-His Development Journey-
Yesterday we just had a meeting with the representative of SENDCO, UK's Special Education Needs and Disabilities Coordination at our son's school, to discuss what has been happening within his first couple of weeks at school. They also asked about how was him back in school in Indonesia. Very thorough and specific.
As we might predict, the class teacher and this sendco lady said that he has trouble sitting still and keeps wandering in class 😅. Sometimes he mumbles while the teacher is explaining in front of the class. He barely looks at the white board and does his own things on his desk. He also is very touchy, likes to touch others' foods/belongings and hug people (mostly younger kids) while in fact that british people are reluctant to be touched by people outside their intimate circle they say. On the other days, there were a few times he was overstimulated in a big group of class consists of 30 students. He sometimes was brought to a small group room to calm down his overwhelmingness.
As a child with neurodivergent or ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder) -while in UK, they prefer to use ASC (Autistic Spectrum Condition) as they argue that "condition" is a less stigmatizing and more neutral term rather than "disorder"-, our son has been very impulsive, craving for sensory, rigid, specific etc. He barely knows social cues and norms not because he is a bad kid, but because he has his own world on his head in quite complex and unique way. He has different way experiencing the world.
We discussed what intervention we can both do at school and at home so we can have the same rules hand in hand. They also say they need to have some paperworks stating the condition of our son (doctor's diagnose and his sensory/social therapy reports back in our home country) to propose a budget to the city council so they can add additional teacher for our son. It is hard to have the assessment for him immediately here, probably we have to wait nearly two years from the NHS (similar to BPJS 😅). Still it is a nice gesture from them and they take our son's condition seriously.
It must be challenging for him for sure. New environment, new friends, new weather (he keeps complaining about weather). Language barrier is also one thing, even though he knows and speaks english, it is hard for him to grasp context. Also, school in here is quite advance for a 7 years old kid compare to the one he had in Indonesia, for example, it is full of writing essays in which he struggles on it 😅.
It is going to be a bumpy ride, for him, for us. We are worried, anxious, and overthinking. Sometimes, I am myself afraid of judgement and on how he would grow independently. We might not know all the answers right now, but we believe he needs time, understanding, and people (mainly us as his parents) who can see his strenghts before his flaws. Bismillah.
