Oh dear...

Today was a very, very bad day.

A little back story before I present you with the complete travesty that was today...

Last term at school, we decided to try half days for Billy. I thought we were trying this because it would work better for Billy (it did) but it seems we were trying it to see if he got sick less. He did get sick less, but it didn't mean fewer days off school. Therefore, the half days were deemed a failure. A week and a half ago, we abandoned the half days in favour of full days again.

Awesome. Not. And today, we paid the price.

More back story (Oh, I am a tease, aren't I?).

Half days were not working for Billy's teacher because it was hard for her to keep track of what he knew and what he didn't. It was difficult to get a sense of he was travelling in terms of the journey of the whole class. I get this, I understand. It must be very frustrating.

For Billy, the half days were awesome. He was alive when I picked him up. He was full of chat, excited about what he had learned in the day, keen for playdates and extension learning. He got sick twice in the term. Just happened what he got once was suspected whooping cough, which took him out of school (he is not fully immunised, neither are the majority of the kids in his school). So, he was out for fourteen days, no matter what. Those darned numbers.

For the teacher, it didn't work. I get it. I hear you.

Against all my better (gut) instincts, I agreed to try full days again.

On the weekend, he was sick again. Exhausted. Coughing, dark under the eyes, generally zoned out. We sent him back, and on Monday he pulled a bunch of stuff off a shelf in another classroom. Lego, other construction toys. Why, dunno. Guess he was overwhelmed.

Tuesday, he stayed home for the morning and went swimming with the class in the afternoon. Last night, he coughed all night.

Wednesday, today, he went to school for the full day. In the morning, they had an excursion. This included a trip in a bus - very exciting and very, very loud. They went to the CSIRO (science centre), and found out all about insects. Apparently he had a good time. Trip back to school in a bus, free play at school... sounds good?

Maybe, but it is actually very very bad.

Billy gets back to school and is banned from all his favourite safe zones by kids, being kids. Billy doesn't get context. To him, there is no difference between kids and adults/actual direction and kid chat/bullying and conversation... he hears, 'you can't play here' and he leaves. He goes to another safe zone and and gets banned because he was breaking rules.

So he leaves. No safe zone. Overwhelmed child full of the noise of 30 kids on a bus. What does he do? He returns to the scene of the lego crashing crime of two days earlier and... wreaks havoc. This time everything comes off the shelves - books, lego, cuisenaire rods, matchsticks, every kind of construction toy... everything. Every-f'ing-thing all over the floor.

I arrive at school to pick him up, and I can't find him. He's in the midst of the crap, jamming books back onto shelves under the supervision of his teacher. She tells me this is all OK, a part of the journey, totally fine.

W. T. F...??? No it's not. It's just not.

Seriously. This is not Billy. Never in his life has he done this. Never done anything like this. Well, I lie. Once, last year he pulled down a series of tubs filled with beads in the craft room at school. He says he can't hear in the craft room. That it's so loud, it's hard to make a good choice.

Are we getting a picture here?

Noisy + Billy + no appropriate intervention = a crash stuff down fest

So, what the hell do we do?

We are at the only school in Christendom where Billy will not be required to sit still for longer than it takes to complete a learning task. That's because no-one is required to sit still in order to maintain a sense of teacher mandated order. That's a big deal. I do not believe it is good for him to get the message that he is 'wrong' purely on the basis that his neurology demands behaviour that is considered inconvenient for teachers. It's involuntary. There's a certain amount he can stretch himself, and we work toward that, but... really, he's not bunging it on. And the more he forces himself to do the 'right thing' the bigger the cost at the other end.

So we're onto a good thing, right? Maybe.

I am increasingly worried that 'success' at school is declared when Billy behaves more like the other kids.  So, he gets through an excursion. Yay. I celebrate that achievement. In my head, I'm thinking, 'holy crap, there will be a cost for surviving two bus trips', but unfortunately I think the school might be thinking, 'he can totally do it, what the hell is she carrying on about?' With no understanding of the cost or, it seems, the consequences of totally doing it.

I wonder if today's classroom redecoration is even remotely related to the excursion achievement? I wonder if anyone asked anyone what happened just before Billy entered the classroom. I wonder if anyone was even watching. Actually, I don't wonder, because I know that no-one was. No-one can tell me how he ended up in an empty classroom slinging school supplies about.

And there's the crappy end of the stick. He needs an aide. He needs someone to help him. He needs someone who understands autism, and understands him and puts the two pieces of information together into a logical, reasoned picture.

And here's where I question whether we are doing the right thing at all, in regard to his education.

I do not want him to go to autism school where he is given the message that his autistic being is wrong, and needs to be re-trained.
I do not want him going to mainstream school where he is given the message that his autistic behaviour is wrong and must be re-directed.
I want him to go to a school were who he is is OK. Autism and all.

The autistic being and the autistic behaviour have to be OK. They have to be understood and anticipated and pre-read and managed and accepted and challenged and, and, and... all the things we have done as a family for the last seven years.

As I type I am clear that this is too much to ask of a school. Even hippy school. Without an aide, he is free to handle his sensory processing disorder in his own way, and he's seven years old. Seven year olds make irrational choices some times. Without support,  he is at the mercy of children who are amused by his behaviour and thrilled by what they can make him do. And we all know what that means. Without some freaking miracle, he is doomed to be 'that kid'... the odd one... the one who does weird things. The retard (and no, I don't agree with that language being used, but it is used whether we like it or not.)

I don't want to set my kid up for failure.

I don't have the answers. I just want to keep him away from all of this for as long as I can. I don't have the energy or the desire to force autism down anyone's throat. I am exhausted enough having it forced down mine.

We are the luckiest parents in the world, because we have a boy who sees only good in everyone. And we throw that luck away when we let him loose in a world not made for his sensitivities.

I have no jokes. I have no answers. I can barely see through my eyes that have cried too much.

Which made sorting out all those freaking legos and construction toys a little challenging, I'll tell you that much. Kids are going to be building spaceships with matchsticks tomorrow...