Category: Parenting

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When is a child old enough to walk to school alone?

Most of us parents will remember walking to primary school on our own at some point but it’s an increasingly rare sight these days.

Practice the journet

There are actually no laws or official guidelines around age or distance of walking to school so it’s down to each of us to decide when our children are ready.

As well as the obvious health benefits, walking to school can help build independence, responsibility, safety awareness and social skills.

The biggest fears amongst parents about letting their children walk to school alone are of traffic and stranger danger. The Living Streets campaign tries to help parents understand the reality of these risks and explains that by protecting children from them they could be unwittingly harming their long-term health and well-being in other ways.

This Living Streets and Parentline Plus Walk to School report states that “Giving children the opportunity to walk to school not only reduces the risk of obesity but helps them develop independence and teaches them important life skills such as road safety and route finding”.

Start small

Build up to walking all the way by accompanying your child most of the way and letting them go the last bit by themselves. Gradually start making that last bit longer whilst they (and you!) gain in confidence until they’re doing it all themselves.

Safety in numbers

Try pairing up with other parents and taking it in turns to walk with the children to school first and then build up to the children walking together without any of you.

Road safety

Use this transition time to give reminders and tips about crossing roads and traffic awareness. If you always make the decision when it’s safe to cross, your children won’t learn what to look for to make safe decisions themselves. Talking through likely scenarios will help build their confidence to know what to do when they’re on their own. Do you know your green cross code?

Stranger safety

Agree an easily remembered code word or phrase to use in the event that someone else has to pick up or meet your children. Tell them to ask for this code word if anyone approaches them offering a lift, whether it’s someone they know or not.

October is International Walk to School Month

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Choosing the right school for your child with autism

How do you choose the right school for your child? Not only do you want to find the school that will give them the best possible education but somewhere that they will be happy, make friends and discover new interests.

This is a difficult and challenging process for most parents but if your child has autism, making the right decision becomes even more important.

Do your research

Get as much advice as you can

Talk to family, friends, other parents and professionals who have knowledge of provision in your authority
e.g. Educational Psychologist, Parent Partnership or Parent Support group

Look at the school website and brochure

This should give you a general view of school policies & structure.
Under the new SEN Code all schools must now have details on their websites about their policy for children with SEN too.

Arrange a private visit to the school

Open days are useful but to get a real feel of a school arrange a private visit during school hours and preferably over a break or lunch time.
This gives you the chance to observe how pupils behave and interact with staff and their peers. You can also get a feel for the more practical issues – how busy are the corridors, how noisy is the school canteen, etc.

Important questions to ask when visiting schools

As well as general questions on issues such as uniform, opening hours and holiday dates, you will undoubtedly want to ask questions on autism specific issues.

Here are some ideas for important questions you might want to know the answers to.

    Staff knowledge and training

What experience and knowledge do the staff have of autism? Have they had any specific training?

Are all staff aware of the associated difficulties of being autistic e.g. sensory issues, dietary needs?

Do teachers use autism-friendly communication strategies e.g. visual cues, key words, clear and unambiguous classroom language?

 

Individualised plans

Would the school be able to offer a tailored curriculum to take into account your child’s needs?

What resources does the school have to accommodate your child’s special interests?

Is one-to-one support available – how much and how often?

Is homework differentiated where appropriate and clarified for a child with autism?

Are there opportunities to learn life skills such as cooking and self care skills?

Pastoral care

How is bullying dealt with and what steps have the school taken to understand the particular vulnerability of children with autism?

What is the system for home-school communication? In my experience, good communication between staff and parents is the key to a successful school placement!

Is there a designated quiet area or room available that children can go to when necessary?

Are there any break time or lunch clubs where your child could go for support or that would match their interests?

Does the school have any system of peer support in place e.g. circle of friends or buddy schemes?

Useful links

The Autism Education Trust have just published a really useful guide that will help you in your search to find a new school, whether it be primary, secondary, mainstream or special school. There’s even plenty of room to make notes so why not print off a few copies to take with you on your school visits.

A parents and carers’ guide to finding a school for your child with autism

 

 

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Fine motor skills

Fumbling in my purse for loose change today, I’m reminded how important fine motor skills are for daily life.

What are ‘fine motor skills’?

Fine motor skills are the small muscle movements in the body. They enable activities such as writing, grasping small objects and fastening clothes. Children who have a weakness in fine motor skills struggle to develop strong muscles in their fingers, hands and wrists. They may also have poor eye-hand coordination.

Why are fine motor skills important?

Problems with fine motor skills can have a detrimental effect on education and impact on life in general. For example, the ability to hold a fork and eat, write legibly and complete personal self care tasks such as washing and dressing all depend on the coordination of small actions.

My own son still struggles with pen & paper tasks, his ability to tie shoe laces remains a work in progress, not to mention the hours of frustration spent battling with fiddly zips!

What can I do if my child needs help?

There are lots of inexpensive resources and ideas to help strengthen fine motor skills.

Drawing, colouring and craft activities can all help build these skills in a fun, informal way.

We’re lucky to have Star Tree Studio nearby who host a range of craft and creative classes (as well as art & craft birthday parties) where kids can ‘play-create-learn’ without messing up the house! Check out your local free papers and family magazines to find something similar in your area.

The imagination tree has a great blog post ’40 fine motor skills activities’

OT Mom Learning Activities has some useful suggestions for fine motor activities for older kids

Make it fun

Kids learn best when they don’t realise they’re learning! For example, we always recommend that children are involved with putting together their own TomTag ready to use. As well as helping them to understand their own routine it is a very tactile and fun activity that can help strengthen fine motor skills. Peeling off and sticking stickers onto buttons requires hand-eye coordination and pincher grip – both important for writing. Hand and finger muscles come into play too when clicking buttons into tags and removing them.

Zip it up!

Getting hold of a zipper to fasten up a jacket, bag or pencil case can be incredibly difficult for children with fine motor difficulties. We’ve now got funky zip pulls to help with those fiddly zips!

We’re giving them away free right now to anyone who recommends TomTag to a friend who then places an order.

We’d also recommend Zipz by MERU – colourful, ergonomically designed zip pulls which are also great for glove wearers: skiers, bikers, winter & outdoor activities lovers.

 

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Let’s celebrate occupational therapy!

This week – 3rd to 9th Nov – the UK’s 30,000 occupational therapists are celebrating Occupational Therapy Week 2013.

love OTOccupational therapy enables people to live more independent and rewarding lives and occupational therapists are the skilled professionals who help people achieve this goal.

Occupational Therapy Week has made me reflect on the huge difference occupational therapy has made to the life of my autistic son Tom over the last 6 years. For Tom, ‘occupation’ refers to daily occupation i.e. the ability to participate in everyday life. Like many children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Tom has a sensory processing disorder which can make everyday tasks overwhelming, such as coping with classroom noise, the feel of certain fabrics or standing in a queue for lunch. He also has difficulties with both gross motor and fine motor activities such as handwriting.
OT steps
We have worked closely with an occupational therapist (OT) to identify strategies and interventions to help Tom. Activities to improve his motor skills development and reduce his sensory processing disorder have been built into a daily programme and we are very lucky that Tomas is able to follow this programme at school before lessons start. His teachers report that he is able to learn and concentrate better after his occupational therapy sessions. He also follows a ‘Chill Out’ programme devised by his OT to help him overcome any anxiety he faces throughout the school day.

 

Six years on and I’m very proud of the progress Tom has made and hugely grateful to the occupational therapists who have helped him to carry out activities he needs or wants to do. Now I just need to dig out that ‘Chill Out’ programme for myself!

OT-Week-2013-lozenge-carousFind out more about what occupational therapists do and how occupational therapy can help by visiting the British Association of Occupational Therapists’ website www.cot.co.uk.

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Good practice is good practice (Sensory Stories with Joanna Grace)

Joanna Grace is a special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities consultant who writes educational resources and sensory stories for individuals with SEN. Recently Joanna successfully ran The Sensory Story Project, to create a set of self resourcing sensory stories that parents, as well as teachers, could afford to buy. Orkid Ideas are proud to have been one of the backers of The Sensory Story Project. We invited Joanna to talk about the overlap between provision for children with special needs and provision for mainstream children and we’re delighted to share her thoughts with you here.

Good practice for children with special needs is good practice for all children

Many of the teaching methods and resources used in mainstream schools currently were originally developed for children with special needs. Classrooms have visual time tables, teachers think about the different learning styles of their pupils: visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, and nursery schools sign with their tots.

It makes sense that anything which amplifies learning for a child with special needs will also amplify learning for mainstream children. Meeting the challenges to learning for children presented by special needs enriches provision for all, it’s one of the wonderful effects inclusion has for all children.

I write sensory stories for individuals with profound and multiple learning difficulties for whom they offer the opportunity to engage with a range of sensory stimuli, develop their confidence, communication and increase their opportunities for socialising as well as giving their carers insight into ways of personalising their care. They’re a great resource and so much fun, and they work well with children who do not have any special needs.

joanna grace chocolate
Joanna touching a vat of hot melted chocolate whilst eating melted chocolate – one of her favourite sensory experiences!

Cognitive development, for all of us, relies on sensory stimulation. If we use our senses when we learn more of our brain is involved in our learning, quite literally more of it; and if more is involved then we’ve more chance of remembering.

A sensory story combines a concise narrative (typically less than 10 sentences) with a sequence of sensory experiences. I have written stories about the birth of stars in stellar nurseries, about the history of Victorian feminism, about fantasy adventures and about every day activities. I’ve written stories for Worldstories, Booktrust, Kensington Palace, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and lots more lovely organisations.

You can pack a lot of information into a small number of words; and you can also unpack all that information from a small number of words. When I revised for my exams at school I would take notes, and then take notes on my notes, and notes on my notes etc. Eventually I’d end up with a few sentences from which I could generate everything I knew about a topic. If those sentences had been accompanied by sensory stimuli I’d have been even more likely to remember them, and the process of revision would have been more fun.

It is good for everyone to recognise that communication isn’t solely reliant on language. Children who don’t have special needs can still struggle with speaking in public, or organising their thoughts into language. Think of that adage: a picture speaks a thousand words. Through using sensory stimuli to tell a story children who aren’t quite as adept at verbal communication can speak thousands upon thousands of words, through smells, tastes, touches, sights and sounds.

I’ve had lovely conversations with young people in mainstream nursery, primary and secondary schools, and yes – even a few universities, who’ve enjoyed learning in a sensory way and have begun to consider who these stories might have been written for. They can be a great tool for disability awareness.

The best thing about sensory stories is that they are fun. We all enjoy learning more (or escaping into that special place created by stories) if it’s fun. You can find out more at http://jo.element42.org

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Back to School – an essential A to Z

Whether it’s your child’s very first day at school or they’re just starting a new school year, here’s our A-Z guide to help ease you gently back into the school routine.

  • A   is for ALARM CLOCK

Choosing a fun model and showing kids how to operate it is a great way to teach them good time-keeping.

  • B   is for BUSES

Have you got an up-to-date timetable and a vaild child’s bus pass? Does your child know where they are going to be dropped off and picked up? Have a trial run so it’s not left to the first morning!

  • C   is for CALENDAR

Think beyond the first week of school and put important dates such as parents evenings, inset days and holidays in your calendar now.

  • D   is for DROP ZONE

Set aside a designated place where the kids can leave their bags, coats and school books so it doesn’t all end up in a heap by the end of the first week.

  • E   is for EMPTY BAG

Make a clean start with an empty bag and clear out anything still lurking in there from last term.

  • F   is for FIND A PARENT

Have you got contact details of another parent at your child’s school who you can ask about school events if letters /permission slips don’t make it home?

  • G   is for GYM KIT

Have you got the right stuff for P.E. and perhaps a seperate bag to put it all in?

  • H   is for HAIRCUT

If you still have time before the first day of school, make sure they get a good cut so you don’t need to drag tired kids out after school or at the weekend to get it done.

  • I   is for INFORMATION

If your kids are starting new schools, it’s time to dig out any information books you have received from the school and make sure you’re familiar with their routine and policies.

  • J   is for JOIN

Get involved with the school community and join the PTA or check out after school activities the kids may want to join.

  • K   is for KEY

If your kids are older do they have a spare key? Get one now rather than wait until first morning back!

  • L   is for LABEL EVERYTHING!

We can’t shout this one loud enough!! Iron, sew, stamp or write your kids’ name on all clothing, shoes & personal items otherwise your jumper will look like all the rest in the lost property mountain!

  • M   is for MEDICAL FORMS

Make sure the school has up to date medical information for each child with details of allergies and emergency contact numbers.

  • N   is for NOTES

Remind your child to bring ALL notes home from school and check their bag each night for anything lurking in the bottom!

  • O   is for OUTDOOR COAT

Have you bought one yet? It won’t be long before those cold days and dark nights start creeping in!

  • P   is for PLANNER

If your school doesn’t provide one, look for a suitable notebook or diary to use as a homework planner, an essential for those kids starting high school.

  • Q   is for QUALITY TIME

Don’t forget that school can be stressful and tiring and that kids need to spend time away from homework, TV and other electronic distractions. Try and set aside some time to chat with them each day so you can pick up on any worries they may have.

  • R   is for RECYCLE

Donate old school uniform to charity or for good quality articles check whether the school PTA runs a second hand uniform sale.

  • S   is for STATIONERY

Check with the school what items your kids need to bring and make a regular check to see if anything needs replacing.

  • T   is for TOMTAG

The essential tool to help kids pack their bag to school!

  • U   is for UNIFORM

Making sure you start the year fully equipped will avoid any panics later and help children to feel more confident.

  • V   is for VISION

Find our if your school offers vision screening and if not, remember to get your kids’ eyes checked regularly as it’s important to pick up any problems as early as possible.

  • W   is for WEBSITE

Check your school’s site regularly for useful dates, school policies and curriculum guides.

  • X   is for EXTRA-CURRICULA ACTIVITIES

Let kids choose what they want to participate in rather than what you want them to. You never know what hidden talents you might uncover!

  • Y   is for YEAR GUIDES

Remember to check your school website or ask at school for details of what your kids will be studying this academic year so you can stay ahead of the game.

  • Z   is for ZZZZZZZ

As the nights draw in, get into a sleep routine for school. Just don’t forget to set the alarm clock!

 

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ORganised KIDs – top tips for back to school

New uniform to buy, school shoes to get fitted, pencilcases galore in every shop – it’s that time of year again when our thoughts must inevitably turn to planning for the new school year.

Last summer our own back to school preparations took on a whole new dimension. My autistic son Tomas faced the daunting transition from his much-loved mainstream primary school to our local secondary. Clearly there would be many challenges to face and one big worry was how Tomas would manage the extra organisational demands of dealing with lots of different subjects.

Organised paperwork

folders for organising school papeworkTomas was going to need a system to help him keep his paperwork organised and in one place if he was to stand any chance of keeping on top of things. We started with eight A4 ring-binders in different colours and labelled each one with a subject. We labelled the pockets of a plastic concertina file with the same subjects and labelled one extra section ‘letters’ to be used for permission slips, newsletters, etc.

I explained to Tomas that he must take the concertina file to school each day and bring it home again every night. Any notes, homework or handouts he was given had to be filed in it immediately after each lesson to prevent them from getting lost in his school bag or left at school! I then showed him how to empty the file each night. We talked through how we made the judgement about what should happen to each piece of paper. It if was needed for lessons the next day it could remain in the file, any homework sheets should be completed and returned to the file and some papers would need filing in the ring-binders for later reference and revision purposes.

Independence

The aim eventually was to have Tomas apply the strategy independently. Direct explicit instructions and plenty of practice are often all that is required to help children learn basic oTomas filing paperwork in a concertina filerganisational or other skills. This approach can be particularly beneficial for a child with organisational difficulties although it is appropriate and useful for most children.

One year on and I am delighted to report that the system seems to be working!  With lots of practice and the support of his teachers, Tomas can now collect, sort and file all his own paperwork from school. Now I just need to apply the same rigour to my own filing system!