So, its just coming up to 6 months (this is the 6th month now), and with the half term coming up next week I thought I would spend a little time and review how little Mr has got on and progressed at his SEN school.
Ok, you could say 6 months it not a lot of time, or you can say that 6 months is a lot of time to see many changes. The truth is, that, 6 months is a vast amount of time at his age to see many changes happen.
Not to start a sentence with and, And in truth, we have seen many changes happen. Some of them more subtle than others. The biggest change though is how happy he is daily. He is really happy to get changed, to get out to the car and to get into school. He's never had an issue with going, but these days he pulls you towards his school.
But what changes have we seen? To list them all would take time, so I will list just a few of the bigger ones.
Firstly, he is happy now to carry his own school bag. This may sound small, but its a big step to him doing things for himself.
He seems to be more interactive these days. He always interacted with us before, on his own terms, but these days he seems to want to interact with us more which is good.
One big thing we've noticed of late is, that, when he finishes his food (like a bowl of cereal or his dinner), he picks up his plate and form/spoon and then brings it to us to put away. Again, this is something we believe they have been working on in school - making them put their own things away.
Which also brings me to tidy up time. Before he would just leave things around, but now we say tidy up time and he puts things away (with limits).
So, this is just a few of the bigger things we have noticed, that may seem like small things to others. However, its an amazing change for us as it shows he is growing, becoming more independent and is progressing. Its all life skills.
Going to SEN school has really worked well for him.
The great thing about the SEN school is the lean towards life skills and learning those. Each week he goes swimming, horse riding, out in the community for one thing or another, as well as any other learning. It truly is a full schedule they have with lots of outside learning and things to do.
Now, don't get me wrong. There are a couple of negative things we have spotted. More to do with letting him play in puddles without his wet gear on or other minor things like that. A lot of that is really down to kids being kids and you can't watch them all the time.
There are other things, things that have not happened to little Mr but things we need to watch. It's a SEN school so you will always have one child or another having a meltdown. Overall though, the few negatives are really outweighed by all the positives.
It they came along today and asked for a star rating, it would have to be a 4.5/5. Overall we're happy with the positives, the way that little Mr has grown, and we only hope that by the end of this term and next term, that there are many more positives.