G is for Growth

G is for GROWTH

…grown-up things

Being gregarious!

A GIFT of time and space

Goals and how to use them

Giraffes

Jiggypuff (?)

Is the grass greener or not?

This is the sixth in a series of 26 blogs about our son and how he is navigating the world on a Super Hero SEN plan.  He’s 5.  The first one is here. 

Growth during UK Lockdown 

L has been back at school just over a week now (it’s June) and he’s absolutely thriving.  He says;

“I missed being with other kids and now I have people to play Honey Badger chase with”

“I sometimes have to do hard work which I don’t like but it’s alright”

We decided L would go back to school because he was lonely.  He enjoyed lockdown and being with us, home and garden education, walks and days out up to a point until he didn’t.

He became lonely and withdrawn, almost depressed so when I spoke to him about school I was quite firm that it was a good idea and he should try and he agreed.

As the news to the change in his routine sunk in, he broke away from playing one afternoon and asked for a cuddle.  He cried and then I cried.  Only the second time (for him) in three months.

It felt right there was a justified sadness to understanding a new world.  I’ve also noticed he struggles with transitions of all types so I stood firm and we went along for the last two days of the week.

How’s school? 

He is being taught by his previous reception teacher who he adores.  He is very funny and musical and likes Mr Men.  L thinks he is very cool.  He’s learning about Australia and has six other children in his class with him.  The get to play out alot and it sounds like boys chase girls then vice versa  – it’s very sweet.

He finishes 15 minutes earlier than usual and is usually full of stories and remembers what he had for lunch and tells me enthusiastically on the drive home.

He’s keen to be out of the door in the morning which is a complete turn around to life and school runs before lockdown.  It’s almost like him seeing the other side and being so ‘in it’ showed him his first ‘Grass isn’t always greener’ scenario.

I felt really guilty at first like I hadn’t ‘won’ at home schooling.  It definitelysatisfied my curiosity as Dave and I were always keen to try it.  We both work part time for ourselves so we didn’t have the luxury of switching off from work to focus in on his education.  We just had to structure it as we could.

I did find it incredibly helpful turning the internet off when we did our lessons and spending some time thinking things through before hand led by his interests.

SEN and things

It’s almost impossible to describe how I feel about L’s SEN plan because at the moment we are just enjoying him enjoying school and learning.  I’ve understood more about the way he learns.  He always enjoyed visual and tactile learning, talking about things rather that sitting and doing worksheets.  He can’t write a sentence from his head head but he can write lovely cards.  I won’t be enquiring about a new autism assessment because I was honestly only driven to help him at school because he was so unhappy.  Since we worked with a tutor who wrote an incredible report for us for school, we all now have a better understanding of how to work with L and help him to learn.

And of course there is always progress whether I worry about it or not so at the moment I’m not.

He still wants to look after animals when he grows up so I remind him of that when he tells me school was a little bit hard today.

I hope you are enjoying your situations either home educating or supporting your children in school.

Claire x