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I love our school because...

My son has a total kicking screaming meltdown in the bag room of his class, and ends up coming home 3 hours later as happy as anything, with a large 'Pirate Ash' book in hand ;)
It sounds like a bit of a strange turn of events, but actually was very artfully handled by the prep teacher. Mrs H taught Sienna for two years and now has Ash in her class, and she is really fantastic with both of them. She had taken Ash aside, after he had begun to simmer down from his meltdown (during which his aide remained nearby), and managed to reach through to him in discussing how his actions would affect the others in his class. He listened to the other children as they explained to him that his screams made it hard for them to listen to their lesson, and could give them headaches. The children, in turn, listened to Ash explain that he was "sorry I did screaming and hurt your ears but I just wanted to go home and was angry". When asked what would make things better, Ash suggested that making a pirate book would fix everything between them all. I laughed when Mrs H told me about this, it sounds rather more like something that Ash would prefer, but she said that the other kids thought that it was fantastic. They all coloured in pirate and ship pictures and put them all in this book, calling it 'Pirate Ash' and asking Ash all sorts of questions about pirates.
Ash got to bring the book home to share with us and read for a couple of days, and then return it to the class. He listened to the other children and learned that they like having him in their class, learning with them. It has really helped his attitude toward school, which has always been fairly positive but he has been more reluctant to go since the recent school holidays. Since this whole meltdown / pirate book scenario he has been back to his positive attitude again :) I'm grateful that he has an aide in the classroom. The whole funding / support process is a bit of a nightmare, but Ash ended up with 15 hours a week of funded aide time. This was with a severe language disorder and some pretty damning behavioural examples from the first few weeks at school - loads of tantrums, stuff like that. It's tricky because the teachers need to focus on the negatives pretty extremely - everything was true, but presented without the balance of positive traits and examples. But the end result of his having that one-on-one learning support is the most important thing and worth the process. We didn't have to go through the process for Sienna - we had begun the application but when it was concluded that she had little chance of being successful, the school found alternative ways of planning to make sure an aide was available to her classroom as much as possible (even though the department wasn't providing the funding for support for Sienna in particular).
It's all quite convoluted, really, but if anyone would like me to explain more about how we handle the kids with their autism (Ash) / aspergers (Sienna) and at school, just let me know :)

6 comments:

Something for Kate said...

WOW FABULOUS turn of events Danielle. Sounds like all the kids + Ash + that wonderful teacher had a great little honest chat about things. That is lovely to hear how things can be turned around so positively with everyone working together. Thanks for sharing xo

Deb said...

Thanks so so much for sharing that story so honestly. My little boy Angus has autism too and is not yet three, so school is a little while off for us but I feel terrified in advance. It's wonderful to know there are some teachers out there willing to help - so glad Ash liked his pirate book and the other kids in the class participated too. Deb xxx

artsy ants said...

that is such a sweet idea. ash and his pirates! glad things turned out so well for him!

Judy Edmonds said...

Hi, I found this through Our Creative Spaces, but it's thispost I actually decided to comment on.  I have a 15 year old with ASD and I want to tell you to hang on, things do get on a little bit better with age!  He is doing way better in every respect than we could have ever thought when he spent all of prep under his table at school :(  Your kids look absolutely gorgeous (oh, and the scrapping was pretty too!)/

dquarmby said...

Thank you Judy :) I'm pretty happy with how we are going now, my 7yo struggles a bit more but we're still able to keep things pretty positive overall, which is important I think. Thanks so much for sharing your experience! I really appreciate that.

dquarmby said...

Hi Deb, thanks so much for commenting, it is hard to know what the future holds and what issues might arise, I know! We've taken a very 'see how we go' approach and manage to keep pretty positive, and you're right - there are definitely caring teachers and schools if you can find them. Even if it's tricky for them to do much, if they just care in the first place then they will really look after your kids. *hugs* Danielle