4.30am ramble re major school concerns

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Ok here goes, sorry if I ramble its 4.30am here J has had me up since 2am he woke up cold and now cant sleep=now mum can't sleep.

I picked J up from school yesterday and I asked his teachers how he is going, we had a psych appointment that afternoon and it had been a while between appointments. I let them know this in case they had anything they (his teachers) were concerned about that they thought the psych could maybe help with. They said their only concern was he still isnt doing enough school work! I have known that they have been struggling with getting him to do the set amount of work, I dont even think they are expecting him to complete the same amounts as the NT kids in his class. I have suggested all I can think of. Last Wednesday the school psych went threw J's most recent evaluation with me where it is now again in black and white that J has major problems in auditory processing and coding. His short term memory is really bad and his organizational skills are really bad aswell. And as bad as all that is, its even worse when he is stressed.

This is a relatively new school for J, he only started there in Feb this year. He is still adjusting to the way this school runs (which is very different to his last school), he does like his teachers and he does have one very good friend (also an aspie, but in the class next door) he has also managed to find at least one child in his class that he likes to talk to in class. He isnt panicing on the way to school, like he used to and he appears happy when I pick him up. He just isnt doing the work. I think I have put it down to he isnt understanding the directions, I've told his teachers he needs more visual aids. He himself has told me he cant follow what his teacher is saying (just this morning) and he does alot of day dreaming, then doesnt know what he is ment to be doing. Anyway getting back to the original reason I started posting, his teachers are so concerned and have said that if things keep going as they have he wont be ready for grade 5 next year so he may have to repeat, he isnt any where near where he needs to be now. I told them that this would be the 2nd time he has had to repeat. He repeated grade 2.
I truelly think this school is more than willing to do what ever they need to do, but I need everyone to be on the same page, ie, therapists, special school teachers (he goes to an autism respite program once a week) mainstream teachers, psych the whole lot. I am so frustrated, everyone wants to help, but I cant seam to get them all together to sit down and sort out a game plan. Everyone is kind of off doing their own little thing, with their own ideas on what needs to happen, I'm getting snippets and having to be the go between and Im sure to be honest something must be getting lost or even not mentioned (for priority reasons) in my translations back to each dept. I really am rambling sorry.
Anyway this morning (not a great morning because I am now so tired) I will be going to the school vp to demand (nicely of course) a sit down meeting-due to a missunderstanding early on I have never actually had one. The mother of J's aspie friend has offered to go with me to keep the emotions out of it and to keep everything on track with the vp.
Any words of advice or an insight into why he perhaps isnt doing the school work or evn some sympathy would be so much welcomed at this stage. I'm feeling pretty drained.

thanks guys.

hugs to you, to start. It can be frustrating.

His reasons tend to be a failure to understand the instructions, is that correct? I think this is the first thing you need to sort out, the WHY. Talk to him, read between the lines, all of that.

If the problem is directions, he may need an aide. The aide would make sure he understands the directions and rephrase them when he does not. If that is not available or the teachers do not believe it is necessary, then they need to make a point of checking on him regularly and, if he isn't making a decent pace on the work, explaining the instructions and being sure he understands them.

Another thing that can happen is for AS kids to feel overwhelmed by the workload. In that case, it would be good if the teachers made a practice of cutting his assingments in half, literally blacking out sections of the page, so that it doesn't seem overwhelming. We used to do this with my son's homework.

If it is a motivation issue - and I actually doubt it is - then you need to be clear to him that he can't advance with his classmates unless he does the work. Even if it isn't a motivation issues, he needs to understand that A leads to B which leads to C; if he wants C then he must first get through A. A lot of times AS kids don't see the connections moving down the road, so they think it doesn't matter, when it actually does. Understanding the relationships increases the odds he'll make himself part of the solution.

If he truly is struggling, it may not be the worst thing in the world to hold back a year. But he needs to be comfortable with that.

I am glad to hear he is happy. That is a very important step. Now it's time to build on it.