Pre-cooking Skills Part Two

 

Good morning!

I’ve lost my marbles.

I love early Springtime. The end of winter is always welcome. I always eagerly await the first signs of Wild Garlic. For the past few years I’ve foraged the herb as it grows in abundance near my house. It makes a great pesto (amongst many other things). You’re probably wondering what in the blazers all this has to do with marbles?

Cast your mind back to my last post, when I talked about using play dough to as a tool to teach pre-cooking skills. We have been continuing with this theme by doing kitchen treasure hunts (where my kids have to find named items in the kitchen) and practising taking trays in and out of the oven (I don’t light the gas oven for this, so it’s cold). I had planned to use marbles to practice food hygiene skills. Only I couldn’t find my marbles. My back up plan was to go out in search of stones. The idea was to get my son to practice washing them in a sieve or a colander. Unfortunately, I didn’t get round to doing this either. It is a great idea, if you ever get a chance.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago we went out to forage for Wild Garlic. This plant comes out in late March/early April and can be found in woodland. My kids absolutely love going to find it, another name for it is Bear’s Garlic, which really captures their imaginations. When we got it home, we put it in our trusty colander and my kids took it in turns to wash it. It was great practice for them. We turned ours into pesto, but it also makes a good soup.

This has piqued my curiosity. I want to find other wild herbs to forage over the rest of the Spring and Summer.

 

Pre cooking skills – Part One

Good morning!

I haven’t managed to write much lately, we’ve been desperately trying to get into a routine. My children have both been finding lock-down hard lately so I have been focusing very much on them. I have also been trying to find time to devote to my proofreading/editing business. It’s been a tough time but I think we’ve found our groove.

I think that the time in lock-down is a perfect opportunity to teach our children (SEN or neurotypical) to cook. I have had a few attempts at this with my SEN boy, but I’ve decided to take a step back and focus on pre-cooking skills. This sounds nuts but it’s actually a great idea. I have picked up a lot of information from the Accessible Chef  (a US based company specialising in teaching basic cooking skills to SEN children).

There are different activities to try with children to help them to learn all the skills used to cook. Our first session involved making play dough and then kneading it, rolling it and cutting it. I think everyone knows how to make play dough? If not there’s a simple recipe here. I made sure (by using bribery and corruption) that this would be a one to one session with my SEN child. He is a different child when he gets my full attention and it was magical. He was able to follow the visual recipe and set out independently to find all the equipment and ingredients.

Once we’d made the play dough, it was time to get on with more pre-cooking skills. Play dough is a really useful resource to use to practice kneading and cutting (with blunt knifes) in preparation for using sharper knives and kneading dough to make bread. Here’s my little man trying his hand at it.

I can’t wait until I can carry on with the next pre-cooking skills. I’ll reveal more soon, but watch this space for my next post….

Take care, stay home and stay safe!

 

 

 

 

Siblings in Lock-down

Hello Readers!

Firstly, I must apologise for my lengthy absence. I went back to work part time a couple of years ago and I have been building up my proofreading business. Unfortunately, this hasn’t given me much time to devote to my beloved blog. The bright side is that lock-down has given me much more time to keep writing about the challenges faced by SEN children and their families, a subject which I am still passionate about.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how all this is affecting my youngest son, who is neuro typical. I have begun to notice that he is copying some of the behaviour and language patterns of his older sibling, who has learning difficulties. I wrote an article a couple of years ago about the struggles experienced by siblings of disabled/SEN children which was published in SEN Magazine.

One key point from my article is that it’s extremely important for parents of disabled children to spend one to one time with their mainstream children. This is not an easy thing to achieve at the moment. I have been trying to keep working, keep on top of the housework and try to teach both my children. This is actually impossible. The only real one to one time I’ve had with my mainstream child has been when we read his book aloud to each other at bedtime (we take it in turns to read a few pages each).

It has got me thinking though, how can I fit more one to one time in with my mainstream child. I already have a lot on my plate so it will be a tough one. Do you have any ideas? Have you noticed any negative behaviours in your own mainstream children as a result of the lock down?

I am going to start a series of blog posts about pre-cooking skills, so watch this space….

Until then, stay safe and well!

 

 

 

 

Sally Phillips calls for inclusion

I’ve been vaguely aware for a while that the actor Sally Phillips (you may remember as one of Bridget Jones’ cronies in the films) has a son with Down’s Syndrome. I just read this highly enlightening article from her in the Guardian and it’s raised a few questions in my mind.

The point she is making in the article is that Down’s Syndrome children belong in mainstream schools but this idea can surely be extended to all SEN children. I am very much in favour of a fully inclusive society where children with special educational needs are taught alongside their neuro typical peers. I also beleive that for this to happen there needs to be a fundamental shift in government education policy. Phillips’ supports her case by explaining that the Finnish Education system is generally inclusive and less than 2% of Finnish children attend special schools. Instead they are where they should be, growing up in learning with their peers. Finnish schools achieve this by adapting their teaching to each child in order to meet their needs. Phillips states in her article that…

“We need an inclusive education system for so many reasons. We need it so kids with additional needs can participate in the cultural and economic activities of the communities in which they live. The Prison Reform Trust reports that 70% of people admitted to prison require mental health support. The impact of excluding kids is huge and long-lasting.”

I’ve written about this before and couldn’t agree more. It’s always been my goal for my son to attend a mainstream secondary school but I’ve recently realised that under our current education system he simply wouldn’t cope there. That seems to me to be a crying shame. He won’t get the chance to learn from typically developing children and neither will they get the opportunity to learn from him.

Challenging Behaviour

My SuperTiddles has always been very easy going, at least up until the past few months. His behaviour is becoming more and more challenging. Years ago when he was a mere toddler he was admitted to hospital a few times with chest infections. He hasn’t had a stay in hospital for at least four years now so we’ve been lucky. When he was in hospital the boredom and stress used to result in him pulling his hair out. This condition is known as Trichotillomania and is more common amongst girls and women. I joined an online support group and many of the people on it are adults who have been pulling since childhood. This worries me as his mum and I would like to nip the habit in the bud long before he reaches adulthood.

Other things he’s started doing recently include wetting himself on purpose, refusing to follow instructions, laughing when people hurt themselves and getting very anxious about future plans. I know these things sound trivial but it does get very wearing after a few days of it. I am trying to look on the positive side and see it as a normal stage of development where he is just testing boundaries. It’s just that I don’t remember his neuro-typical brother’s behaviour being quite so challenging.

With the Easter holidays coming up I could do with a playscheme to send both my children to so that I could have some time to myself to work and just relax. There was a playscheme locally that catered for disabled children and their siblings but it fell prey to funding cuts. This means that now the only playscheme that takes disabled children in my area doesn’t take their siblings. My children don’t want to go to separate playschemes and I don’t see why they should have to. It simply isn’t fair. We need more inclusive playschemes that disabled children can attend.

Shortage of SEN Provision

There is a severe shortage of SEN schools in my end of Surrey which desperately needs to be addressed. It’s the same story year in year out. The LA struggle to find places in local SEN schools. This leaves a lot of parents in very stressful situations as they are left in limbo without a school place for their child. The government needs to address this as it’s placing huge pressure on parents who already have a lot to deal with and it simply isn’t right or fair to ignore the issue. I also read this article about a similar situation in Hull so it seems like it’s a nationwide problem.

My son was extremely lucky to get a place at a great SEN school where he’s thrived. The teaching staff really  have done a good job and helped him progress wonderfully. We didn’t have to fight for his place. We need to push for much more SEN provision across the UK. My son is now in year 4 and it’s time to start looking at secondary schools for him. We looked at our local one but it doesn’t suit him. There is a school two miles away which would suit him but as it’s only 2 miles away we wouldn’t get transport. This would mean I would have to do a long school run every morning as it’s on the opposite direction to my youngest son’s school. It would make it very difficult for me to return to work. I refuse to send him to the wrong school for him just because the LA can find him a place. There are more SEN schools the other end of Surrey so we are considering moving house to be closer to them. Something needs to change. This situation cannot be allowed to continue.

Light for Leo

There is nothing in this life more heartbreaking than the death of a premature baby. I just read this article in Surrey Mirror about the tragic loss of Leo Frost, who passed away in February after being born at 24 weeks and 3 days.

The story really struck a chord with me as my oldest son arrived very early at 24 weeks and 5 days. What makes Leo’s parents story all the more sad is that they conceived him after a long 6 years of IVF. His Mum and Dad, Lauren and James Frost, spent a precious eight days with their son before he went to sleep.

They are crowdfunding a book which they want to write about their experience to raise awareness of premature birth. The book is about a brave lion called Leo and focuses on the challenges faced by micro premmies.  Dig deep peeps and follow this link to donate.

 

 

My son’s a Trichster…

My oldest son, who we commonly call SuperTiddles, suffers from Trichotillomania. This is a condition I hadn’t heard of until a few years ago. It basically means the compulsive urge to pull one’s own hair out.

He used to do it a lot when he was in hospital. I put it down to a mixture of boredom and anxiety as well as feeling very poorly. It’s been more than five years since his last spell in hospital and there has been no sign of hair pulling since then. I thought we’d got past it and he’d grown out of it. I was wrong.

Our much loved family cat, Shadow, sadly passed away unexpectedly in September last year. We recently took the plunge and got two new lovely kittens. SuperTiddles had been asking if we could have new kittens for a while. He told his teacher it would make him happy as he felt sad that Shadow died. I also wanted to get new kittens to we found some in our local rescue centre and brought them home a couple of weeks later. This has triggered a new bout of hair pulling. He told his bus escort that he misses Shadow and he’s worried that the kittens will get run over like she did. I can’t promise him that they won’t. So we just have to use diversion tactics to keep his hands busy and away from  his hair. Easier said than done.

When I googled the condition I did come up with this page which offers a lot of support and advice on how to tackle the issue. I feel it is important to talk about Trichotillomania as sufferers are often sensitive children who are targets for bullies and this will isolate them further. Teachers need to be made aware of the problem in mainstream schools.

Choosing a secondary school

We’re currently looking at SEN secondary schools for my son. I thought that choosing a primary school was hard but this is even harder. How on earth do people choose the right school for their cognitively impaired child?

My son is on the SLD/MLD cusp. That puts us in a tricky position. Many schools for SLD children focus a lot on building confidence and learning skills for life. They tend not to work towards qualifications. MLD schools often have much better options available for their pupils. My gut feeling is that an MLD school would suit my son much better.

The other problem is that there are very few SEN schools in our area. We have discovered that there are significantly more at the other end of our county. We are considering moving house to be in an area with more choices of school available.

Transport is the other minefield. I want to be in a position where I can either walk my children to school or be a short car ride away. I do not want to be in a position where I have to drive 80 miles every day to drop my son off at school and pick him up. That simply isn’t good enough. I want to be able to work and that would prevent me from doing so.

Special Education

Wouldn’t it be great if all mainstream schools shared the same ethos as many SEN schools? That sounds like quite an odd question but bear with me. I’ve heard it said many times that the new national curriculum is far too narrow and does not allow children to express themselves or nurture talent.

My youngest son is neurotypical. He’s currently in year one. We had parents evening last week and there seems to be a gap between the way the teachers view his progress this year and how the government see it. According to the national curriculum framework he is below average in maths and writing. He’s always been good at maths (I’m not deluded by the way) so I find it very strange. He is quiet in class so maybe that’s affecting his performance. The national curriculum does not allow for teachers to focus on the emotional needs of children. Nor does it serve to boost their confidence in themselves.

We’ve recently begun to look at SEN secondary schools for our oldest son who has learning difficulties. One thing that has stood out to me is that there is a trend among SEN schools to focus on building confidence and giving the children an enthusiasm for learning. These schools work hard on giving their pupils the tools to learn for themselves and become independent learners. I beleive that is far more important than cramming childrens’ heads full of facts at increasingly young ages. This leads to anxiety and stress in children. I beleive a rethink of primary school education is in order.