What do parents worry about in SEND education?

In SEND education teachers cannot work in a bubble (please excuse the terminology this was written pre COVID!). We must embrace the views of the students, parents, and carers in order to gain as much insight into the lives of our students as possible. Parents and schools must work in partnership. As a parent myself, I worry about my children when they are at school. So I asked the following question:

“What, as parents you are most afraid of at school for your child? I have often had discussions about the care side, in fact this is the conversation that comes before the academic side. What do you worry about?”
Joe White

Responses by Parents

There was a clear mix between the social and academic aspects of education but with a heavy emphasis on social interactions and how children would cope with interactions between peers and with teachers.

Bullying. While our kids are “different” they don’t always look it. Other kids can be so mean and it breaks my heart.

I worry that he isn’t making or keeping friends

I worry about bullies – both adults and children!

I worry about elopement. He runs out of the classroom when it gets overwhelming. He’s gotten out of the school as well. My worst fear is that he makes it to the road.

I worry first and foremost that he gets picked on at school or that he has no friends. I do worry about the schoolwork part but I can help him work through that. Which believe me i do every single day.

I worry about toxic people (“Toxic relationships are ones in which someone’s own negative behavior can cause emotional damage or contaminate the way a child sees himself or herself.”) My son’s 1st teacher damaged him a lot -lost his confidence, was sad all the time. Not his happy goofy self at all. Luckily his next teacher made it her goal to get him back, and she did.

School are fabulous truly they are. But it only takes one boy to be nasty and all the therapy and work he has put in over the last 8 years to be taken away. My son is very open with me so i am very lucky in that sense. Just hopefully I would find out sooner rather then later if anything ever happened.

What parents worry about SEND Autism.jpg

I worry I will fail advocating for him at the school and he won’t have proper care or academics.

He just never seems to feel any responsibility for remembering to do things or completing things. It’s like he wants to stay a little kid forever so nothing will be expected of him. He’s not a little kid

Bullying and rejection by far before academics!

I wonder how his day is really going at school. I worry he might get depressed in the near future because he hates being there; he tells me that often.

My son says he hates school too and it really worries me. He doesn’t know how to make friends and prefers to be alone.

I worry about him having friends and getting teased. I’m a second grade teacher, so I also worry about the academic side of things. He can read at a 3rd/4th grade level, but he can’t write to pass the test. He hates writing. We are working on it.

I worry about his completion of assignments and tasks as they continue to get harder. It’s easy in second grade, but his handwriting is awful and he tires easily. Doing longer assignments are difficult, he gets frustrated and fatigued. How will he do in middle school?