There's a Panda in my Bellybutton

The Importance of Attendance If you read any news articles on education, correspondence from your child’s school, or are simply clued up on parenting then you will know the importance of school attendance. Schools place a great deal of focus on targets and will often offer incentives and competitions to encourage and increase attendance figures, but what if your child has a serious illness. What happens if they really are not well enough to attend school. What happens then? Attendance targets at Ryan's school are currently set at 95% attendance for the school year. Therefore realistically your child can only miss 10 school days due to illness. Medical appointments such as GP or Dentist do not count, but you are encouraged to make these appointments outside of the school day where feasibly possible. If your child consistently misses school, even if it is only one day a week, that equates to 39 days over the school year. Even missing one day in a week results in pressure on the

The build up to moving from Primary to Secondary school became more and more apparent as the months rolled by and the time crept ever closer. Ryan's meltdowns increased and he took to regularly sleeping on his window sill. In his bedroom he has a lovely deep sill that we made into a window seat. He spent a lot of time sitting, contemplating and so it appears, sleeping. Unfortunately Ryan was once again excluded during year 5 for violent behaviour, which although is inexcusable the reasons go back to that metaphorical fizzy pop bottle . The instances of bolting from school and becoming angry with the world once again escalated, but we now knew why these were happening and the SENCos from both schools where in close contact helping us all to prepare for Ryan’s next biggest challenge. Ryan was given extra ‘transition days’ in his new school to prepare him and make it a little less daunting, but the stress was too much and Ryan developed Shingles. He was really poorly for

Ryan continued to show signs of post traumatic stress disorder and was in close contact with a myriad of health professionals, but the good news was that he had finally gone through his assessment process for a statement and a proposed statement of education needs was issued in June 2010, when Ryan was eight years old. He asked me one day soon after starting year 4 in Sept 2010 if I knew what a ‘Marmington’ was? I admitted that I did not. He explained that it was a bald man, with white eyes and long fingernails from his nightmares. He continued to suffer with his sleep so his Melatonin was increased and a slow release version also given to help calm him. This worked for a short while but unfortunately Ryan was once again excluded from school for violent behaviour just before his 9 th birthday. His behaviour continued to prove erratic and he was finally given an opportunity to attend a program of social skills groups with the Speech and Language therapy team, which went

Day 1 Wednesday 13.1.2010 was not a usual Wednesday morning but it was similar  to recent days. Snow had been laying for over 3 weeks and we had another 5-8cm fall on Tuesday night so the Primary school was shut yet again due to dangerous roads & pavements and broken heating. My work was open however, so Dunk decided to work from home to look after boys and we decided there was little point dragging Owen up and out to trek Ryan across to his school as the conditions were not safe so we let them sleep in. I had a leisurely breakfast and left for work early as the roads were very slushy and icy. I got to work on time but very few children had yet made it to school so I put my bag and coat by and sat down to sort out the readers I was going to listen to that day; it was 9:05am and my phone rang. “oooppps, sorry Mrs H-P I forgot to put my phone on silent”. The actual phone conversation is somewhat hazy at this point by it went something like: Dunk – “COME HOME! VAN HIT HOUSE”

Autism Ryan saw the Paediatric Team for the first time on Wednesday 12 November 2008, two days after his 7th birthday. The paediatrician we saw was the first person to take me seriously and agreed that we had a right to be concerned about Ryan’s development and mental health to date. That day was the first time that the term Autism was used officially. The paediatrician made an urgent referral to the Educational Psychologist team, gave me a bunch of questionnaires to complete and some that the school needed to do and off we toddled with a further appointment for 6 months time.  I make this episode sound light, but it really wasn't. We had spent over an hour with the Paediatrician who had taken an in-depth history of our lives thus far (fortunately I had kept diaries which really helped answering the myriad of questions). The reason I make this sound light hearted was simply because of the relief we felt that we were finally being taken seriously. Remember I had first raise

There are only two times when I feel stressed:  Day and Night. This was the shape of things to come over the next 3 years. I spent more time at the school dealing with Ryan’s inability to cope and increasing violence (he had just turned 4) than I did at home. I was frightened every time the phone rang, dreading what had happened this time and became increasingly embarrassed each time I turned up at the school to find out what he had done this time. We were the 'English family' in a small rural Welsh village.  Everyone knows everyone and everyone talked about everyone.  Ryan had quickly become top gossip. Dadi Skilts & I slept on different shifts and often in different rooms as Ryan had no need for sleep. Sleep was for the weak. DS & I became a formidable tag team of good cop/bad cop and had to synchronise our cycles to be sure we didn’t PMT at the same time. (Permanently Meltdown Together). We learnt restraint techniques as Ryan was becoming bigger and stronger.

Life changing decision. 2005 was not a good year as they go. In fact it all started in November 2004, the 5th to be exact when Dadi Skilts (DS) was rushed to hospital. He had been ill for most of the preceding year and thought he had discovered a brilliant new diet where you drank litres of water and lost loads of weight (although you had zero energy and slept most of your life away). I assured him women across the world would have sussed that one, millennia ago. I don’t know why, but I encouraged him to get a diabetes test as the local pharmacy were offering free ones. After copious nagging and most likely just to shut me up, he went; but unfortunately it appeared their test kit was faulty because it gave a stupidly high reading and it was suggested he should visit his GP for a more reliable test. More nagging and an eventual Doctors visit on that fateful day once again showed a reading so stupidly high that the Dr thought his machine was also broken until DS commented that wa