her and K, but baby M will need to stay at home with her Nan as very young children / babies aren't allowed. Much to his deep joy I have promised Daddy P I will be wearing my Christmas jumper for Christmas day itself, too. (I know he's secretly thrilled by that!) 

I showed J his new Christmas jumper and asked him if it was what he had in mind. He smiled from ear to ear and said "Yeah, thank you, it's brilliant!" before turning to Daddy P and saying, "Look, Olaf!" I think he's pretty pleased with it too.

Love,

Mummy P

x x x x