Mad at myself and need advice from French homeschoolers

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My kids are on winter vacation right now and I noticed my daughter keeps asking if she has to go to school. I have told her that she is on vacation and we even made a schedule and a calendar which typically works. Then it dawned on me that she would be happy when Id say, "No were are on vacation and you dont go back until ____" She was asking just to assure herself that she still had time. It prompted me to ask her "Do you like school, Maddy?" She scrunched up her face and said "I HATE it". I was surprised, she has always loved school but then again she has been having a lot of issues lately that I chalked up to me being in and out of the hospital and being ill in general but now that I think about it her behavior has changed since she started at the big school (kindergarten was next door and much quieter, with toys, sandboxes, and a very understanding teacher). The big school is very loud, crowded and her room looks like an institution with white walls and rows of desks. Her Aide has been give opportunity after opportunity to come to the therapy center to learn more about autism. We have offered her things we printed on the internet which she obviously didnt read and we even offered to pay for her to go to a seminar. Instead she complains to us that she does not know what to do with Maddy and she cries all the time and has meltdowns. I sent some PECS and some sunglasses as she said Maddy can not stand the sun coming in the windows, she told my husband these things were helping, and the last we have heard from her but then again I cant walk Maddy to school anymore, we have had to pay a nanny to do this and sometimes my aides do it.....Still, despite the glasses and PECS.....Maddy "HATES" school. She has one girl at school who takes care of her and Maddy will have a huge meltdown when its time to go back to school after lunch if this little girl is not there. Obviously this little girl is more her aide than her paid aide!

I had a really bad feeling about sending her to this school. When school ended last year we had our meeting and we agreed to send my son (aspergers and LD's) to the special school for kids with LD's, ADHD, ASD and other behavioral disorders or brain injuries. The class my son is in is for kids with LD's and some of them also have ASD like him or ADHD. They love my son as he has had some social training and he also has a little sister with classic autism so he tends to watch out for the little ones even grabbing one of the younger non verbal wanderers when he tries to wander off. The class they would have to put Maddy in would be the Autism class as she has no LD's and actually scores very high in most subjects. They, sort of, threatened me telling me that Maddy would regress being in a class with lower functioning kids. I gave in but I was still very worried about her sensory issues in this huge, loud school. I was wrong to give in because she is regressing now and she is happier in therapy with the lower functioning children than with the typical kids.

They made me some promises that they would make a special quiet place for her and a schedule and special teachers, ect. I recently found that her "schedule" is a small chalk board, she has no special place to go for when she is overwhelmed and they are not putting her ear defenders on when they send her to the playground and she says the playground hurts her. Im very angry. If I were not in this horrible pain I would go there everyday and make sure they did what they are supposed to do. I am tired of waiting for stupid Proloquo2go to ever come out with their French version so we are going to download iCommunicate which is already in French. Im hoping this might help her to communicate better with her aide who seems not to pay attention to her. Maddy is not straight forward about her communication, sometimes you have to read between the lines. She will scream and say "it hurts" and when you give her the iPad she will press the PECS for the toe or her tummy, whatever as she does not know how to tell or at times how to point. When she is in pain or stressed she is very difficult to understand. If you asked her where she hurt she would just continue to scream.

We also are having issues with the other kids. Maddy does not understand French very well and the other kids were bringing their Christmas toys to school so Maddy wanted to take her 3 Zhu Zhu pets which are expensive electronic hamsters. Some of the other little girls wanted them so Maddy handed them over thinking they would give them back...thinking she was doing as she has been taught to and share. They did not give them back and she came home screaming about her princess and the nanny was confused. We did not have a PECS for zhu zhu pets but I figured it out since she took her toys to school with her and she pointed to toys on the iPad. One of the other Mothers the next day understood and knew Maddy has Autism so she brought them back but the other girl refuses to give back the Princess. Instead of fighting with the parents and upsetting the little girl I bought her a new one and told her that toys need to stay home. However I was told by her today that another little girl said that her eardefenders belong to her instead of Maddy. I dont know if she understands what the other girl has said or if she even understands what I am asking but I do know that she does not have her eardefenders on the play ground as Ive been told that she does not "ask" for them from her aide....so I guess this is why she tells me the playground hurts her *sarcasm*.

For the past several weeks, every night, aside from Tuesdays, she comes home and has a meltdown and after I calm her down, she eats her snack and then proceeds to spin for up to two hours, then lines toys or watches a video over and over and over and over or some other stim. As I said, I thought this was due to all the hospital stays (I was in the hospital 13 days after Christmas and have to go back for two weeks the beginning of March and then will go back for surgery at a later date) and that may be part of it but she does not want to go back to school. She says she wants to go to therapy and cries when we say there is no therapy right now because we are on vacation. They had three days at the beginning of vacation. She is much calmer now after the week home from school. She is not spinning, hardly any meltdowns, she is happy Maddy again and we dont even have the sensory room finished yet which I started on because I was so upset about her being so stressed.

I do not want to send her back to that school. My son was bullied endlessly at that school and no matter how much my husband called and went in and spoke to both the teacher and the director of the school, they did nothing about it. I would pick him up sobbing at least two to three times a week. My husband says I can not just yank her out in the middle of the year that this would be illegal and we would get in trouble. So I want to know if anyone knows if there is a way to take her out and home school with a private tutor (I am too ill and know little French) and maybe some educational apps for her iPad and her same therapy schedule until next year when she can go to the autism class?

I cant stand the thought of sending her back there and the only time we have no issues getting her up and ready for school lately is Tuesdays because she has swimming in the morning and therapy all afternoon....every other day my husband has to drag her out of bed and she typically returns there. We can not get her to eat and its very painful for me to get her dressed as its like wrestle mania and I can hardly stand up. I have to dress her sitting on my bed and many times she gets sent to school with her hair not brushed....I just stuff it in a hair tie and her teeth not brushed and I stuff a yogurt pack and a cooking in her back pack in case she gets hungry. Im in too much pain to deal with this and it causes me pain to see her so upset, stressed and again regressing into hours of stimming just to calm herself.

She is so happyflappy to go to therapy and my son loves the school so I know Maddy will too. I just feel like if we leave her in this school she is going to be severely damaged. My husband wants to try to work some things out with the school and the therapy but Im tired of this school lying to me. Our therapy center (SESSAD) had tried to help but the school does not seem to want to listen to them either. So my husband says he will tell them that I am ready to yank her out of school if they do not do something or at least follow our rules for dealing with our daughter.

Anyone have any better ideas?....I admit I tend to go nutso when my kids are being harmed and probably dont think straight but Im really mad at myself for listening to the stupid handicapped place about sending her to the other school. They annoy the hell out of me.
I thought my daughter was doing really well but I think she was just holding it all in and we had a lot going on so I didnt notice how bad she was getting.....it was a slow process.

I know you didn't intend this, but the school your daughter is in is torture for her. Take her out NOW! Never mind continuing trying to work things out with them. They are not serious about helping her. They are geared for normal kids, and are out of their depth with kids on the spectrum. They have a full load of regular kids to deal with and don't really have the time, the resources, or the inclination to take care of the needs of special needs kids.

If you can't get her into the other school this year, then home school her. If you can't do it yourself, then have the aid or nanny help with it. As long as Maddy is being taught, it doesn't matter where. Make that plain to the authorities, if they start to give you a hard time about pulling Maddy out of school. And make it plain to them that you won't tolerate making Maddy suffer any more at the current school.

No child should be put through what Maddy is going through at school.

I agree....I hated when my son went there but I was stupid enough to believe that they were going to do all these wonderful things for her. She is very smart and has come a really long way considering she did not start speaking until she was between 3 and 4. She had wonderful in home therapy, she went to a autism program (we were in California then) at the public school starting at age 3 and she still had in home therapy.

I was glad to move though because even though the early intervention in the US is awesome they just dump the kids into public school with no aides (unless you fight and Maddy would have been considered too high functioning because she could speak) once they turn 5 so I thought it would be better here and at first, at least for Maddy, it was. Her Kindergarten was awesome but I knew about the other school and I just could not see her happy there. I cringed at the idea....my son was a mess and he can handle things better. I was stupid, I admit it but they lied to me and I will point that out.

I dont want her to loose her therapy so my husband says that we will try to negotiate first but I know how slow they are.
They do have a "handicapped" room and I dont understand why she is not in there instead of the typical 1st grade but my husband says that is more for kids with CP and other issues but I have seen an Autistic boy in there so that cant be true.

I know what it feels like to be tortured by the horrible sensory conditions she is under. I just told my husband that I would sometimes do something purposely bad so my teacher would send me out in the hallway. I was supposed to sit and face the wall...they left the lights off so it was nice and cool on the floor and dark and I was blissfully alone .

The thing I really need to know is if this is possible if anyone in France has done this and how they did it? I will be going to the hospital for two weeks as I mentioned, next month. I could get everything set up and my Mother in Law could teach her if we could not get a tutor. We also are going to ask if she could just do half days and she could do her school work here.