The transition to school

Amy is now at school. She turned five at the end of March and had two weeks at school, just attending until 1.30pm to give her a chance to settle in.

She is now over half-way through Term Two and is doing really well all in all. She does three full days a week: 9.00 - 3pm and two days a week she leaves at 1.30pm; essentially having the afternoons off. On Monday afternoons she goes to RDA (riding for the disabled) and on Thursdays she goes to private swimming lessons.

The two afternoons off a week seem to have been a good idea for Amy's first full term at school. She does get so very exhausted at school and it is good for her to do something outside of school such as horse-riding and swimming that doesn't tax her so much and in fact revitalises her.

It has been a very interesting process moving from Kindergarten into school. I feel as though I have been in transition myself, as a parent! Amy never got any ORRS-funding which was to be expected, since she is "high-functioning." However she did get a short-term teacher's aide for the first month at school - or at least - the first month in Term Two. It was only for half an hour a day, but it was something myself and the Ministry of Education proposed with the school as the one hour unstructured lunch-breaks seemed a long time for Amy - for a child who struggles socially and needs a lot of adult support in any social settings.

I gave the school as much information as I possibly could about Amy - her back-story, information sheets, and social stories. Visuals are in the classroom to assist with routine and scheduling.

Amy loves the structure of school - the repetition and the learning side of it. She loves her homework and is chuffed that she can now write her name and can read her readers when they come home! She challenges herself by reading more difficult books and reading some of her books at home.

When I pick her up at lunchtimes twice a week I get a chance to see what Amy is up to. She seems to have found her way for the most part with the lunch-break although she struggles with sitting with the whole school (300 children) to eat her lunch for a minimum of 15 minutes (before they are dismissed). Sometimes she barely touches her lunch. And just like at home, Amy can be resistant towards toileting.

Amy's best-friend is now in the same class (they are two months apart in age) and it has been great for Amy to have a good friend at school. It was also good to have a couple of months without her friend so that she had the opportunity to settle in and to get to know some of the other children. Sometimes she will appear to be a bit down about the socialising side of school and I have witnessed how much she struggles with small groups of kids at lunch several times. The same dynamic went on at Kindergarten. But one-to-one Amy seems to do just fine.

Amy puts herself on time-outs at school - she has a step she sits on at the back of the class or she sits at the computer. On occasion I have been called in to take her home as she has been so sensory-loaded; she hasn't been able to do much.

I really want to encourage some more independence with Amy and have some ideas up my sleeve around toileting/eating/socialising. She needs prompts and adult support in all these areas, but at the same time gets irritated by the reminders or the attempts to steer her in the right direction. I still have a team of specialists around who I am calling on right now to fine-tune these key areas.

Amy has just gone off for a play-date at her good friends house. A weekend of just being at home with her parents isn't enough for her now that she's settled at school, so it is time to start broadening her social horizons again - I will encourage Amy to invite some other children home from her class (on a one-to-one basis).