School Visits

It feels like we have been working towards this since Ethan’s diagnosis, and there was a battle to make our wish a reality, but in a few short weeks Ethan will finally be starting school.

It’s both a very scary and exciting time, partly because we can only hope that we can visually prepare Ethan for this change as we don’t have the luxury of being able to have a conversation with him about it.

Part of this process was to set up some trail days at the school so that we can all meet Ethan’s new class and teachers, our first of these being last week.

So last Thursday both me, Darren and Ethan spent the morning with Ethan’s new class. I was very nervous as any child’s education is one of the most important decisions you can make for them. We had also fought very hard for Ethan’s place at a special school and we can only hope that this is the perfect choice for him.

When Ethan arrived at the school his anxiety’s about other children really kicked in, we also just arrived after their assembly had ended so there was quite a few children about. He clung to us saying ‘no’ at every opportunity. When we were in his class he wouldn’t even take his coat off so we had to ignore him and find ourselves a place to sit to show him that we were staying.

The teachers asked what toys he liked and they found him every flashing, spinning sensory toy they had. Ethan started to show an interest but he still wasn’t sure. They then asked Ethan if he would like to go to the sensory room, he went with Darren and one of the teachers. Thankfully Darren was able to sneak away.

From that point we were redundant he had a new friend in the teacher and was happy to go outside and play with her too. He was spoilt as Ethan clearly indicated he wanted to so to the sensory room after their outside play and he was able to do that again.

We decided to leave before lunch time as we didn’t want to overload our little man, the fantastic thing was he didn’t want to leave right away.

We came away from that morning feeling so relieved knowing that we made the perfect choice for our son. We are now excited about our sons future education.

Ethan also visited the school on Friday without us and he was able to take part in their Red Nose Day activities, he must have had a great time as he even let us put the nose on him when he came home. Ethan has major sensory issues so this was a real surprise for us.