My fight with dyslexia on behalf of my Ds – Pt2
By Year 4, I was struggling to keep him at class at school (he’d go willingly, but had managed to work out the most effective method to get removed from class), he attended the new school just 2 hours a day, until he could prove he could behave, they also taught him to read through small groups and Reading Recovery, at the time I was pleased. With the most amazing Yr.4 teacher we have ever had (even now), he flourished, keen to do work at home, willing to do almost anything for her and was successful.
Sadly in Yr.5 he got a teacher who told him to think dolphin and shark thoughts when he became disruptive, he spent most of the year sitting under the table and rarely did any work, in fact his school books came home unused and we were able to recycle them the following year. His teacher didn’t tell me any of the behaviour or his lack of organisation until the middle of term 4, when I asked, by then it was too late to repair the relationship and again we’d lost a year of schooling.
Yr 6, we were blessed by another great teacher, but it was too late for my DS, he was disengaged and had no self-esteem and generally challenged himself as to how he could get asked to leave classes in the shortest amount of time. At home, I was having huge meltdowns and anxiety attacks from him. He still went to school daily but had managed to establish how to get suspended so he could miss the last week of each term, therefore in his mind, only have 9 weeks to go to school, the school did eventually provide in school suspension when I pointed out his tactic, but it made little difference.
DS was the last year of Yr.7 being at Primary school, but due to the age of the school, they had already chosen to end at Yr. 6, therefore I moved him to a different primary school for Yr.7. My reasoning was another year of having just one teacher would hopefully be positive. When I visited the school prior to enrolment they promised me and my DS everything, sadly, they never delivered. Upon commencing Yr.7 I asked the teacher what she needed from me, I explained my son needed to be allowed to move when learning and was severely dysgraphic and dyslexic and needed adjustments and understanding in expectations. She placed him in the middle of the classroom (he doesn’t do confined spaces) and printed everything on blue paper. I had many meetings with the school psychologist, deputy principle and classroom teacher who each time refused to listen to the adjustments my DS needed and said that the blue paper would fix the problem.