School

I've read many posts from adopters who have constant struggles with their child's school appearing to have no understanding of adoption and the issues adoption can present in a child.

Thankfully, so far, Missy's school have been great.

We had our bi-annual PEP meeting recently where Missy's social worker, our social worker, me and Daddy, her teacher and the advisory teacher from the LA attended.  The headmaster is also the person in the school responsible for LAC so he attended too.  I'm glad he did as he's quite a cool dude, very willing to help where he can.

The report back from the teacher was that Missy is doing fine in school, is happy and quiet.  I pointed out that "happy and quiet" could probably be read as "compliant" as Missy hates the thought of her teacher being angry with her and is desperate to please.  We explained the anger Missy was exhibiting recently and how the girl they know at school is very different from at-home Missy.  However, because she is doing ok academically, the general concensus is that, as far as school is concerned, there is nothing for us to worry too much about.  And actually Daddy and I agreed with that.  Yes, we have to keep an eye on how 'compliant' she is, and it's obvious that she's holding a lot of emotions in at school, but on the whole we are happy.  Her workbooks look great, her reading and writing has come on leaps and bounds and she has lots of friends.  Her teacher is very happy to work with us and the headmaster suggested a couple of things to which Missy's Pupil Premium could be applied, such as emotion cards.  They realise that Missy struggles with the social side of things and have suggested a few things they can do to help her.

All that said, I still attended a workshop arranged by our LA on how to support adopted children in school. The day was led by an educational psychologist who certainly knew her stuff and definitely came across as understanding where parents are coming from.  We all shared why we were there and it was awful to hear of some parents' school stories: condescending headteachers, children being punished for their behaviour, parents being blamed by the teachers for their lack of parenting.  Whilst we have no issues with Missy at school at the moment, we know it could change, particularly when she goes to secondary school, so it was good to get tips and advice so we can be prepared.  Even though Missy is in Year 1, many of the parents said it definitely wasn't too early to start checking out the local secondary schools.

Straight after the workshop, I met up with the Play Therapist who offered to spend some time with us talking about Missy's current anger.  I explained the strategies Daddy and I were using and I admitted our patience was being sorely tested, and it was good to hear that she felt we were doing everything right (even if at times it feels like we aren't).  She gave us some other techniques to use and we'll catch up with her again in a few months.

In other news, hurrah for Kian being crowned King of the Jungle.  I've only just cottoned on to Kian - even my Mum was a Westlife fan years ago!