Jumping off the path

I write here about Jiggy.  Of my six children he is the one that I have been so totally responsible for and he is the one who is now so entirely under the radar that I feel the need to speak publicly about him, to hold our stories out as proof that we are doing what we can and that we are being careful with him.  I don’t want the sort of ‘support’ that leaves us feeling smaller and weaker, less able to raise him, less able to understand him the way we do.  However, being off grid is a scary place.  It is quite isolated out here. I occasionally consider pointing out to the local authority that they really should be keeping an eye on us but then I picture hordes of grey suits bearing down on our colourful and chaotic little world and shudder.

That said, Jiggy isn’t the only one who would benefit from some time in this bubble of ours.  Moo has had nearly four years of education and still can’t do simple number bonds to 5. She has been on School Action for some time and the academic gap between her and her peers does nothing but widen. Many children exposed to drugs and alcohol in utero need to go over and over a thing before it sticks and school just don’t have the time. I think I probably spend about thirty hours for each hour that school has to bank simple basic building blocks such as money, time, number bonds and times tables. She loves school though and gets much more socially out of it than Jig ever could, or did. So, with her blessing, I am considering suggesting a flexi school arrangement for her, to scoop her out of the race she is so clearly losing, to move the goal posts and to make a new Moo shaped space for her in this quirky world that is our day.

It is IEP week this week, perfect timing.

 

April 29th

IEPs are all about writing a to do list that doesn’t actually impact anyone nor does it require any actual resources or input from anyone that is out of the ordinary run of things. I am happy to play those silly games when I need to – which is when I am letting my children settle, giving them time, waiting to see what will happen.  However, those times end.  I don’t expect anyone to know that I have changed my tack, or that I am now going to start requiring actual action rather than virtual action and it may be unfair of me, now, to be demanding that learning deficits be addressed by the application of some sort of actual teaching when I didn’t before.  But then life isn’t fair and they have had a good ride thus far.  If the SENCO doesn’t have a plan for me by Wednesday 3.30 then Moo will be home with us one day a week on a maths workshop day pending their further communication to me regarding a real individual education plan – with actual teaching.  No doubt I am not as good as the teachers, no doubt they could do a much better job, no doubt there have been umpteen training days and policy wallah meetings about how best to teach her but, in the end, no one seems to be actually doing it.  Better me than no-one. Flexi schooling has never been a first choice and, if I were a different, braver, calmer woman I would have had her at home full time anyway but I’m not.  This may well be a good enough compromise.

In your own time…

Concentration is such a big issue for us. I take a very laid back attitude to curriculum and schedule.  We take opportunities as they arise and we go with the flow almost all the time.  However, there are some times when you just need to listen and then do.  This is such a fundamental skill and it is so frustrating (for both of us I think) to be working in such tiny time slots all the time.  The projects we could be doing, the skills we could be learning and the conversations we could be having hang over me, taunting me slightly as the day goes on. As I began this paragraph he needed to know what 6 and 5 were.  He knows this.  He just can’t recall it.  He is blowing a piece of dust along the table, picking his nails, kicking the chair, throwing out random numbers, making himself cross eyed, picking up books next to him and reading them.  I am just typing.  If he can’t get to 11 soon this place value addition exercise is going to take all day. Literally.

You will understand then my joy at a pottery session yesterday when he painted a pot that he threw a couple of weeks ago, quietly and carefully for maybe four minutes.

His pen is now ‘talking’ to his other fingers. Out of frustration I have decreed that he will not be doing anything else until these 15 sums are done.  He is talking out loud.  Every single thought that comes into his head is now flying out, buzzing around the room, battering hard against the quiet click of these keys. He is standing on the table.  He is lying on the floor.

Can you imagine how this would play out in school? He won’t be punished, sanctioned or excluded for this behaviour today.  He will simply carry on, however much noise he makes, until we have finished this revision session on Hundreds, Tens and Units. And that is that.

Post script

In case you were wondering, two hours have passed and we have finished the sums.