I took her out for three days, wrote to the school, explained to the school why I had taken her out of school and that I felt that their, you know their attitude and the measures they were taking weren’t productive, they were counter productive. You know it just seems to be a constant battle and schools just seem to see parents as the enemy, you know, and I have made myself hoarse keep saying to schools, you know I understand that you have a difficult job to do. I understand that you have, you know xx amount of children to deal with, that you have different children with different difficulties, that you have targets to meet. You know I understand all of those things but at the same time I am Nicole’s mother and Nicole is my main concern.
And the system isn’t ideal and schools treating me like the enemy isn’t going to help, doesn’t change the system and it certainly doesn’t help Nicole. But a lot of, you know, professional pride and professional ego and things it all seems to get in the way and the schools feel that they are the educators, they know best, and I should just butt out really. But it doesn’t work like that, you know, I can’t help Nicole’s behaviour. I can’t influence Nicole’s behaviour to the degree they seem to want me to.
They seem to think that I have got some kind of switch that I am throwing. I mean I have actually been told that they feel that the reason Nicole isn’t as compliant at school as she should be is because I am negative about the education system but I have a daughter who is two years below Nicole who is achieving brilliantly. She’s accessing the full curriculum. She is in top sets for everything. She is getting top grades, top marks, she has got a social network. She accesses after school activities, so if I was so negative about the education system surely that would affect my younger daughter too?
You know I have had so much negativity from the education system, you know, down to what do I feed the children, and when I was asked that question I said, “Well I am a vegetarian member of the Green Party who believes in the local organic, you know, well cooked vegetarian food. We don’t have coke, we don’t have, you know, high additive foods and I know Nicole is sensitive to additives so we don’t have that kind of food in the house so if you are suggesting that, you know, I am influencing her behaviour negatively by feeding her rubbish you can just think again.” But the whole attitude seems to come over that children on the autistic spectrum are perceived by schools as bad and naughty and manipulative and devious and that they are in control of their behaviour and that they are behaving badly deliberately.
