Very unhappy Yr 7 daughter

[Oblique]

This is my first post, 'though I discovered this site some time ago. I have found the forum to be a tremendous source of help, information and support so a big 'thank you' to everyone! Hopefully, I will be able to return the favour.

2childmum, have you considered trying DD with ear defenders? The downside to this suggestion is that they may make DD stand out from the crowd, which most kids this age wouldn't appreciate. However, they can be very effective for children who are sensory defensive and I know of several children with Autism and/or sensory processing issues who use them. You mention DD suffers with sensory overload; I wouldn't be surprised if her finely tuned musical ear finds the normal noise and discordant babble of school utterly intolerable!

Dyslexia can go hand in hand with Dyspraxia, where there is a difficulty with planning and thought. I am not suggesting that this is an issue for DD but she may find concentrating more difficult than others. Just cutting out the background noise when working individually in class may make all the difference to her mental energy levels. The school will allow DD to wear ear defenders if they are supportive and understand her needs.

Don't let DD drop her music, especially if you think it could be her profession. I massively regret giving up as a teenager, even though I could never have made a career from it. It could be the stress vent that she really needs at the moment.

[2childmum]

Hi. Thanks for your replies. I've twice told DD to stop homework when a piece is taking more than an hour (and when she has other subjects to do that evening) but neither piece has been handed in yet so I don't know what the response will be.

Thanks for the idea about ear defenders but I'm pretty sure she won't wear them. She has just been assessed for coloured lenses to help with her visual stress so that will make her stand our enough I think.

She does have problems with organisation and we have put things in place such as plastic folders for each subject so that she can just check her timetable and grab the right ones each day, and I help her organise her ideas for her homework.

The school are concerned that she is unhappy and are trying to sort out strategies for her, but as she said this morning (tongue in cheek) 'making me go to school is child cruelty'!

I have to say I think the huge schools, noisy classrooms, and the pressure they are under to be constantly 'challenging' themselves, getting the next attainment target, the better grade, probably feels like child cruelty to quite a number of children!

[Amber]

If it is any consolation, which I am not sure it will be, at least two of my three have found school largely an unpleasant and stressful experience and cannot wait to get out of there. They are totally different characters away from the place (and this doesn't depend on the school they are in - all have changed schools at least once during their lives) and I have drawn the conclusion that some children just are not suited to school. It isn't surprising when you think about it - shoved together with the same large group of people all day, every day, largely competing with each other on the same tasks, and to top it all being forced to socialise in your breaks and probably feeling under pressure to socialise again with the same people outside of school. It isn't for everyone. The strategies we adopt here tend to focus on making the out of school time as different as possible from the school time, and making sure home is a nice place to be and there are other people to socialise with other than those the children see at school every day. While it doesn't necessarily make school itself any more palatable, it does reduce the focus on the place a bit and help to put it into context. I do really feel for your daughter - she has a lot of years of this ahead and it must seem like a horrible prospect. In my own experience school is great for what I would call 'mainstream' children - those whose interests are in accordance with the prevailing zeitgeist; more sensitive, quiet, introspective or creative types may find it less alluring.

I wish you both luck and hope you manage to find a way through this for your daughter's sake, as well as your own - having an unhappy child is the worst feeling as a parent, and not being able to 'sort out' the problem is ghastly.

[2childmum]

It is helpful to hear that other children struggle too - my son (yr11) is not overally keen on school, but he is very academic and so although he is bored most of the time (even in the grammar school) his strengths fit in with what school is looking for, and as he can function at GCSE level at least using very little of his brain he spends his time at home pursuing his real interests (quantum physics and designing incredibly complex board games requiring lots of complicated maths - no he isn't on the autistic spectrum!). DD has no energy left for anything, not even the things she enjoys. She would function best in a small, quiet and un-pushy environment, but they don't exist. We have just accepted a place with a scholarship to a private 6th form for my son, which we can just about afford for the next 2 years, but we can't find the money for a private school for DD and they all seem just as pushy, plus 2 or 3 languages so that's not an option. She wants to be home educated.

We had a report for her last week - most subjects she is at level 5A - 6A. Spanish is 3 B which you would expect as she has only just started it, but her target for the end of year 7 is 6B!! 3 entire levels in 2 terms in a subject where her particular learning difficulties make it all a complete mystery!! I despair!

[Amber]

I have done the home ed option too and if I had the time and the patience I would do it again. Is it something you would consider? In many areas there are support groups which are highly developed and involve sharing out responsibilities and subjects - the freedom you get from home educating is fabulous. Maybe worth a thought? Years 7-9 are largely wasted at secondary school anyway so it might be a good time to try it - there is no requirement to follow the national curriculum, only to provide an education which is relevant to the society your daughter is growing up in.

[KB]

On a practical note -

Quite a lot of children now have coloured lenses so hopefully it wont be too much of a big deal for her - we 'went with it' and got frames that co-ordinated.

Could you investigate noise cancelling headphones? If the school would work with it, they could be pretty discrete ( although the school do seem to be listening to you and maybe they will just try to keep noise down in the classrooms!)

Given her musical ability could your daughter get involved with the music department so she feels she has a place at the school - maybe helping those who are new to learning an instrument with their practice or getting involved with lunch time groups etc. It might make getting through the rest of day less awful.

If there are subjects where the homework is regularly taking too long then I would speak to the SEN co-ordinator and get a plan for those subjects so she is doing the critical parts of the homework rather than just stopping, not least because she may spend all her time on the easy bits and never get to the parts that are interesting or test her intellect rather than ability to wade through treacle.

Does she actually have to take a MFL or could she be allowed to use the time for literacy support? Again its tricky to introduce more differentiation but it always seems daft to me that dyslexic children are expected to learn a MFL before they have grasped spelling in English. All my DCs did master the one that they needed ay GCSE but not without private tutoring and a lot of hard work and I still don't see the point.

I wouldn't worry too much about academic outcomes atm as most year 7 work can quickly be caught up - rather concentrate on how to give you DD a positive learning environment. The school do seem to be helpful so may be it would be worth perservering for a bit longer? Home schooling is attractive and I have been tempted in the past but in the end decided that getting them to a position where they could cope in mainstream school was worth persevering with and we achieved it before the point of pulling them out.

Not knowing where you are - but are there any small private girls schools in the area where there is less focus on academic achievement? We have one locally - it doesn't have great exam results but there is less pressure and girls who are able still do well enough and if music is her gift then top notch GCSEs probably aren't so important? Point taken about costs but could she get a music scholarship and a bursary? Small private schools that have a rather 'old fashioned' approach can be much less expensive as well.

My heart goes out to you and your DD.

[kenyancowgirl]

2childmum - I was thinking the same as KB - I'm not sure what area you are in but I can think of the perfect private school for your daughter near us - it is exceptionally strong on music and drama, small - very small, mixed, dyslexic specialist mainstream school - independent but very very generous with bursaries and scholarships, especially where there is a real need, Quaker school so incredibly fantastic on the pastoral side. It may not be that you are local to this area (they do offer boarding too) but there will be something similar near you, I am sure, and it is worth investigating as generally, that type of school would really try and help you financially if they could. I will pm you the name of the school near us.

[2childmum]

Thank you everyone for your thoughtful and helpful replies. A small private school would suit her but there really isn't much around here that isn't pushy and we couldn't afford it at the moment, having just accepted a 50% scholarship for sixth form for my son. We wouldn't qualify for a bursary, and scholarships only seem to be available if you apply and join at the normal time, rather than mid term or at a different point in the year. Also. music scholarships then require an awful lot of the students - playing and singing in every group going, available at every concert, sorting out music for the teacher ......

DD chose very trendy glasses that should blend in with the lenses - she needs very dark ones so I think they will look rather like sunglasses.

DD would rather have nothing to do with the music department, but has to play her flute in the band (such as it is) as she has her lessons there and they are heavily subsidised and a condition of having them is that she plays in the band. Flute is very much her second instrument (she does no practice at all) and I think it will die a death once she gets her braces. The main focus of music is pop music and steel drums - her beautiful rendition of a classical grade 7 piece on violin got a round of very muted polite applause, whilst the very out of tune singing of some pop song to a backing track received huge amount of cheering and whooping. The behaviour of the audience at the last concert (cheering, whooping etc all through pupils performing) has led us to jointly decide that we will be 'unavailable' for future concerts. She is so far ahead of even the sixth formers (as far as we can tell - there may be others who have decided to keep their heads down) that there isn't really a group she can play with at any meaningful level. Actually, aside from steel bands there are hardly any groups to join anyway. The school has staggered half hour lunch times, so no time for anything other than queuing and eating. I think that is part of her problem - no time to hide in the library (such as it is) in the quiet for half an hour and re-group,

I'll mention the headphones to her again, and see what she thinks. A lot of the problem seems to stem from the noise made whilst the teacher is trying to teach, so they won't help with that, but may make part of the lesson more bareable.

A lot of the long homework tends to require lots of researching stuff and writing it up - the research itself can take over the half hour each piece of homework is supposed to take. I had a friend whose daughter started at this school a couple of years ago and she complained that they got very little homework, which is part of the reason we chose the school! They must have changed their policy, although to be far it balances out over the week. Part of the problem is the lack of a timetable so if she gets loads one day we try to get it all done that day, as we have no idea whether any more will appear the next day or not. Plus she can't really do much on Wednesdays due to chamber orchestra.

I'm not that bothered about academic outcomes - there is a lot more to education and life than attainment targets. Unfortunately the school is!

She can't give up a MFL - in fact I have been told she will have to take it at GCSE. It's not just the spelling - she has a language processing problem which means she can't process the sounds in words properly, and then doesn't store/retrieve them very well. Even if she never had to write a word of Spanish she would still find it all a mystery. I will be fighting the MFL GCSE requirement very hard should we make it that far!

I have been looking into Home Ed a bit. I would rather she stayed at school, but how miserable does she have to be for how long before I decided enough is enough! She told me this morning she feels sick everyday. However I do know from past experience that it takes her a long while to adapt to new things, so I think we will hang on in there for at least the time being, and see if things improve.

This all makes it sound like the school is an awful place - it's not. It has the best pastoral care we could find and most teachers are very concerned to get things right for her. I think the problems with size, noise and pushy expectations are true of all schools, certainly around here, although i wonder if the fact we are in London has anything to do with it. My sister has moved around a bit with her two daughters and find the London schools were far pushier than those outside of London.

[kenyancowgirl]

I honestly think a school like the one I pm'd you about would consider your dd VERY carefully - this particular school certainly took a friend's daughter in mid year and gave full financial support as she was diagnosed with dyslexia and struggling at mainstream - they didn't think they would be eligible for any support either - look around for schools that might suit and approach them with your particular daughter - you may be surprised. Certainly the situation doesn't sound great for her particular needs, where she is...

[2childmum]

Hi. The school you pm'd me about looked great, but is too far from us, and I wouldn't consider boarding for a variety of reasons. We have looked into all the options within travelling distance - we did it all when we were looking for secondary schools in the first place and this really was the best option for her. The problem partly comes from where we live - not exactly 'inner city' but but close enough to some areas which would probably count as such, so some of the children are coming from quite difficult backgrounds and settling down to learn is not that high on their agenda, understandably so in many cases. One of our nearest schools features on the 'new teachers' programme which has just started on Thursday evenings, showing teach first teachers in difficult schools.

DD came home yesterday in a much better mood - even though last lesson had been a science test - the teacher had enlarged the rather small test paper to make it easier for DD, which isn't something we have mentioned at all but which did help her. That's 2 days in a row she has come home happier - still doesn't want to go in the morning though!