Education at home

We’ve had a bumpy ride since the autumn, losing Sal’s dad and getting used to both Martha and Beth being away at university. Jake hasn’t had a good time with school, shouting and screaming as soon as he realises he’s due to go, sometimes hitting us and kicking the car on his way out. Since before Christmas, we have had to leave him in the school playground as his teachers try to convince him to come into the building whilst we walk away with his shouts after us ringing in our ears. We’ve then had many a tearful drive back home, all ready to start work again by half nine.

When Jake was in Year One, we ended up having a mediation meeting with the local authority and his then-school to debate the possibility of having a flexi-school arrangement whereby he’d be in school a couple of days a week and at home with us for the remainder. We had put together a full programme of activities with different subject experts coming in to supplement our attempts. It was turned down because the LA insisted that a head teacher had to have responsibility for Jake throughout the week, even when he was learning at home with us. School, quite understandably, couldn’t sign up to such an arrangement, so Jake got stuck back in full-time schooling.

We said at the time that this setup would reduce his anxiety to such an extent that we’d avoid a full-on pressure cooker overloading explosion further down the line. They still said no.

Well, dear reader, in circumstances that nobody could have seen coming, Jake is currently a school-refuser. Having spent the intervening years masking a lot of stress and anxiety, he’s finally exploded. We now can’t even mention school without tears, shouting and meltdowns.

It has been nearly two months now since we last got him to the school building, but he was so upset and anxious that we just had to bring him home again. He also stopped eating after Christmas, gagging over his breakfast cereal and leaving his packed lunch so that school were worried that he might faint.

We also found out a few weeks ago that he hasn’t got a place at the local special high school that we’d requested. Instead he has a place at another special school that is even further away than his current primary. We are going to appeal, although whether we can actually get him to either place in September anyway remains to be seen.

His current teachers have been fantastic, supportive and willing to try different things to help Jake and us. We don’t know whether his anxiety will reduce from its current place high in the sky, but we need to discuss how we will cope and change what we are doing with our work.

We have very little reserves left at the moment.

Seeing Jake happy, smiling and relaxed is wonderful. He’s more receptive to learning things and he’s much calmer these days. That, of course, is the really important thing. We now need to craft the rest of our lives to make sure that can continue.