Malika
Well-Known Member
Well, it's happened... the genie has come out of the bottle and all hell has let loose!
I was going to pick J up from after-school care tonight when the deputy mayor of the village happened to drive past... he said he wanted to speak to me "for two minutes". So he duly gets out of his car and starts talking to me... saying that one of the assistants in the school had come to talk to him twice now about how upset she was about J's big rages - he had another one on Tuesday evening when I went to pick him up, how upset all the other children were about it, etc. Basically, the upshot of his message was that I am not taking authority over my son, it is my job to manage him, not the school or the after-care, that it wasn't possible to have this sort of behaviour in the village, and so on.... well, yes, flabbergasted I was somewhat. I tried to tell him J is ADHD, that's it's not so simple to control, that I myself had never seen him raging like that and no, I hadn;t really known how to handle it in the moment, that I have been asking for a meeting between the psychiatrist and the school (and indeed that is what another of the assistants had asked for when we talked on Tuesday as J was running off refusing to come with me and speaking to me disrespectfully - something that totally shocks the village, apparently.
Anyway, the deputy mayor clearly understands nothing of J's special needs and doesn't want to understand. He is involved because the assistant went to complain to him because the mayor's office is responsible for the after-care at the school... I was naturally a little upset and in the evening rang ANOTHER of the assistants, who lives in the village, a nice woman, warm and kind. It was a VERY revealing conversation. Apparently J is often very troublesome in the after-care and they have never told me, often they punish him all the time (by having sit alone with the adult reading a book or whatever), that they all think I am not authorative enough and too nice, and that the director of the school, J's old teacher, has told them he is NOT hyperactive. What?? Last time we spoke, about six months ago, I told her he had now received a formal diagnosis... She has no idea what ADHD is (kept calling it "superactive") or how it might be dealt with. By the end of the conversation she was saying she and the other staff would absolutely welcome a meeting with the psychiatrist to try and get some understanding of how to deal with him.
All of this just confirms to me what I already know... our days in the village are, and must be, numbered. I think it is probably best for J if we stay out the school year, particularly as he is learning to read and then... some hard decisions to be taken.
I'd be interested in your reactions to what happened...
I was going to pick J up from after-school care tonight when the deputy mayor of the village happened to drive past... he said he wanted to speak to me "for two minutes". So he duly gets out of his car and starts talking to me... saying that one of the assistants in the school had come to talk to him twice now about how upset she was about J's big rages - he had another one on Tuesday evening when I went to pick him up, how upset all the other children were about it, etc. Basically, the upshot of his message was that I am not taking authority over my son, it is my job to manage him, not the school or the after-care, that it wasn't possible to have this sort of behaviour in the village, and so on.... well, yes, flabbergasted I was somewhat. I tried to tell him J is ADHD, that's it's not so simple to control, that I myself had never seen him raging like that and no, I hadn;t really known how to handle it in the moment, that I have been asking for a meeting between the psychiatrist and the school (and indeed that is what another of the assistants had asked for when we talked on Tuesday as J was running off refusing to come with me and speaking to me disrespectfully - something that totally shocks the village, apparently.
Anyway, the deputy mayor clearly understands nothing of J's special needs and doesn't want to understand. He is involved because the assistant went to complain to him because the mayor's office is responsible for the after-care at the school... I was naturally a little upset and in the evening rang ANOTHER of the assistants, who lives in the village, a nice woman, warm and kind. It was a VERY revealing conversation. Apparently J is often very troublesome in the after-care and they have never told me, often they punish him all the time (by having sit alone with the adult reading a book or whatever), that they all think I am not authorative enough and too nice, and that the director of the school, J's old teacher, has told them he is NOT hyperactive. What?? Last time we spoke, about six months ago, I told her he had now received a formal diagnosis... She has no idea what ADHD is (kept calling it "superactive") or how it might be dealt with. By the end of the conversation she was saying she and the other staff would absolutely welcome a meeting with the psychiatrist to try and get some understanding of how to deal with him.
All of this just confirms to me what I already know... our days in the village are, and must be, numbered. I think it is probably best for J if we stay out the school year, particularly as he is learning to read and then... some hard decisions to be taken.
I'd be interested in your reactions to what happened...