I had that warm, tingly, sun on your face feeling.
I’d just watched my girl running - yes, technically, definitely, sort of running - down the track for the sprint race at her special school sports day. She was at the back of the pack but she was having a real go.
Minutes earlier, I’d stood back, amazed at her bouncing along in the sack race, her cheeks reddening from the effort. I got flashes of her beautiful grin as she shot sidelong glances and giggles at her dad: a middle-aged man with sticky-up hair, wearing flowery shorts, shouting out "Boing! Boing! Boing!" as he pogoed along beside her.
Special school sports day is always fun. One of my daughter's classmates, having been told he could dress as his favourite sporting star, came as Kevin Pietersen in full cricket gear, pads and helmet and all, which I can attest makes the long jump a challenge. I even got involved myself, as part of an impromptu and rather hefty parents team in the Parents v Staff Tug Of War. Victory tasted sweet. An estimated 30 stone team weight advantage had nothing to do with it, I tell you. It was all technique.
It was my second sporting foray of the day, having already taken part in the mums' race at my boy’s sports day earlier the same day. I’d seen my opportunity to cause him burning shame, and I’d taken it, because he’d been a little sod all week.
He watched as I had galumphed up the track, trailing in the wake of several mums who were younger, fitter, and - as my own mum would quaintly put it - less ‘booby’ than me. I’d adopted an unusual running style: the ‘right hand clutching right nork, left hand clutching left nork’ technique* (*first pioneered by Dolly Parton when she forgot her sports bra for track practice. Probably). It had seemed apt to protect my assets (coincidentally encased in a Tony The Tiger ‘They’re GGGGGGRRRREAT!’ T-shirt) as I needed way more jiggle-proof scaffolding than that provided by my standard M & S bra.
I walked back over to see my boy sitting on the ground next to his dad with his hands over his face. “Brilliant!” I thought. “I’ve really embarrassed him.” But no, the ‘hand-bra’ style had passed him by, possibly because he was watching from behind the start line and had only been able to see the back of me. No, his hands were not hiding his shame, they were suppressing derisive laughter. “You came last, Mum. You’re RUBBISH.” Yes. Yes I was. But at least I didn't have sore jugs and two black eyes, and I consider that a victory, even if nobody else does.
We have a meeting next week at my daughter’s school.
It’s the Annual Review for her Statement of Special Needs - the first one she’s had since she’s been placed in her special school’s satellite class at the local mainstream secondary.
We’ve been reading through the detailed report provided by her teacher, which describes how our girl has settled in, what her behaviour has been like, what strengths she is showing, what fixations she has, her confidence levels, her independence, and how she’s performing in different subjects. It also reviews each of her ‘Statement Objectives’, which detail the areas where she needs extra help and focus.
This may all sound a bit ‘management-speak’. Like those god-awful ‘appraisals’ I vaguely remember from my previous life in office-land.
But it’s not like that. It looks like a sheaf of dull paperwork, but it really isn’t. It’s a fascinating description of my daughter’s school life. It’s a report that rings true. It matches the unique personality of our girl.
It’s illuminating and familiar.
We’re in the loop. What's more, we're riding the same rollercoaster.
Oh, blimey*. (*Warning, Mum, subsequent exclamations may be swearier).
My daughter sat at the tea table tonight, and asked: “What is sex?”. Her dad caught my eye and answered quickly: “Your mum will explain it.” I believe this is what’s referred to in rugby as a hospital pass. You know - when you catch the ball but don’t have time to catch your breath before a big bastard flattens you.
The thing was, though, that this wasn’t just an innocent query. What I initially thought was a bit of teenage curiousity from a sweet girl who doesn’t know what most 14-year-olds think they know about the mysteries of fornication and procreation, was a little more alarming.
We had a little talk as she was having a bath. And it turned out that a lad at school had been having a bit of a joke at her expense. At least that’s what I think happened, and I’m going to try to get to the bottom of it by having a chat with her teaching assistant tomorrow.
“This boy, he was nice, he came to sit next to me when I was finishing my drink at lunchtime, and asked me if I would be his boyfriend,” my daughter said.
“Girlfriend, I think he probably said,” I corrected, before asking: “Who was he? Was he one of the boys in the special school classes or was he a mainstream pupil?”
“Mainstream. I said yes. Then he asked me if I’d have sex with him. So I said yes. That means we’re boyfriend and girlfriend, doesn’t it?”
Once I’d recovered my cool and managed not to blurt out one of the expletives running through my head, I quizzed her about exactly where she was, who was around, whether an adult would have heard, whether the boy’s mates were nearby (possibly giggling), and I think I understand what happened.
I think the ‘lad’ (and I use that in the pejorative sense) may have been dared by a friend to get my daughter to say something they could snigger at.
Teenage boys are idiots, I know this. But I’m mad at this particular one for a couple of reasons. Firstly, my daughter is quite closely supervised by a teaching assistant at lunch and breaktimes, so he must have been quite sneaky to manage to hold this conversation with her without an adult realising exactly what he was saying.
Secondly, if it happened like she described, he was taking advantage of her learning difficulties and her lack of streetwise smarts to make fun of her and laugh at her.
Thankfully, he hadn’t upset her, because she didn’t realise this. On the other hand, the effect it did have on her broke my heart a little bit. The conversation actually had made my daughter happy, because she thought it meant that he was her boyfriend. (The “he was nice” bit is making me go boggle-eyed, gnash my teeth and think violent thoughts).
So I held a difficult conversation with her, kneeling on the bathmat next to a wide-eyed child surrounded by soap bubbles. As delicately as I could, I explained that sex was something natural and nice that happens between two people who love each other. I even included a small amount of anatomical detail about a willy (I know, I know) going inside the woman’s bits (I know, I know). “Oh, is that where the man gives her the sperm?” she said, surprising me by remembering a pertinent point from sex education classes, and making me feel like a numpty.
“Yes, sweetheart. But it’s something that adults do, not children. And you can get in trouble for doing it when you’re under 16. Plus it’s much better to wait until you’re grown-up and you really love someone. It’s normal and healthy but it’s private. When that boy was talking to you about it, he was being a bit silly and rude about it because sometimes that’s what boys are like.” The bastarding bastardy little bastard, I thought. “I think his friends were trying to get you to say something you didn’t really know was rude. I think they dared him to do it and he was being a bit of an idiot. But you’re not in trouble, because you didn’t know. And there’s no point worrying about the silly things some silly boys do, is there?”
She took in all this information and reacted astonishingly well. (By not asking me if Daddy puts his willy in Mummy for a start). After more matter-of-fact discussion, we agreed on the best thing to say to that boy, or any other one that came up to her and wanted to talk about anything like this again.
“I’ll hold up my hand, Mummy, and say: ‘Stop!’ You shouldn’t be talking to me about this, it’s wrong. I’m going to tell an adult,” she said solemnly.
She clambered out of the bath, and I wrapped her up warm in her dressing gown before she happily pottered off for her Cadbury’s Highlights hot chocolate and a listen to a couple of tracks from her Hannah Montana Movie Soundtrack CD. She seemed absolutely fine.
I breathed a sigh of relief. And thought about the conversation I will have with her teacher tomorrow. Where I’ll suggest they see if they track down Mr Lets Get The Special Needs Girl To Say Stuff About Sex, put him on the spot, give him a right ticking off, and embarrass the hell out of him. Then maybe stuff a firework up his lily-white arse.
My daughter started at the local comprehensive school today: a big, imposing, building with 1300 pupils in it. It would have been a daunting enough day for any other 13-year-old. But for a girl with special needs, in amongst a sea of ‘mainstream’ students, it was a bit of a leap of faith.
I held her hand and walked alongside her, through the crowds of bleary-eyed teenagers, many still in British Summmer Holiday Time, their bodies in shock at having to get up before noon.
I was, of course, the only mum doing this, which felt really odd compared to the motley bunch of us that used to turn up with our offspring at the doors of her old special school. My daughter, thankfully, was oblivious to this fact.
Mainstream didn’t work for my girl after the age of about seven. She was lost in a sea of pupils that were quicker than her at almost everything. When we recognised it wasn't working, we moved her to a special school, where the teaching was done in small, well-staffed groups. And she's been in a special school environment ever since, where she’s thrived.
Yet now, here we were, walking into a mainstream secondary. Had we done the right thing?
Well, things aren’t quite how I’ve made them seem. Despite being decked out smartly in the mainstream school’s uniform, really she is still part of her old special school, and is being taught in a small, specialist, tightly-supported ‘satellite’ class. Although the unit is part of the widespread policy of ‘inclusion’, it’s actually pretty self-contained. To all intents and purposes, it is a miniature special school with just six pupils in her class, supervised by one teacher and two teaching assistants, who also accompany the group at break and dinner times, keeping a watchful eye on them when they come out of the safe cocoon of their own little learning world.
So we have taken the plunge, and this morning, for the first time, I took a deep breath, gave my daughter her last few words of encouragement as her teacher met her at the gate, and watched her disappear inside. In her smart jumper and tie, clutching her Hello Kitty bag, she somehow looked incredibly tough and grown-up but incredibly young and vulnerable all at the same time. Then I took Dennis The Menace to nursery on his scooter. Then I went home to worry.
Just under seven hours later, I picked her up, trying not to inhale the exhaust fumes of the school buses, and squeezing past the lanky, bumfluff-lipped sixthformers, leaning casually on their mopeds.
How had she found the day? How had she coped (particularly when, although closely supervised, her little group of ‘different’ classmates would have come into contact with the wider school cohort)?
She walked towards me, chatting to her teacher, her hair swept up into a glamorous pony-tail that put my morning's amateur scrunchie-grappling to shame.
“You hair looks nice!” I said. “Who did that?”
“Kate.”
“Kate?”
This earned me a withering look. “You know, my cousin. She came to find me at lunchtime.”
I smiled, thinking how nice it was that her cousin, without any prompting from me, had taken it upon herself to seek out my girl.
“So what did you think to it?” I asked, searching my daughter’s face for clues to her mood.
“I’ve not made my mind up yet,” she informed me. “But I think today gets a thumbs up.”
She’s grown up a lot. She’s coped with being in a class of boys and learned to stand up for herself. She’s marched into the classroom and announced that her “spoilt brat” of a brother kept her awake until 9.49pm playing with his toy bin lorry. As her teacher relayed this little speech to me, it was the precise time that made us both giggle the most. She’s managed a few jogs along the PE track, despite announcing she doesn’t “do” running. She’s been away on a PGL holiday and enjoyed it so much she didn’t want to come back. She's been on stage as Cinderella. She’s made a friend. She’s never, not once, said she didn’t want to go to school.
We’ve just got a neat pile of new uniform for the autumn, when she’ll be heading to her special school’s satellite class at the nearby mainstream comp. She can’t wait.
All this may sound mundane, but it isn’t to me. I remember when she was diagnosed with Prader-Willi Syndrome as a baby and her muscles were so weak it seemed like she'd never walk, or talk, or have any kind of proper life. I look at her shyly twirling around in her new PE kit and I think how far she’s come, and it amazes me. I've seen it happen, but it still amazes me.
She’s already badgering me about buying her a new schoolbag and packed lunch box for September. I refuse to take for granted the everyday, humdrum stuff like this. This is what life is. What I once thought it couldn't be. It's glorious.
Video is Sigur Rós - HoppÃpolla. I have no idea whether the lyrics are appropriate or not. It just feels good.
It’s pelting down with rain today, but I’m still basking in the sunshine of Californ-i-A.
I watched my daughter strike surfing poses on a cardboard surfboard this week. I sat there with a big, stupid grin on my face as she and her schoolmates did ‘The Swim’, and yelled out the chorus of The Beach Boy’s Surfin’ USA so loud that thousands of palm trees fell off Hawaiian shirts all over the world. I tried to stop my camera from shaking with laughter as the deputy head appeared clutching a rubber shark and chased them off the stage.
The song was part of her special school’s summer production: “The 12 Days Of Summer” - the much-awaited follow-up to a legendary version of Cinderella that still makes me smile when I think of it, seven months later.
This week’s evening and matinee shows (by volunteering to take photos at one and film the other, I wangled myself two tickets) were cut from the same theatrical cloth, the basic ethos of which is: “Everyone has a go, bung ’em all on stage, and let the organised mayhem ensue”. Somehow, my girl's 'costume' (shorts and T-shirt) were mislaid backstage before the evening show, which - miraculously for someone who struggles when things don't go to plan - didn't seem to bother her. Quite how her teachers had talked her down from this potential catastrophe, I don't know. But they obviously had.
The kids, from little ones clutching teddy bears to big hulking teenagers, and from energetic dancers to those in wheelchairs, were all included - whatever their abilities. They did a performance of Singing In The Rain waving cardboard umbrellas. One young pupil was allowed, upon his enthusiastic insistence, to spontaneously grab the microphone and tell a completely unintelligible story. It was greeted, to his delight, with rapturous applause.
The teachers and teaching assistants were right in the thick of it. One male teacher continued his growing obsession with wearing drag, appearing in both a lollipop lady and a Mary Poppins outfit. A female member of staff, who I had previously thought was quite strait-laced, whirled about the stage in a hippy outfit in a performance that can only be described as astonishing. Another, taking part in a beach scene, was perched on a deck chair with Dame Edna glasses on, reading a book that with a quick zoom of the camera lens was revealed to be Fifty Shades Of Grey.
Thursday evening’s performance came after a two day Ofsted inspection, called with the customary two days notice, during the week before the end of a long, tough term. The head told us the school had received a ‘Good’ rating. I wish the Ofsted inspectors had stayed to watch the show. All they needed to do was watch the pupils’ faces as they interacted with the staff. All they needed to do was to witness the care, attention, patience, encouragement, and love on that stage and in that room. Their highest grades aren’t good enough for this.
Oustanding. Bloody well outstanding.
Video is The Beach Boys - Surfin' USA. You are just going to have to indulge me. As you can see, they found her fetching pink and yellow outfit in time for Friday's matinee.
I’m sitting at my computer screen looking at a school uniform page and staring at my old school tie. And there is a distinct possibility that I’ll be ordering one for my daughter.
She goes to a special school which is based on two different sites, half a mile apart. They used to be separate schools but were merged a couple of years ago and now operate, under one name, as a primary and secondary site. The school also has a couple of satellite classes at the local comprehensive, next door to its secondary site. And this week an interesting idea has been raised. My daughter might be heading to the comp.
This came as something of a shock, and my initial reaction was negative. For the past few years we’ve been convinced that a special school is the right place for our girl to be.
These are our reasons:
She thrives in a special school environment is because of the small class sizes and individually-tailored teaching and learning methods
She can’t keep up with the speed, pace and nuances of social interaction, so the mainstream environment could overwhelm her
She needs constant supervision at lunch and breaktimes to make sure she doesn’t eat anything that is not on her carefully controlled diet
She is under that vulnerable category of “otherness”, which could make her an ideal candidate for bullying. And she’s not even ginger.
So, I’ve been for a recce at the mainstream comp, walking past the Sixth Form Common Room where we used to plan all sorts of escapades, and catching a glimpse of the running track where I once took a pig on a sponsored run.* (*long story, never mind). The satellite classes are essentially in a separate unit, although they are contained in the main school building. It’s a micro-school within a massive school. To all intents and purposes, it’s still a special school - it just happens to be located somewhere else.
And after conversations with the teachers and teaching assistants who know my daughter well, and some sleepless nights (well just look at the time I’m posting this stream of consciousness) I’ve come to the following conclusions:
The class size in the special unit at the comp will be half as big as at the special school site, and my daughter will learn at her own pace, using teaching methods that suit her
She’ll be protected from the wider mayhem of a mainstream school by full-time supervision from staff
If anyone bullies her, one - or all - of her three cousins who go to the school will beat the shit out of them.
I do know three people who independently won around £100,000 each from the National Lottery, the bastards. But me? I don’t normally get a sniff of as much as a box of choccies in a raffle.
Yesterday, this fact changed. I did win something. Something quite special.
A week or two ago, I filled in a letter that my daughter brought home in her school book bag, then promptly forgot about it.
Yesterday, someone from the school rang me, with that obligatory opening sentence: “It’s nothing to worry about...”, always uttered early on in the conversation so you don’t think your child is a) mortally wounded or b) has burnt the school down.
It turned out that the slip I’d returned, entering a prize draw, had won me and my daughter a day out that I have a feeling we’ll never forget. Two tickets to watch the athletics at the London 2012 Paralympic Games in September. Oh, and two travelcards, too. Apparently, special schools across the country have been allocated lucky draw tickets to the Paralympics, and we had the luck of this particular draw.
It was only a few days ago that I was writing about my girl’s Olympian efforts at her special school’s sports day. Now she’s going to get to see some Olympic athletes in action. And she’ll know that all of them have some form of disability. A bit like her. This makes me want to hug Sebastian Coe, and believe me, that’s a sentence I never thought I’d utter.
Of course, my name-drawn-out-of-a-hat triumph deserves an apposite song. I've picked Muse’s offical London 2012 song - Survival. We are all going to be sick of this, I know. But for now, it fits my surreal and overblown joy. And, when it gets going, it's properly bonkers.
She glanced up from her position and waved, shyly. Her brother was hopping up and down with excitement by the edge of the track.
“RUN FAST, JO-JO, RUN FAST!” he yelled, as the starter’s gun popped. At least that’s what he tried to say, but he has difficulty with the letter ‘f’, so what the other parents may have thought he was yelling was: “RUN ARSED, JO-JO, RUN ARSED!”
To be fair, her running was a little half-arsed. My daughter has never been quick - the poor muscle-tone from Prader-Willi Syndrome has always ensured this - but she sometimes used to break into a little trot. I’m not sure what’s planted the idea in her head that she shouldn’t go above walking pace, but that’s her current thinking. Perhaps she’s watched a clip from the film Speed and thinks she might explode if she goes over one mile per hour.
It didn’t matter. She was quite happy to partake in the obstacle course, stepping through a hoop, and carrying a ball along in a plastic scoop. She was just going to take her sweet time during the ‘sprinting’ bits in between. And that was perfectly OK.
This was School Sports Day at my daughter’s special school. A slice of luck meant it didn’t rain. Fortuitous timing meant my husband wasn’t on shift, and Nanna & Grandad could come and watch as well, as the date didn’t clash with one of their jaunts with the appallingly-named Probus Club* (*This is not a Prostate Examination Appeciation Society, although it sounds like one. Apparently, it’s something to do with retired PROfessionals and BUSiness people. I’m guessing none of them worked in brand management).
So my daughter had her little team of supporters. We cheered as she ambled up the course, finishing a bit behind her speedier classmates. Then we followed her round the field as she took part in a bit of mini-golf, a not very long-jump, and some rather excellently-executed beanbag throwing.
Some of her schoolmates were being pushed around the field in wheelchairs. Some of the more physically able, bigger lads were somersaulting onto crash mats after bouncing off a trampoline launching pad. The staff were getting stuck in, demonstrating, encouraging, and retrieving wayward footballs.
My girl was in the thick of it, smiling, and joining in. At the end of it she clutched her medal proudly.
She’s my Olympian.
No video for this, but it's a cracking track. It makes me want to go running up some steps like Rocky Balboa, shaking my ass as I go. Although if I ran up some steps like Rocky did, my ass and the rest of me would probably never stop shaking: Big Boss Man - Triumph Of The Olympian.
The Spongebob diary is a source of great happiness to me.
It’s a notebook (which my daughter decorated herself with a drawing she did of Spongebob Squarepants). It’s filled in every day by her teachers or teaching assistants, who use it to let me know what she’s been up to, tell me about things she’s enjoyed, things she’s struggled with, and any problems that have arisen. They also use it to inform me of any activities coming up which involve food, so I know what she’ll be having and can adjust her snacks accordingly, or provide a low-fat alternative if needed. I reply, and it works well as a quick, easy channel of communication between us.
But it’s the incidental things I like the best.
Here’s a selection (Nanna and Grandad feature quite heavily):
“We were talking about names today, and she said ‘When Nanny is calm, she calls Grandad Mike, but when she’s angry she calls him Michael and he goes in the garden.’”
“We have had strict orders from her to write in her book that she would love a foot spa for her birthday.”(!)
“We are encouraging her to choose something else other than Hello Kitty, which did not impress her much.”
“She was very talkative today and told us some more amusing stories about Grandad falling asleep and spilling coffee on Nanna’s new carpet.”
“We looked at products that change today, and had a bit of messy time with shaving gel. She told us: “You’ll be in trouble with my mum because she’s just washed my jumper.’”
They’re just little snippets. But what I like about them is that I can hear my daughter’s voice. When her teachers describe her day and how she’s reacted to certain things I recognise her personality and her behaviour. She’s being herself; she’s acting in the same way at school as she does at home. I find this hugely comforting. And I’m confident the staff at her school ‘get’ her. They seem to know what makes her tick, which goes a long way towards making things tick along more smoothly.
It's not all sweetness and light. But there’s a phrase that - thankfully - is common to the vast majority of entries: "She had a good day today".It’s a simple sentence. But it’s a damn fine one.
“Who’s Sarah?” I asked my daughter, only half-listening as I cleaned up the kitchen after tea.
“Sarah. She was a girl I had to read to.”
I could see this was going to go in ever decreasing circles if I didn’t focus a little harder. I put down the dishcloth.
“OK. Is she another pupil?” I asked. Direct questions always work best.
“Yes. She’s in Pink Class.”
“How old is she?”
“She’s seven, Mum. I read to her.”
I ignored the repetition and tried to get her to elaborate.
“Why were you reading to her?”
Finally an answer. “The teacher asked me and the other good readers to read books to the children who can’t read.”
It’s only a few years since my daughter regularly came home in tears from mainstream school, because her classmates were leaping up through the reading levels while she lagged behind. It was heartbreaking to see, because she loves books and reading is one of her strengths. She might not be as proficient as the average 13-year-old, but for a girl with a learning disability, she’s not half bad.
Now, at her special school, things are different. Now she’s flying high.
The song is The King Of Rome, performed by The Unthanks and The Brighouse & Rastrick Band. It’s ostensibly about a pigeon. But it’s about more than that, really.
My daughter took part in her special school's Christmas show yesterday.
If I had to pick a phrase to describe the performance, I think ‘joyous mayhem’ would just about sum it up.
The cast was a motley, gorgeous bunch of children, from primary school aged poppets to hulking great teenagers.
They clutched their scripts, lost their place, declaimed their lines to the furniture instead of eachother, got tangled up in microphone wires, forgot their cues, and wandered off and on randomly.
They were brilliant.
Two of the teachers were on the stage with them, cajoling, reminding, helping, conducting, and just about keeping the lid on things.
My daughter was right in the thick of it. After years at mainstream school of being Angel No. 14, or Camel No. 12, she had a starring role as Cinderella.
The girl that just used to stare at her feet throughout nativity plays was front and centre for the first time.
I wondered whether she’d freeze. Lose her confidence. Clam up.
She didn’t. She looked out shyly from beneath her fringe, pottered about at her own speed, adjusted the microphone each time before she spoke, and read out her lines. With some real oomph.
She was given a bunch of flowers at the end. She clutched them to her chest in the car on the way home, repeating over and over that she wasn’t tired at all.
We bundled her into bed and she was out like a light.
