School

The choice is mine, apparently…

16/07/2015 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

Blackboardwithchalktray

I went to look at a primary school yesterday. The first one I’ve been in, since I was a pupil of one! Oscar’s needs, moving forward are obviously going to be a bit different from your standard pupil (not that I actually believe there is such thing!). But either way, I need to look at school options and I need to start doing it now (or depending on who you speak to I should have been doing it ‘ages‘ ago). Anyway, in order to abate some of the panic that was rising, I made an appointment to go and see a school. Just to have a look. Just to start the process.

You see when I was a child you went to the nearest school. You didn’t have a choice. In fact I lived in a village and we really didn’t have a choice. You went to Balsall Primary or you went private, but that meant serious travelling. And no one really questioned that. The school was good. Hell I thought it was great, but the decision to go there was not really a decision at all. It just was. However today, even in a small town like Haslemere, there is a serious amount of choice, of both state and private schools. Add to that the possibility of specialist provision and I suddenly find myself on the end of what feels like an enormous decision. I know all parents today have more choice in primary schools than, for example, my parents did for me but the process of viewing and deliberating and worrying seems to come down to either what you can afford (if you plan to go private) or what you’re offered (if you’re not). Or am I over simplyfying? At the end of the day you can lust after a state school all you like, but if they don’t offer it to you, even after you appeal, you don’t get it. Your choice is taken into consideration, but really that’s all it is. A consideration.

When you have a child with Autism, the system is different. And I mean very different. We’ll park the weight of responsibility I feel to get this decision “right” for a minute and talk about the process. We have just started down the road towards possibly getting Oscar an EHCP or an Educational Health Care Plan, or what used to be called a Statement. This process in itself is mind boggling complicated and takes months and months of preparation, including assessments by Educational Psychologists and the involvement of many other agencies. The back and forth and back and forth again (and if the stories are to be believed, again and again…) should, if all goes well, result in a legally binding document that means as a parent I can send Oscar to ANY school I believe is best for him. It also means that school has to provide the support he is legally entitled to. I’ll have all sorts of advice, from various assessments and agencies, to listen to and the professionals tell you it’s important you heed the advice. But then experienced Autism parents tell you that, really no one knows your child like you do, so trust your instinct when it comes to choosing the school, mainstream or specialist. Panic rising again!

Anyway, back to the school I looked at. It was a mainstream school, out of my catchment area, but one that’s given me huge amounts of hope. Its also made me want to look at other mainstream schools to see if they are all this attuned to SEN needs or if this really is a stand out school. The head also gave me some really useful advice about dealing with the ‘county’ and what I should be doing right now in order to get his ducks in a row for next year. She didn’t sugar coat how difficult the next year might be in terms of bureaucracy, which I was actually incredibly grateful for.

So today, as per her encouragement, I made a raft of chasing calls and I kept a log of who I rang and what was said. I was dismayed to hear that he STILL hasn’t been assigned a speech and language therapist, despite being on the list for over a year and a promise six weeks ago that sessions would start in July, but not surprised. I had a good conversation with his Early Years Advisor and found out that his preschool notification has definitely been issued. That ball is well and truly rolling.

So I’m feeling slightly more focussed now. I need to make appointments to go a see other schools, including some specialist schools. At least we can’t afford private, so that narrows the field a tiny bit. Every cloud! Once I’ve looked around some more schools, I’m hoping it will mean I can listen to all the advice and trust my instinct. The panic has abated.

For now.

Lisa’s Stuff

06/01/2014 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

One of the things I was (and still am a bit) most proud of about my early adult life was the fact that when I left home aged 18, I never moved back. I packed up all the belongings I felt were important to me at the time (you know ghetto blaster, Alanis Morrissette CD, liquid eyeliner) and moved on. At the time I wasn’t interested in keeping much from my childhood. I was tasting freedom for the first time and I was all about the future.

That seems like such a long time ago now and the person writing this is not the same as the girl who left home in her boyfriend’s car to travel from Devon to London in 1997, or even the young woman who lived for all her 20’s in London, the very place she wanted to be and the place she came to dislike so much. Now I have a child, a family of my own, and it has bought my past into sharp relief. It’s made me reexamine memories long forgotten. It made me wish I’d kept more of my “stuff”, physical evidence that, I too, was once a child.

My mum called a few weeks ago to tell me that she’d found a box marked “Lisa’s Stuff” in amoung the boxes she’d been storing, some since they moved in 1998. She said that it definitely appeared to be mine, although neither she nor I could think what was in it. So it was with great excitement that I collected the box from my sister’s when we visited over Christmas. I couldn’t wait to get it home and take a look.

The box was rather damp and mildewed, and fell apart once I removed the parcel tape. On the top was a doll. I hadn’t seen her in over 20 years, but then I don’t remember ever not having her. I believe it was given to me as a baby. She was a little moldy and her felt eyes and one cheek had been lost along the way but here she was, something so firmly from my early childhood, it was a little bit like being punched in the stomach.

And it carried on like that. I felt like Tony Robinson, uncovering the layers of history.

Next came the books.

These were the books I learnt to read with, the same kind of ladybird books I had wanted to collect for Oscar. Here were piles of them, every picture dragging me back. Then the Story Teller binders, a magazine and tape I got every week for 6 months when I was about 5. I listened to and later read those stories over and over again, for years. I doubt my parents realised just what an amazing investment these would be.

There were beloved Enid Blyton books (nobody laugh at the title Mr Pink Whistle Interferes please – this was a much more innocent age!!! 😉 ) and annuals and various other titles. It was a joy to hold them again, read the words, look at the illustrations and remember.

Then there was the school work – mostly from the late Juniors and early Seniors. I found project work about Australia and the Second World War and a whole folder of stories I’d written. I sat up way into the night just reading them. It’s amazing just how much I was influenced by Australian soap operas as an 11 year old and it’s even more amazing that my wonderful teacher at the time, Mrs Tooth, encouraged my style. Bless her. Even back then she told me I “considered my audience”! Although I did also have a taste for the slightly macabre, with titles such as The Holiday Terror and The Birthday Horror (don’t ask!)

I had such a fantastic evening, rediscovering parts of me I’d left behind. I found a jigsaw, that we had always kept at my paternal grandmothers (no idea how I got it) and this has been given to Oscar, along with some of the books. The Kylie Annual 1990 was a real hoot and I also found a couple of photos. One was my class photo from my first year in infant school (I look just like a long haired, brunette, female version of the boy!). The other was from when I won a competition at a holiday park in Cornwall when I was 11. I look so lovely, so tanned and happy.

Then as I was looking through the books, I found a print out of a piece I’d written about myself when I was 13, called All About Me.

This is it.

Parts of it made me smile. I still don’t live in a cottage in the Cotsworlds or a mansion in the Caribbean (although both of those things still sound awesome!). I still don’t like Pasties and although I can tolerate spaghetti now its still not my fave. I would still love to go Scuba Diving – I have tried but my epilepsy is an issue. I liked the bit about career choices. Actress, Social Worker or Counselling Person (!). I am not and wouldn’t want to be an Actress, I’d rather eat my own arm than be a Social Worker and if I assume a Counselling Person means a Counsellor then I don’t really think I’ve got the patience. But I do enjoy helping people so maybe that’s enough.

But part of it made me really sad. I was 13 and I was concerned with money (or lack of it) and my weight. At 13. I looked again of the picture of me at 11. I wouldn’t say the girl in that picture was overweight, but when I look back I know I felt it. I’ve been/believed myself to be overweight all my life. And what you believe will be the truth.

It broke my heart, but it also made me realise that it’s time to change those beliefs. Those deep rooted, long held beliefs, the ones you’ve had so long you don’t even know you have them. I couldn’t have found this at a better time in my journey. I intend to prove to that young girl, that you don’t have to be what you believe you are. You can change. I will make her wish come true.

Although World Peace might be a stretch!

School holidays suck

14/08/2013 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

When I was a child the school holidays, particularly the six week summer holidays, were my favourite times in the whole world. I remember playing with friends, riding my bike, making perfume out of rose petals and water (really gross!) and attending week long play schemes. And there in lies the clue. I’m remembering the holidays of an older child. I don’t remember those from when I was a littley and no one told me just how disruptive and stressful these could be!

During term time, Oscar and I have a kind of a schedule, much as those children who go to school.

Mondays, we decide on the day
Tuesdays is Noah’s Ark Toddler group followed by coffee with a friend
Wednesday is library or sometimes a trip into Godalming
Thursdays is Hammer Toddler Group followed sometimes by lunch with a friend
Fridays is my NCT group meet up
Saturday is swimming lessons

Its pretty samey, but I need this routine as much as the boy does. I like to know we have something planned for most days. It motivates me to get out of the house. Its important for both of our sanity’s.

However, in the holidays, and particularly in the summer holidays everything stops. All the toddler groups grind to a halt and the library’s activities for pre schoolers cease. I looked into it and most other local pre-school classes/courses (such as baby gym, music, sensory, play etc) also stop. Their hiatus leaves me with no more routine and a baby I can’t explain this to.

Don’t get me wrong, I know why this is. Some toddler groups are run in schools, which need to close their buildings in the summer. Some groups are run by women who have their own older children who need looking after. As an aside, neither of these apply to our groups.

I see many places running classes, courses, schemes and workshops over the summer and these are wonderful, if pricey. I remember going to some myself as a child. But not one of those I’ve seen does anything for under 5’s let alone under 2’s. It would appear that the assumption is that younger children/babies do not need entertaining in the holidays in the way older children do. I can’t think why this might be the case, or is that just my toddler?

OK, so this is the case and we the parents of little children just have to suck it up and get on with it. Right, so we find new places to takes them, different things to do. We find the money to cover the expense and we go. And wherever we go is heaving with older children, as quite rightly their parents have had the same idea. But this can makes these trips incredibly stressful. Anything physical, such as a park you would happily let your toddler roam around, suddenly becomes dangerous with long legs and big bodies fly around with gleeful abandon. As it should be of course. But I’d like to see you explain to a firebrand of a 16 month old that actually he can’t go in that park or as happened in the playpark in RHS Gardens Wisley on Monday that he had to go back in the buggy and be taken away for fear he’d be brained! He was livid with me but what could I do?

Whenever I bring this up my husband tells me to “be the miracle”, In other words, “do something about it”. Or “if your’re not going to do anything about it then shut up”! So I try to not bitch about it and find other things to do. I’d find it hard to do anything about it at the moment, as I have Oscar to look after. Maybe I’ll wait til he’s older. Oh wait then he’ll be off school and I’ll have to look after him. Oh hang on……… 😉

Believe me I do understand the situation. The only people affected by this are parents of young children, who either have little ones to look after or who work. And those who work often have their little ones in day care and probably don’t notice as much, as day care runs all year. Why wouldn’t it? You pay enough for the privilege. Maybe I need to think more seriously about going back to work. That’d shut me up!

Maybe it’s just where I live. My friend in the US says this simply doesn’t happen where she lives. What’s it like in your neck of the woods? How did/do you cope with toddlers in the summer hols? I’d be interested to hear.