Am I the only one who thinks this school isn't right for me?

Post Reply New Topic

A specialist Aspie school.

I'm a 14-year-old girl.
I have been diagnosed with dyslexia, aspergers, and some symptoms Pathological Demand Avoidance syndrome (the symptoms I do have seem to be very atypical, I don't think I have it, but some other condition which is yet to be discovered) I've also been recently prescribed anti-depeesants, and my doc thought I was anorexic at 12, but I refused to get tested.
http://www.autism.org.uk/about-autism/r ... drome.aspx

The more pressure I feel to "act normal" (there's more pressure, and more persuasion than anywhere I've ever been), the more impossible it gets. I kept purposely having to do socially incorrect things, and the more I did, the more staff, and sometimes students, would tell me not to. This only made me more anxious, and made me have to keep doing that incorrect thing, and more. They kept trying to be indirect with their demands on me, it was obvious what they were trying to do, so the fact that they were going to more trouble than normal to get me to do something, made it even harder, plus whenever I managed to follow one of their demands when doing one of these silly methods, they were so bloody smug, I wanted to run away,

It's well know among the PDA community that techniques used on people with autism, and aspergers can have damaging affect on people with PDA. As it do so on me. I only attended the school for about 2and 1/2 months, attended about 20% of lessons, and it caused me to have a breakdown. Every-time I even thought about the school I would cry like I never have, for about an hour, for weeks, the pain was unbearable. I became very suicidal, the only thing which stopped me from running onto the train tracks near the school was me thinking about the driver.

I felt the same pressures I felt in mainstream school to be thin, so I cut down on eating, I felt like I had to, I was making myself sick with the lack of food in my body.

(this made me suicidal, and have such low self-esteem that I cried at everything)People in mainstream were horrid to me for being "stupid" (I'm not, just whenever I disagreed with one of my ex-friends, she assumed I was wrong, called me stupid, and told other people I was).
I'm behind academically, because I've missed years of school, and the head insisted on moving me down a year, even though it says in my statement that I shouldn't. My tutor told nearly all the girls that I was moved down, and the stereotypical autistic maths geniuses were mean. Being moved down is not good for my self-esteem, and they didn't listen to my statement.

I wasn't able to learn in that environment (learnt more in mainstream, in a massive classroom, with 5x a many students), the teachers would ask you every 5mins if you were okay, making it impossible to concentrate, I couldn't learn using normal Aspie methods, the staff would tell me off for classic Aspie things I cannot help, I was uncontrollably copping other students (I won't go into why), was so exhausted after school I wasn't able to do anything, and just, ARHGHGGGGGGGG!

Please tell me if any of that doesn't make sense, there's other stuff too, and it's not a simple case of just asking them to stop doing certain things.

Council people, mum, grandmother, ex-friend, all think I'm not trying hard enough to go to school, when I just really cannot cope.

I've never able to put it into words, without sounding like a whiny b***h.
I wasn't bothered about my grammar, correct paragraphs, and stuff BTW, that's why it's not very well written :L

What would you like to do instead of school?

Your predicaments remind me somewhat of my personal experience with high school. However my school was not so much specific to Asperger's school, but rather just a more general separate from the mainstream type school. "Accommodations" that were detrimental to me were forced on me, the size of the school and the people I was around were difficult to deal with. I tried to look ahead to my future after that school, but that is easier said than done, especially since I am done with high school now. That thing about looking ahead is really the best advice I can give, school was quite a struggle for me, but later on you will have more options available, and perhaps have learned something from past difficulties, if not what you had difficulty in, but rather dealing with the difficulty.

Have you come across the home and hospital teaching service in your area?

My son was taught through them after getting a sick note from the GP saying he was too ill to attend his normal school. You only get 5 hours a week and it's normally only short term but it is a lot better than nothing.

Once my son was there we looked at all the provision for him available and found that the LEA didn't have any suitable - he couldn't cope in mainstream, he wasn't suited to specialist AS provision outside the authority as he couldn't cope with leaving home and he was far too academically able for the special schools - so his statement was changed to allow him to stay at the home and hospital service and to allow him more than 5 hours (he never had full time provision but that suited him). The service was excellent - very supportive and able to adapt to individual needs much better than any other provision I've come across. Initially they came to our home to teach him but when he was ready and knew them well he was able to go to their unit and eventually he was able to attend some mainstream lessons for his A-levels supported by staff from the unit.

I don't know where you live so I can't say what the provision is like but it's worth looking at

Every LEA has a department responsible for children out of school - usually called something like Education Other Than At School which covers both elective home education and pupils who can't access school for some reason - they should be able to give you information about their home and hospital teaching services.

Mum has looked into them, and she says non of the ones near to us are right for me :/.

There is only one service in any area, you don't choose.

This isn't a school or unit in the usual sense - some EOTAS services don't have units at all - this is a service used for kids who can't access any other teaching such as kids with cancer or with anxiety problems. The aim is to get you ready to go back into school, give you catch up classes and help you make a transition which is why it is usually only temporary. It is totally adaptable to the students needs and even if it's temporary till you get something that suits you better it might help.

If you are out of school the LEA has a responsibility to educate you anyway - they must provide at least 5 hours a week, you should not have to work on your own all the time. EOTAS is the service they do this through. They will probably tell you they can't but if you insist you will get access.

My council recommended two for me. The second one may have been a similar hospital, I don't know.

We know, and the unit isn't right for me.

I'm still enrolled at my Aspie school, even though we applied for me to be home-educated 5 months ago, I think this is their way of making it look like I'm getting an education. The school is a private one, and the council pay for it.