‘School’ the Jake Way

The boy has a tutor! Another grown-up whom he spends time with that isn’t us!!

It’s taken a lot of fighting and many stop-starts but the local authority finally agreed that having a tutor work with Jake at home was the best option for him right now.

We’re up to an hour’s session a couple of times a week, and he is happy to see her and likes working with her. They’re doing all sorts!

Yesterday, they built a gingerbread house after Jake had written out the instructions. Today, they played a Gruffalo game, drew a very smiley horse, wrote a bit about it, and then read the Three Billy Goats Gruff (complete with character voices throughout).

He moans and groans first thing, and says he doesn’t want to see her, but it doesn’t last long.

Over the past few months, before we finally got the green light, he’s been on roll at a high school that he’s never set foot in. We had to take him every week so he could be seen by staff, meeting in a nearby park & cafe. We don’t miss that two hours out of our schedule.

And it’s not really about what he’s learning, but he’s loving all his favourite fairy tales (still obsessed) and it’s a step forward getting him used to another adult, especially one who is asking him to do stuff. One of us sits in the room with them both (while the other sits with our jumpy, barky dog in another room), but we can tap away quietly on our laptops and leave them to it.

We will be building the time up as we go along.

Still couldn’t get him to sit-in at the local burger place tonight, but at least we got him out of the house. Small wins at the moment.