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There's a very interesting piece on the BBC news website today about a specialist school for autistic children being built in Reading - especially interesting to me because so much of what's said here strikes a chord with our experience of the Small One growing up through the mainstream education system.
This bit, for example:
Received wisdom in recent years has told us that mainstreaming disabled children is the best way forward. But Veitch says although regular state schools have tried hard, a specialist environment is needed to bring out the best in some pupils on the autistic spectrum.
"Many of the children we have have been permanently excluded from one or two schools or are on really reduced timetables and go into school for an hour or two a day, so that's why it's so important we get this right.
"A lot of the children are not just a bit bright, they're very bright. But because autism gets in the way, that impacts upon their behaviour."
Yes - so much yes. For her last few years in school, our girl was only attending for a handful of hours a week and spending most of that time in 'Bloc M', which was the special needs unit, because she found the classroom too stressful. She was never going to be academic, and she does have a specific learning disability sitting alongside her autistic spectrum disorder - but her school experience convinced her that she is dumb, and she isn't, she really isn't.
The learning environment is built around the children, rather than expecting them to slot into a one-size-fits-all school.
Children on the spectrum find it difficult to process information fed to them by their senses. So, in an average classroom for instance, they may not know what sounds to prioritise: chatter, ticking clocks, birdsong, banging, air conditioning or the teacher's voice. It all comes through at the same intensity, as do smells and visuals.
Yes again. Chel found the classroom intensely stressful, all the more so because she also has fluctuating hearing loss. She spent two years in a porta-cabin where the sound was excruciating for her - my parents had to pay for curtains to line the walls to dampen this effect. She had to concentrate so hard just on hearing/reading lips that she had no energy left for comprehending the myriad of other sensory stimulation she was receiving - and this is a child with no innate ability to read expressions or body language, for instance; where for most people this comes naturally and is so instinctive we don't even know we're doing it, she has had to learn what different expressions mean and consciously apply those meanings to the faces she sees around her...and doesn't always get it right, even now.
It's now well-known that a fascination for the stereotypically male domains of computing, engineering and maths can be indicators of autism. This has led to many more men and boys being diagnosed.
"What we're finding now is that actually there might be a lot more girls out there, but the ways in which autism manifests itself is very, very different to how it manifests itself in boys.
Yep, yep again. These days most people are at least on nodding terms with the better known symptoms of autism as it presents in boys. But for an autistic girl the challenges are very, very different - and all the harder still because there is so little understanding of those specific issues and requirements.
"These children, some of them don't feel they belong anywhere. So what we're trying to do is provide somewhere that really is theirs," says Veitch.
Chelsea once said that she feels as if she comes from another planet and that's why nothing in this world makes sense to her - she said that she needs the people from 'her planet' to come and take her home because she might fit in there and understand that world. It's hard to imagine how exhausting it must be to go through every day in a world that you can't comprehend and don't feel part of. And Chel is at the high functioning end of the spectrum - she has learned enough coping mechanisms that her problems aren't immediately obvious to the casual observer. Those coping mechanisms mostly only function in public, however; in private she remains enormously challenging.
My sister got next to nothing out of her years of schooling. She is now a year out of school and still struggling, her social services support withdrawn and other avenues difficult to impossible to access. She still has an afternoon a week with her support worker, a friendship she relies on enormously, but she only has that now because my parents pay for it privately. She spends two days a week volunteering on a local farm, but that again was arranged privately, and we were lucky to find someone not only willing to take her on, but able to understand her enough to forge a strong working relationship with her. What does her future hold? It can be scary to contemplate that question, so we focus on the here and now and on getting through each day at a time.
This bit, for example:
Received wisdom in recent years has told us that mainstreaming disabled children is the best way forward. But Veitch says although regular state schools have tried hard, a specialist environment is needed to bring out the best in some pupils on the autistic spectrum.
"Many of the children we have have been permanently excluded from one or two schools or are on really reduced timetables and go into school for an hour or two a day, so that's why it's so important we get this right.
"A lot of the children are not just a bit bright, they're very bright. But because autism gets in the way, that impacts upon their behaviour."
Yes - so much yes. For her last few years in school, our girl was only attending for a handful of hours a week and spending most of that time in 'Bloc M', which was the special needs unit, because she found the classroom too stressful. She was never going to be academic, and she does have a specific learning disability sitting alongside her autistic spectrum disorder - but her school experience convinced her that she is dumb, and she isn't, she really isn't.
The learning environment is built around the children, rather than expecting them to slot into a one-size-fits-all school.
Children on the spectrum find it difficult to process information fed to them by their senses. So, in an average classroom for instance, they may not know what sounds to prioritise: chatter, ticking clocks, birdsong, banging, air conditioning or the teacher's voice. It all comes through at the same intensity, as do smells and visuals.
Yes again. Chel found the classroom intensely stressful, all the more so because she also has fluctuating hearing loss. She spent two years in a porta-cabin where the sound was excruciating for her - my parents had to pay for curtains to line the walls to dampen this effect. She had to concentrate so hard just on hearing/reading lips that she had no energy left for comprehending the myriad of other sensory stimulation she was receiving - and this is a child with no innate ability to read expressions or body language, for instance; where for most people this comes naturally and is so instinctive we don't even know we're doing it, she has had to learn what different expressions mean and consciously apply those meanings to the faces she sees around her...and doesn't always get it right, even now.
It's now well-known that a fascination for the stereotypically male domains of computing, engineering and maths can be indicators of autism. This has led to many more men and boys being diagnosed.
"What we're finding now is that actually there might be a lot more girls out there, but the ways in which autism manifests itself is very, very different to how it manifests itself in boys.
Yep, yep again. These days most people are at least on nodding terms with the better known symptoms of autism as it presents in boys. But for an autistic girl the challenges are very, very different - and all the harder still because there is so little understanding of those specific issues and requirements.
"These children, some of them don't feel they belong anywhere. So what we're trying to do is provide somewhere that really is theirs," says Veitch.
Chelsea once said that she feels as if she comes from another planet and that's why nothing in this world makes sense to her - she said that she needs the people from 'her planet' to come and take her home because she might fit in there and understand that world. It's hard to imagine how exhausting it must be to go through every day in a world that you can't comprehend and don't feel part of. And Chel is at the high functioning end of the spectrum - she has learned enough coping mechanisms that her problems aren't immediately obvious to the casual observer. Those coping mechanisms mostly only function in public, however; in private she remains enormously challenging.
My sister got next to nothing out of her years of schooling. She is now a year out of school and still struggling, her social services support withdrawn and other avenues difficult to impossible to access. She still has an afternoon a week with her support worker, a friendship she relies on enormously, but she only has that now because my parents pay for it privately. She spends two days a week volunteering on a local farm, but that again was arranged privately, and we were lucky to find someone not only willing to take her on, but able to understand her enough to forge a strong working relationship with her. What does her future hold? It can be scary to contemplate that question, so we focus on the here and now and on getting through each day at a time.
