Expecting children to say what is ‘wrong’ when they have never experienced ‘right’!

It seems that for many children, back to school after Christmas isn’t going as smoothly as we would all hope. I have had lots of parents contact me in the last week and the themes are really similar. In my own family we are experiencing the same but thankfully only for one of my children; I do appreciate it when they take turns to have a wobble! My 11 year old in Year 6 is now struggling to attend school and we are trialling 2 days of online learning at home alongside trying to go into school for 3 days to see if this helps. The online learning starts at 10am and the later start is so much better for him. He doesn’t have to wear uniform and with his tactile sensitivity this also really helps. There are so many other benefits of the online learning too, however we ideally don’t want him to do this full time as he does enjoy seeing his friends at school and ideally I would like him to get out the house a few days a week.

The reason I’m sharing this is that it has highlighted something interesting for me that I thought you might enjoy thinking about too. Until last week my son had only had one experience of school (well technically 2 schools but both mainstream primary with a similar ish approach). When he has struggled, both teachers and us as parents have asked him what he finds hard about school as we were all keen to help and happy to make adjustments. At his previous school he literally couldn’t identify anything and always said he didn’t know. At this current school, he has only been able to identify a few things (I think this is because he is a bit older and also his nervous system is in a better place so he can actually think). However, having a completely different experience last week with online school, has meant that he has been able to identify so many things.

This made me realise that we are often expecting children to say what is ‘wrong’ when they have never experienced ‘right’! This felt like a lightbulb moment to me. It’s a bit like asking someone who has never tasted a pomegranate before whether they prefer pomegranates or grapefruits; how would they know?! So for example, my son has always had to write with a pencil/pen at school and copy from the whiteboard as is typical. For online school he was allowed to type and clearly all the info was on the screen directly in front of him. Now that he has had this experience, he has been able to identify how tiring he finds handwriting and how challenging he finds copying from the whiteboard. But it wasn’t until he had the experience of typing and looking directly at the screen that he realised this. Another example is that for online school the children can screenshot their work and private message it in the Zoom chat to the teacher for help and feedback. Now that my son has had this experience which he loves, he has been able to identify and tell me about how hard he finds it asking the teacher in class for help; having to get their attention, his friends knowing that he needs extra help etc. There are lots more examples but I won’t go on.

I feel like I’m sharing half developed thinking with you as I haven’t got to the next stage of, 'so what does this mean in terms of potential solutions for all our children'? However, I think it’s an important thing to think about when children are struggling and we (could be teachers, parents, professionals) are expecting the child to explain why they don’t want to go into school. I can now see that many of them genuinely don’t know what’s wrong as they have never experienced right! I wonder whether one of the longer term solutions lies in us as a society being more open to different education approaches. If you have any thoughts on this please do reply; I’d love to hear what you think.

If your child is struggling at school at the moment or is completely out of school, know that you are in my thoughts. I think one of the things I am finding hardest at the moment is the uncertainty of it all. As I’ve said before though, things can be really tough and we’ve got this! SEND parents are amazing; I believe in us; we have so got this!