I went to J's Parents Evening yesterday and had the opportunity to meet with his potential Head Teacher from the Secondary School he will have to go to (unless I win the fight to send him to my choice of school - but I haven't decided yet whether to send him there or not).
There are times when you think people just don't believe you when you describe what J is capable of doing. And I mean his undesirable behaviours.....
J was in full force in the meeting room with the potential new HT.
He grabbed the water jug in the middle of the table and continuously poured himself some water to drink from the plastic cups. He polished off around a litre of water and then turned his attention to swiping the cup over, full of water.
Then he took his shoes off and laid forwards onto the table with his knees resting on the chair and his feet over the back of the head rest.
Then he continually babbled over our conversation and used my I Phone to video us and then played that back as we talked! Have you ever tried to concentrate on what you are talking about whilst listening to your own voice repeating what you said three minutes ago? It's very off putting!
Then, and this is the big one, the water he had consumed had started to filter through and he needed the toilet. He requested "toilet" several times and I repeated back, "Yes toilet in a minute" (we were almost finished with our conversation so it was only 'a minute'). Just as we were closing and saying our goodbyes I spotted J in the corner, facing us, genitals on display over the top of his trousers, and the wee starting to flow.....
It was a new one on them I think. By the looks on their faces, trying to disguise their shock, it certainly seemed that way.
And remember that I do not 'allow' him to behave that way in public or in private. I do continually tell him to stop/ remove the object or item/ try to distract him etcetera, but he is hard work and just battles on regardless.
As for his actual report for the Parents Evening, he is doing well. Naturally the work he does is on a par with his middle brother,O, who is five, but he is doing well at it.
His concentration on work is very poor, so he has a reward/ thing he enjoys doing such as creative art, shown to him via a PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System) card and he understands he has to finish the work in front of him and then he can do what the PEC card is showing him.
And because he has such poor attention, his work tasks are very simple. We are talking about in Mathematics him having a sheet of paper with English penny coins on and he has to add up how many coins there are. He can count up to twenty fine, but he gets confused if more than one coin is shown - he does not know that a 5 pence piece has a different value to that of a penny.
We are (his teacher and I) going to work on his sensory issues surrounding him not wanting to wrap up in the cold weather.
He still doesn't wear underwear, but that is being left for now as the cold weather and his lack of clothing is more of a problem.
On his top half he only likes to wear a short sleeved tee shirt with a light weight coat, and he hates doing the zip up on his coat. He is also wearing his lovely leather school shoes as moccasins (bending the back over and resting his heels on it,and exposing his heels to the elements).
I managed to get him to wear, and keep on, a tee shirt underneath his school shirt this morning, and that is a big improvement. He hates the school jumpers so I am going to send one in to school and they are going to try to desensitise him towards it.
Friday is the ADHD appointment so I will follow that up with a blog post. I am trying to be sceptical about it so as not to build my hopes up. I really will not be happy if they just ask me to form fill for six months. And I will tell them that as well.
