Listening to: Adam Lambert, streaming his album "For Your Entertainment". Love it.
The kids have started school and while it's more of the same thing for my son, for my daughter, things have changed rather a lot.
Firstly, we have to get up at 6. It's still dark and feels like the middle of the night. She hates it and while she was excited about it last week, is now dreading the mornings. She says each day is very long, meaning they go through a lot of work each lesson. And then there's the homework. Again, lots of it. The sheer quantity of work they're expected to get through makes the mind spin and on top of this they start 'tuition' this week. This 'service' is a paid extra supplied by the school to improve the children's English and Malay.
Students are expected to attend 2 afternoons per week (after they've completed their morning school session) for 2 hours and then for 4 hours on a Saturday morning. That boils down to having to attend school 6 days a week and for two of those days, attendence is 10 hours. I knew this was coming and didn't like it then and I don't like it now. The children can be exempted under special circumstances, so off I trotted to see my mate, the Guru Besar (principal). Her and I have a mutual respect for each other and as such, getting daughter exempted from the madness of having to attend tuition was easy.
At the same time, I was helping a parent explain to Guru Besar that her son is not autistic and won't be diagnosed as such. The parent is Hao Wei's mum and she'd ask me to speak iwht the principal about her son - be a mediary, so to speak. She's beside herself about what is going to happen to her son. He started in Standard 1 this week, as planned, but the teacher has promptly told her that his behaviour is not up to par - apparently he keeps wanting to leave and you know, I don't blame him. He is one child in 30 and doesn't have the skills to keep up with what the teacher is saying. The teacher meanwhile is wondering how she can pay attention to one child and leave the other 29 to their own devices. She doesn't have the skills and neither does he. There are no teacher assistants here and no outreach services. So the principal has recommended that he be placed in their special education class with some other children. Kudos to this school for being as progressive and actually having a class that caters for those that can't attend mainstream school. Personally, I think it's in his best interests to attend - he will get the attention he needs, the curriculum will be modified to suit his needs and he won't be left out. His mother is still worried though and only really let her concern be known as we were leaving. She said, "I worry because he with other autistic and then he will be autistic. I don't want." I had to tell her then "if he's not autistic, he can't become autistic. You can't catch autism." She looked at me first, like she didn't believe me and so I said it again, trying to reassure her. Even if he copies the behaviour, which he may well do, that doesn't make him autistic. I hope she believes me because she continues to send him to the mainstream class, he will fail, because the system here will fail him, not because he can't learn.
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Oh yes, I have new glasses. They are very shiny - a subtle pink shiny, in fact. My others broke on the plane after I sent my daughter to look for them after they'd dropped to the floor. "Oh, here they are mummy... (crack) uh oh". I wore my old silvery ones from six years back while I was home and now I have these lovely things, with those arm spring things so they stay on my face. Handy when you're all hot and sweaty. All for AUD $100 (RM 299). Good. :)
Keep smiling.
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