Yesterdays mail brought with it some less than kind news, the school we were super keen on for Lilliana , we were unsuccessful in getting her placed in the first round of offers. We have already signed up for round two!
Breathe in and out….. this is the moment I kind of want to throw myself on the floor in full flight tantrum. Instead we signed more papers, crossed our fingers and are now focused on round two.
Mentally I am not prepared for this rejection, my plan is she will go there, my plan B is not emotionally connected to the actual plan, I am stuck on plan A.
Sometimes it feels as though there are just many battle to be fighting, sometimes when you are starting to recover from the last one your hit with something else and the fighting resumes. This is how I feel about living with autistic children. As a parent we are fighting systems that have little time or resources for this, any parent with a kid with additional needs feels this same frustration. There’s is a big gap in schooling, health and social awareness. Working in health I am all too aware of service gaps, and failings.
Sometimes with this diagnosis of autism there is either the battle to get a diagnosis, or the battle of being given the label! For us it was a mixture, we knew things were amiss with Lilliana, we had some big concerns but allot of little ones. The preschool had concerns, the GP had concerns, but the Autism diagnosis took me by surprise, it makes sense the more I have learnt and questioned the professionals. It was the moment that it made sense to me that I felt completely devastated and overwhelmed by it. Prior to my moment it was simply a range of small tasks to bring her up to speed with the Neuro typical kids, when really Lilliana is always going to be well Lilliana, but Lilliana with autism. We are always going to have these things were are trying hard to keep her up to speed with and normalise.
But the frustrations of schooling they are something else, these stem from our hard and trying experience of placing our older son in school and all of the hurdles that we faced with that. This is a different child with a bunch of different needs, but still the same hard frustrating battle. The battle for us as parents to help get her into school where she will be treated respectfully, where she will be challenged and understood, where she will be nurtured. Often times within the school system autistic kids look like the naughty kid or the poor coping kid, there are multiple stats on a higher rate of suspensions among these children, and all of the negative vibes that goes with that, the labelling, the bullying for peers and even staff and the frustrations experienced by the teacher and the student. I don’t want to set my child up to fail. I don’t want my child experience of education to be so tainted due to autism.
Sadly at present there has been a further shift in funding, and cuts to supports and placements, yet the need has not decreased, this is making me more nervous than ever of attempting to rely on an very flawed public education system. Our options are so limited.
This schooling frustration just continues
