I will start with this: mainstream education has failed us.
That grand experiment in inclusivity is indeed little more than scientific hypothesis, suggesting that if we mix the two worlds together, each shall benefit from the other. But sometimes the scales tip deeply in the wrong direction. Sometimes mainstream benefits, yet it is the child actually fanning the flames of understanding who gets left behind.
Not for much longer. It's time to go.
Our mainstream primary school has been the most caring, beautiful place on earth for nurturing an inclusive approach. My son, this disabled child who learns more slowly, whose behaviours go well against the grain and whose words are currently best spoken with two palms and ten fingers - this child is no longer learning anything at school.
How hard is that to comprehend, let alone type?
It is important for you reading this to understand that this is not his failure.
Read that again, I'll wait.
This failure to deliver an effective mainstream education to my son is down to systems which don't fund the appropriate support, the right training, the correct staff, to mingle in with the mainstream - without teachers and LSAs frantically doggy paddling to stay afloat and absorb specialist techniques and knowledge on the fly. That's not to say they didn't throw everything they had at it to support him. My heavens, did they. My heart is so full and I will love them all completely, until my last breath.
But this remains a desperately flawed system which tries to jam square pegs into round holes, all with one eye shut, to force fit everyone into a single, inflexible, one-size-fits-all curriculum. It's tragic on every level, really.
It is down to a society infected with ableist beliefs, one which places far too much emphasis on pace and power and money and barely any on empathy and compassion and patience.
This is not his failure. WE are the disappointed party.
The fact remains that we are ecstatic for the opportunity to enter a world of education which actually sees him properly. One which understands where he has come from and where he will go, and at what pace he'll get there. His. Not some generic book of standard pace, but HIS.
We're about to join the costlier of the educative roads. That which people love to call 'special' and mock and pity and feel shame towards, and I would beg to differ but I don't beg.
It's not special. It's appropriate.
(Best read that twice, too.)
Once again, I sit in stunned silence wondering how we are so fortunate to have been told at such pace, 'yes, we agree he needs more structured and tailored education, so here - there's a place for you at a specialist school...
'THIS autumn term.'
We're visiting a potential school on Monday. The proposed start date is not yet confirmed but fits into 'this autumn term'. Guess what folks, it's autumn and we're four school days away from half term.
This pace is so blisteringly unfamiliar I cannot stop crying from the anxiety of it all. Because, quite simply, we don't do fast here. Ever. With regard to anything.
Still, the delight which I find in not having to draw a sword and go to battle, in being heard, in the fact that my son is being SEEN. Quite probably a few years too late, but our previous attempt at progress was mashed to a pulp in March 2020 just like everything else.
Pace now, is welcome - albeit terrifying.
The lack of control over such an important situation is not only awful but it requires me to free my caged and ravaged heart and dole out great swodges of trust to absolute strangers. This is something I don't do well. I've only ever done it during those epic long trail races, with likeminded people looking after me, seeing me on through the dark night, their own beacon of light joining mine to help guide the way.
Ah and there we have that Venn. Two lights shine brighter than one. Trust is earned but sometimes trust must be gulped down and inhaled and you take that backwards fall or that leap over the edge, expecting the cushion, expecting the arms, expecting the destination to comfort and caress and buy you a coffee or a pint, depending on the time of day.
But really - how do you like that? Another DNF. We made it to year 5, just. Time to put it down. On our terms. Feels familiar.
That mainstream journey hasn't worked out because of those very harsh and scratchy words 'severe learning disability' - only harsh and scratchy because, truth be told, like everyone else I was an ableist dick in my life before Rukai. And he's nearly 10 and I'm still working on it - working hard.
How that shreds my heart. He's my SON for fuck's sake.
But my God in the great beyond, I feel exactly like I did on hearing his diagnosis. But why? This is not his failure. This is not a failure at all. We've decided to move on because they no longer know how to teach him anything.
Fact.
This. Is. Not. His. Failure. That repetition more for me than you, but do register it. I'm livid that I'm so stressed out about this. It's a lonely old life, mine.
And the pace, that blistering pace, here we'll guide you, go here, do this, go there, see them...
I cannot trust anyone enough to feel comfortable with this. But I know that mainstream has failed to deliver and this is what my son needs.
Special school? No, and that's the rub.
SPECIALIST provision.
See the difference? Words matter so much. That ableism boils beneath most people's skin. It's woven into our sinew. It's not the potential new school and it's students which are special. The people who do the educating and their techniques are beyond the ordinary levels of expertise. What is a specialist after all? A subject matter expert.
Huge knowledge. The right kind of expert.
And I'll wait for you to digest that, too.
I detest my historic thinking, and see it on the faces of those parents during the school run I will probably delight in abandoning, looking at us with a head tilt and an awww, or with abject horror as if we are foaming at the mouth, encased in a neon green fog with horns growing out our heads. Climbing up our heels as we shuffle towards the gate, impatient, churning, palpable frustration just oozing off so many of the folks behind us.
Of these all, so few come up and say good morning. The ones who do truly rock our world. The child having a lovely chat with Rukai - in Makaton - yesterday was enough for me to cling to, for what will soon be forever.
Ah yes and there are them tears. Rolling in the deep, still a fire starting in my heart. I'll need a bit of salt later - been some few days around here, what with all this emotion.
But alas, we were part of that world once. For five and a bit years, we were there. We did not finish - they couldn't do enough for him.
This is not his failure.
It's time to go - so we're going.
Remember him.
Remember what you learned.
Remember what he taught you.
Remember how he shines.
Remember him.
