School Readiness – Our Perception

Hi All,

this is a school hunting season (Jan to May). The period where you get active participation from every silent WhatsApp member, Facebook member to post queries about list of schools, reviews, fees etc. For a parent with special needs child, this is a golden period for them, as they need to act fast to get their kids admitted in the very few schools that allows kids with special needs else the slots get filled in fast. More than the usual, upcoming academic year (2022 to 2023) is very challenging for any special needs child, as they have not left the house for close to 2 years or had minimal exposure to the outside world. In most cases they are pampered by the parents. Now people start take offensive of the word pamper here, not referring to offering love and being kind to them, I am referring to making them lazy, not formulating a routine, not familiarizing them in following commands, no training on self care, granting every wish of the child etc.….This might have made our life easier during the lockdown, but the real side effect can be felt when we take the child to assessment or screening or interview to these schools and when the child starts going to school. We know about our child well, but the way he expresses himself during the assessment period will determine whether he would get admitted or not, even though he may not express himself like that all the time. But it gives an impression to the admission staff that more work may be required to cater to the child’s needs, which may either result in denying an admission or getting admitted with lot of disclaimers and hefty fees for the additional care. Also there is no guarantee that in spite of all this, your child will be able to complete an academic year. The teachers will start to pin point every mistake the child does on the daily basis to the parent, projecting that either the child is not capable of handling the commitments expected by school or parents doesn’t know how to parent the child, instead of working with the parents to resolve those issues by formulating strategies. This is how most of the schools are at present and going to be as well, with very few exceptions.

The typical worries of the special needs parents when they are searching for school are:
1) Is it an Inclusive School
2) Do they have specialized staff to take care of my Child
3) Are there caretakers to assist the child during toileting and eating
4) Will my child be protected from other children or Will my child be monitored so he does not harm other children around him
5) The unusual acts which he does is due to his underlying diagnosis, so will the teacher understand that the child does not mean what he says/acts out.
6) Will the teacher focus on my child or ignore him or be rude to him
7) Will they allow or offer a shadow teacher to help the child in the classroom.
8) Is there a behavior, speech and occupational therapist who can review his progress and contribute to his development in the school
9) Will there be regular feedback from the school to parents
10) What would be the fees and additional costs in the school
11) Will IB, ICSE, State board, CBSE, Montessori, NIOS curriculum benefit my child
12) Will Inclusive, Mainstream, Special school is the right fit for my child
13) Can i homeschool my child, does it work
14) Will he be allowed to carry any fidgeting toys with him that can calm him.
and many more ….
All the above are genuine queries but this post is not to answer the above, this post focus on making the child ready for the school before we actually start searching for one, to avoid issues that are most likely to happen. This is in our hands and doable.
It is my view that most Schools will only do what is bare minimum from their end to any children, so the onus is on us(as parents) to prepare the child for the school mentally, physically and emotionally. If we are sending our child to school who has not been trained on school readiness, expecting that school to fix him, as you are paying them the money, it is guaranteed that schooling for that year is going to be extremely painful and challenging both for the child and parent. As a parent if you have missed out on training your child for the school during lockdown and pandemic, you still have time … It is MAR now, most schools start only by June. You still have 3 full months to train your child on aspects which you are worrying a lot now. Sharing few aspects where training at home has been helpful for our child when he began schooling.

If you make an effort to train your child on the below and observe the challenges faced by the child, work on each of those challenges and see the progress over weeks, that will actually help you in determining the ideal the curriculum and the mode of school. Most parents choose a school and expect the child to adjust to it, whereas it should be the other way around. Know your child first, check for his current strengths and weaknesses and opt for a school that is a right fit for him now and not when he will be 18 years old.

The List is inclusive, which means that there are more things to be added considering every child is different and the comfort zone, anxiety, triggers are different for each one of them, below is what we tried with our child:

1) Sleep Pattern

As simple as it sounds, it is the most crucial factor for kids and even for teaching/non teaching staff when they have school next day. A Better sleep does so much to growth hormones, circadian rhythm, recharges body, relaxes the brain etc. The side effects of not having enough sleep will show up in everything that we do in the following day.
Typically most schools in the city start by 8 am to 8:30 am. Lets say 8 am as a start time, what it means is that you have to drop off off the kids at school at least 5-10 mins before 8 am, so the kid has to start from home before that. If you are living within 5-8 kms radius of the school, it will take from 20-30 minutes to reach school from home, which can go up on days of traffic. So the child has to start from home by 7:30 am at least. If you are a parent dependent on Ola/ Uber cabs/autos, then factor in the buffer time for cancellation at last minute as well. Like that if you keeping working backwards you will get the below schedule roughly, the sequence of the tasks varies between each household :

6:30 am = Wake up
6:40 am = Empty Bowel
6:45 am = Brush Teeth, Take bath
7:00 am = Eat Breakfast
7:15 am = Wear School Uniform or School Dress, Comb Hair
7:25 am = Wear socks, shoes . Ready with School Bag and Lunch Bag
7:30 am = Leave Home
7:55 am = Arrive at School
8.00 am = School Time

The point here is that if the child has to wake up at 6:30 am and he needs to sleep 9 hours the previous night, it means that he has to go to bed by 9:30 pm. If a child has to sleep by 9:30 pm, then the chid should not have afternoon naps, should complete dinner by 8 pm, should not involve in anything that make them excited or energized after 8 pm. This routine poses challeges to an hyperactive child, who normally sleeps past midnight and at times wakes up before sunrise. With online classes there was a flexibility, were most kids just sat in front of the laptop/tab/phone without even brushing their teeth, with actual schools the routine has to be established and not changed frequently. We have to train our child to a school like routine for few days to understand the challenges the child would face. Our son now sleeps at 9:30 pm in the night during weekdays, we offer relaxation to this schedule on weekends or during holidays. We began doing this few days before his first day of school.

2) Toileting

I see this to be a challenging area for many reasons. Foremost is the body not alerting the brain that it is time to go to toilet, as a result the child does not get an urge in a timely manner, in most cases it becomes too late i.e. Interoception Sensory issue. In some cases, child will go to toilet by himself without asking, in some cases child will go to toilet only when prompted. There are scenarios where child will not enter the bathroom by himself alone, he needs an adult to be accompanied. Some does not like new bathrooms, they prefer to use only home/familiar bathrooms etc. We have to prepare the child for this, as the caretakes are not available for all grades, you can expect till Grade 1 to 3 at the maximum, beyond that the child is expected to handle his needs by himself. Also use a common and understandable terminologies to express that he has to go toilet, at home you can call it as loo, ucha, etc.. But when the child is at school he has to use words that everyone understands. Our son came and told us that he went Urine after 2 days of school, which we never taught him at home. Glad that he understood what it meant. We trained him on Indian Toilet and Western Toilet. We have trained him on washing himself after going motion as well.
Ensure the toilets at schools are at comfortable height for the child, it a western toilet is too high for the child, his legs will not touch the floor causing gravitational insecurity
Also for the initial days or weeks, there is no harm in using diaper, we have put diaper on his first day at school in Grade 2, as we know there is so much to process on that day for him, we don’t want this to cause additional burden which is very much preventable. After 2 days, we stopped using it. He is now used to asking for Urine break during the class. Establish a habit of asking for toilet, instead of going to the bathroom as and when he feels like. If you anticipate that there could be toilet related accidents at school, it is safe to keep an additional set of dress, fresh diaper, wipes, toilet paper/roll, carry bag or plastic cover to keep the old clothes.

3) School Duration and Emotional capability

During the lockdown, most children has developed an emotional dependency on the parents, where they are used to seeing them all the time or touch, hug, express physical affection towards them. The period of time they have spent outside the home without the presence of parents/close relatives is almost NIL for many children. Child has to be mentally prepared to accept that he will be taken care by adults other than their parents like teachers, caregivers, non teaching staff etc. Also train the child for this by leaving him in relatives or friends place for 30 minutes or more and pick him up later. Also try sending the child to dance classes, music classes, martial arts classes, singing classes, drawing/coloring classes, phonics classes etc., just to train him in advance and see how long he is capable of handling that separation anxiety. We have prepared a chart with the school time table and kept it in his school bag, so that he knows how many classes are there and how many are still pending etc., for him to be mentally prepared.
We have to try our best to make the first impressions good, else they will form a fear, anxiety and associate it with the circumstances/place, and will ignore it with tantrums or possibly a meltdown.

4) Sitting Tolerance

This is an area where most of the hyperactive kids struggle with. It is not that they cannot sit idle, they can sit in one place if the class is interesting for them, else it is hard for them to be at one place during a class which is boring for them and not in general. If they can use any fidgeting tools that can help them to sit, speak with school to have that in place for the child. If not advice child to take a walk around the class during the breaks. Children need movement breaks at regular intervals. We have to train our child at home with activities that involves sitting tolerance, and also use chair and desk like model at home during practice as no schools are allowing children to sit at floor these days.

5) To Do /Not to DO

It is important to predict the possible scenarios that are expected to happen and train the child accordingly in the event of such occurrence, like:
a) Be seated at your Desk all the time (Instead of do not stand on your desk, do not sleep on your desk)
b) Listen to what teacher says (Listening refers to open ears, closed mouth, focused eyes etc..).
c) Avoid/restrict stimming habits such as self talking / Hand flapping etc.
d) Follow the teachers commands
e) Ability to sit quiet when the class is not interesting
f) Do not touch other children. Only offer high five or shake hands.
g) Use only his items and do not ask for others pencils, erasers, sharpeners etc.…
h) Not to use disrespectful words.
i) Speak in low pitch, instead of shouting tone. This needs training.
j) Not to scribble on the school table, note book covers, provide him a rough note book to do that.

6) Motivation to Go to school

If the child is already attending the online class and now he is going to offline classes at school for the first time, right motivation is required so that he can set clear expectations. The hype and exaggeration is very essential, so he is not threatned by the surroundings.
Tell him that he is going to meet all of his friends/classmates in person who he saw only in laptop till date. Also the teachers will put stars in their hand for good work, you will have your own desk and chair for writing and keeping books, If you are very good in school teachers will like you and appreciate you by hugging, clapping or playing with you etc…You will have a big playground in school to play, mom will pack you yummy snacks and lunch. You will get a new school bag, lunch bag and water bottle with your favorite cartoon characters or super heros etc.
Train the child with the names of the teacher, his class mates, it helps the child to interact with them.
Also generalize that going to school is someting we also did during our childhood days, show pictures of us in school uniform etc.

7) Handling the School Bag

A child with low muscle tone will definitely struggle in this aspect. This is something we never really trained our son, faced few difficulties and made modifications accordingly. Now if your child is in kindergarten then the school duration shall be around 3 hours, which means there is no meal break, child will only have a snack break. If your child is studying Grade 1 or higher then school duration will be 6 hours or more, where a meal break will be there. what it means is that on top of school bag the child should carry a lunch bag with water bottle in it.
It is important we should train our child on the usage of school bag and lunch bag like:
a) What color school bag belongs to our child. If you are using a school bag given by school, then everyone carry’s the same, so place a sticker or use marker to write the name of the child in the bag. We wrote his name in permanent marker on the bag and also our phone numbers in it.
b) what are items that are kept inside the bag, like classwork, rough book, pencil box, pencils, eraser, sharpener, scale etc.. and where it is kept like which pouch or which partition has which items in the bag. We in fact labelled every items that is kept inside his bag with his name.
c) If the bag is of backpack type then train the child wear it at home and practice walking, climbing stairs up and down. If this is of Trolley type, then train him to lift it using his dominant hand.
d) Teach the child about taking a book from the bag and keep it back inside. We have labelled all his notebooks and text books with the subject name and also like class book, home work, rough book etc..
e) We realized this later, where our son was able to take his book and write stuff, but he didn’t really care which is front and back side of the book, so one day he started writing from front, another day it was from back. So we again has to label the book, that this is front side and always start from this side and not from the back.
f) Also when our son picked up any page of his choice when it comes to writing and not the immediate unused page. i.e. if the first two pages are already used, he should typically start writing from page 3, but he has began writing from page 20. He started writing on the page which he saw that was unused, so we trained him on that.
g) We kept spare pencils in his pencils box which are sharpened at home, he is also trained on sharpening the pencil by himself. It is important that he carries the sharpener that works better for his hands. Do not buy all new stuffs for first day of school, the child needs to have items that he is familiar and comfortable with.
h) He should be able to open the pencil box, take pencils out, close the pencil box, keep it inside the bag etc..

8) Eating Lunch / Snacks

Always provide a separate bag for lunch and not sure the same backpack where the books are present, so in case of any spillage due to not closing the lids of water bottle or lunch box, the books will not be impacted. Use containers/lunch boxes that the child can open by himself without any assistance, train the child on opening the lunch box at home with food inside. Avoid packing sticky, semi solid foods on initial days, let it be his favorites for first few days. Make him eat snacks at home using the lunch box, where he has to open it by himself, eat and close it. Also train him on eating food using spoons / forks, as most schools does not have a separate dining area, the children eat at the desk itself, so eating using hands will require washing where the child has to walk with unclean hands from classroom to washroom without touching others with that hand. Also provide a napkin which can be spread on the desk before placing the lunch box on it, train the child how to use it and fold it back. Have few tissue papers stuck inside the lunch bag, just in case. Avoid providing sweets, cakes, chocolates, cookies, fancy biscuits, etc.. as lunch which shall trigger other child to ask for the same, sharing becomes an challenging aspect for many kids, so it will not go down well.
Also for lunch bag, it is important that you use different containers for snacks and lunch. We labelled the boxes as well, also arranged in a fashion that he will get his hands on snacks box first which is the first break he will get as per schedule.
Keep water bottle which he is used to drink from at home, if you are buying new one, train him for few days in advance like how to open, how to close, how much drink etc. It doesn’t matter that it is sipper type or swallowing type, it has to be the one which the child is most comfortable with.

9) Wearing Shoes, Socks or any footwear

Almost every building that is constructed in last 5-10 years have made the flooring to be in tiles/granite/marble, which are extremely smooth and slippery to walk, it you do not have a proper footwear. Hence it is important that the child wears footwear with proper grip, to enable walking or running at the school premises or on the ground to prevent any accidents.
Most children were never used to wearing socks and shoes, it is challenging to expect them to wear it all of a sudden and that too for an extended period of time.
a) Make sure you buy the size of shoe which the child is comfortable with
b) Gone are the days where schools shoes only came with laces, we have all school shoes now a days with Velcro strap as well. We used Velcro strap, as we did not train him on tying the laces. But do train him on how to remove the Velcro strap to remove or wear the shoes by himself.
c) Socks is also critical, buy standard colors like white or black and nothing fancy.
d) Teach the child about impressions, when you wear a new socks for the first time for a longer duration, the elastic end will form an impression on the skin, which returns back to normal in few minutes once the socks is removed. Our son did not like the impressions the sock made in his leg, he thought he got hurt by the socks.
e) If for any reason the child is not going to wear shoes, ensure that he wears a slipper which has a better grip. Avoid crocs or floaters which requires hand involvement is keeping the strap in place. Use simple Flip Flop slippers or Sandals which is easy to remove and wear without the need to bend down each time.

10) Following Commands / Active Listening

Our children listen and respond well when given personal undivided attention to them, without any distractions. But such a scenario will not happen at the school. The teacher is not going to call out each kids name to open the book, etc., the instructions are common to all, hence the child has to treat that the instruction applies to him as well and follow it. To do that, he has to be listening what happens at the class all the time.
a) Ability to respond or action based on common instruction given to the classroom
b) Ability to take the book mentioned by teacher (Subject names, volumes, etc)
c) Ability to turn the page numbers
e) Ability to identify and count paragraphs
f) Ability to count the lines and start from the requested line
g) Ability to understand most used commands like Stand up, Sit down, clap, High Five, Silence, Keep Quiet, raise your hands, hands down, circle correct answer, put tick mark on correct answer etc..
h) Copywriting from the board
i) Writing based on the dictation by teacher

11) Communication

For a child who is verbal, it is important that he speaks English first as it is the only acceptable language for communication in schools all over India, unless it is a government run local schools where the medium of study is the local language of that state. So based on the school the language is determined. But whatever is the language, the child should be able to speak and pronounce the words correctly. Parents should use words at home, which are understandable by others else it is very difficult to understand him without you being present. The ability of sentence formation is still a struggling aspect, but at least we have to train the child to use the keywords or sentences like I need help, I am not well, I am hungry, I am thirsty, I feel sleepy, I finished, etc.…

12) Transitions

All children hate waiting time, as it causes anxiety. The waiting time often happens during transition or the other way around. In a school setting there is going to be different periods where each subject is taught, so for every 30-40 minutes there is a change in the subject, teacher and what is expected from the child. We need to prepare the child for this transition. As mentioned earlier we have provided the time table of the classes for the week to our son, so he can find out what is the next class. Also the school has a practice of ringing a bell after every class finishes, so we told him that if he hears the bell ringing it means that class is over and next classes is going to begin, teacher will come shortly. Also prepare the child for the unexpected, when the classes does not happen as expected. Like cancellation of a class, or change in time table in the last minute for the day.

13) Sensory Overload

School is an extremely crowded environment and noisy environment which is a big NOOOO for children having auditory sensory issue. So take your child to such places where he is desensitized to such noises. Also with respect to crowds, take child to places that are crowded as well.
Children should also be used to the school bell rings. If the child cannot be desensitized, then please avoid dropping the child on time, drop him either 10-15 minutes early or late.
With respect to tactile inputs, few children does not like being touched by others, but in a school environment there will be occasions where the teachers or care takes may hold the child hand, touch their shoulder to make them stand in the line, a PE teacher may touch while teaching a game or exercise, so we need to prepare the child for that mentally and say that they are not causing harm, they are touching only to help you.

14) Ability to meet minimum expectation of the school

I kept this as the last, but honestly speaking this should be the first and foremost point.

a) Be seated at his designated place all the time.
b) Does not make any physical movements that cause disruption the classroom
c) Does not make any noise that cause disruption the classroom
d) Participate in the classroom activities.
e) Ability to wait and take turns
f) Able to read, write,
g) Ability to write sentences on his own
h) Handle pencil
i) Ability to read the question and answer it
j) Ability to Understand what he reads
k) Perform his tasks without prompting or minimal prompting
l) Ability to fix issues which he can, instead of expecting an adult to intervene
m) Communicate his needs in a clear and understandable manner i.e. use words that everyone understands.
n) Write exams by himself
o) Be at good behavior even when there is no immediate reinforcement offered
p) Wearing Mask for longer period of time

Most schools allow the parents to view the premises during weekend, so you can take your child on a weekend and provide the exposure of what is going to happen, train him on how to use the facilities there. If such an arrangement is not available in your school, avoid sending the child to school on day one, you visit the school on day one and take permission from the class teacher to take pictures or video of the school, corridor, classroom, restroom, canteen, playground or take pictures, teach him through that and see if any issues are getting triggered on the child. Social stories also helps.

In short, if your child is not ready or trained for inclusive setup school, do not admit him there and blame the school system/teachers/support staff /caregivers. If you are planning to cut down a big tree, you need to first sharpen the axe. Also keep the goals realistic as on date, and do not expect everything to happen smooth and kid should adjust to everything in a short span of time. Childhood Trauma once caused is extremely hard to recover from. Focus on one challenge at a time, address it. Look for alternate options such as Special School, Montessori schools etc.

If you feel that your child can excel in mainstream school / inclusive setup with little help, then try having like minded parents can join together and have a mock school classes conducted by special educator for the upcoming 2 months for their children with special needs, that will prepare them for school and bring out the challenges, which can be addressed before the first day of actual school.

Regards,
Saranya and Karthikeyan