SEND HUGS, Chesham (2026)

05/06/2026

This week, my son has been on his Year 6 residential. He’s had an amazing time and has absolutely smashed it, participating fully in every activity - though he was a bit disappointed that the arrows they shot each other with had foam tips and the rockets they made were powered by air and water and not by rocket fuel!

He was very nervous beforehand - he’s terrified of heights and has never even wanted to climb on playground equipment much. He was particularly worried about the water activities and the climbing.

The reason he was able to go is that his teachers agreed he didn’t have to stay overnight, and we could choose from day to day which activities he would join in with. So I’m staying in a hotel nearby and picking him up each evening.

At the end of the first full day of activities, he was enthusiastic but exhausted. He initially didn’t want to go back the next morning and had a lot of trouble getting up and leaving our room, so we made a little tweak and decided he wouldn’t do the remaining evening sessions.

That was the right decision, and he’s slept like a log each night and gone off happily in the morning.

On Tuesday evening, he was excitedly telling me how much he’d loved the day, and I said, “Should I have let you do the whole thing and stay overnight?”

He replied, “No, it’s because I know I can see you and have all the things I need at night that I can have fun in the day.”

Some schools say the residential is all or nothing and all children have to stay for the whole time if they go at all. I can see why - it is extra work for them to meet me twice a day for the handover, and it could potentially have been unsettling for the other children (though they didn’t see me when I went to pick him up and drop him off). But they’re also not dealing with an overtired, overwhelmed child.

This is one reasonable adjustment which has worked brilliantly for us.

(The photo was taken on our way back to the hotel on Tuesday.)

03/06/2026

I wrote yesterday about a letter from the school of one of my children that had made me cry.

I received another letter later on in the day that made me cry for a different reason.

This one came from the new school that my son will be attending from September. He's currently in Year 6 at a small, nurturing mainstream school (which, incidentally, handled his transition into Year 6 particularly brilliantly), and I had been very worried about his transition to secondary school - it was not an easy transition for my other child.

But this transition will be very different. From September, my son will be at a special school which is set up to support children with his needs.

The school has sent me a detailed letter setting out the full transition plan. It includes information packs for parents, visits by the transition team to children's current schools to find out all about their academic progress, pastoral needs and friendship groups, transition days at the school for the children, an information session for parents, a welcome barbecue before the end of this term, and 1:1 meetings for families to meet staff, discuss their child in more detail and ask any questions they may have.

This is a school that's curious about my child and what he actually needs, and wants to ensure that he is happy and comfortable at his new school, and that's what made me cry - happy tears this time.

I know that what's possible for the small intake that they have at a special school can't be replicated in full for 200-odd students moving to a mainstream secondary school, and I know many mainstream schools do their best.

But if they want more children with SEND to attend mainstream settings, wouldn't it be marvellous if they could at least do this for the children identified by their primary school or parents as needing additional support? Or even just show some curiosity about what might help them to settle into their new school?

The work put in would pay dividends in enabling children to access their new school in September, and be so much more effective than adopting a "fail first" attitude and then addressing poor attendance with punitive measures when it inevitably ensues.

02/06/2026

I mentioned before half term that I had cried when reading a letter from my child's school about their new attendance strategy.

Yesterday, I received confirmation that this was not just because "Mum's very anxious".

I was right to be worried - the school has emailed me to demand that my child's attendance improve in the next ten days.

This is the child whose attendance was 43% last year and is 58% for the year to date.

Instead of celebrating that success, they've started treated late arrivals as unauthorised absences. And now they've sent me this letter. I hope it's been sent by some automated system and that when I get through to a human, they'll continue to support us.

But can we talk about their timing?

They sent the letter the day school started back after half term. That's a day which is very difficult not just for my child, but for huge numbers of children who experience emotionally based school non-attendance (EBSNA). My child did make it into school, but arrived later than usual. The late arrival was coded as unauthorised absence.

I had emailed the school in the morning to explain that I was unavoidably going to be away from home all week and that my husband would do his best to support our child's attendance, but we could not predict what effect my absence might have. My husband has taken the week off work to support our child.

Having sent that email in the morning, it felt like a low blow to receive an attendance letter only a few hours later.

If you're experiencing similar, please don't forget that the statutory attendance guidance permits schools to code absence due to EBSNA using code I for illness, and that parents are not required to provide medical evidence unless there is genuine concern about the validity of the illness.

In addition, the guidance does not require schools to code late arrival after the register has closed as unauthorised absence. The exact wording of paragraph 291 is, "If a pupil is recorded with code N but arrives later in the session after the register has closed, the attendance register must be amended to record them as absent using code U or another absence code that is more appropriate."

EDITED TO ADD: I emailed the school about this and got an almost immediate and very satisfactory response. This is why I would always encourage parents to inform themselves about what the law and guidance actually say and to engage fully with the school from the beginning.

Automated emails can be very distressing to receive, but many (though, in my experience, by no means all) schools will engage in constructive dialogue if approached directly.

30/05/2026

Other people: So if you cast your mind back, when would you say your child started to show signs of PDA?

Me: Pretty much from birth, but Facebook gave me a pretty good example this morning from a month after her second birthday.

Facebook memory from May 2014:

Whenever we’re out in the car, N argues with the sat nav. Example from today:
Tom Tom: "After 100 yards, turn left."
N: "Nooooo! Not turn left. Turn right!"
TT: "Cross the roundabout, third exit."
N: "No roundabout. Not go on roundabout, not take motorway!"
TT: "After 100 yards, turn right."
N: "Not turn left or right. Go straight on!"
Me: "This is a T junction. If we go straight on, we'll end up in the sitting room of that house."
N (wails): "Noooooo turn left, Mummy! Noooooooo!"
And yet when we were on our way home, she asked me why I hadn't turned Tom Tom on...

27/05/2026

This book arrived today, and begged me to stop working and have a quick look at it.

I shouldn’t have listened, because the quick look became a longer look, and then I was sucked in completely and trapped inside its pages when I really should have been working.

If you have a child with SEND, this book will make you nod along in recognition. It’ll make you want to cry, scream and throw things. But it’ll also let you know that you’re not alone.

It’s a novel, and the author is careful to say that none of the characters or events are based on any particular person or event. Nevertheless, you’ll recognise many of them. And most of all, perhaps, you’ll recognise yourself.

It’s beautifully crafted - the writing is understated but searing in its accuracy and honesty, and your mind will fill in all the details behind the sometimes starkly presented prose. It also has some one-liners that you’ll pause over, read again and again, and remember.

This feels like an important book - one I wish I could give to all sorts of people, sit them down and make them read it.

But as one of the children in the story says, “If the lesson was learned, why are we still doing homework?”

27/05/2026

This week, I reviewed an updated EHCP draft following an annual review. This is shared with the parent's permission.

The child has a diagnosis of autism with a demand avoidant (PDA) profile. I was shocked to see almost every instance of "struggles to" in Section B replaced with "cannot yet".

So "X struggles to interpret social cues" was changed to "X cannot yet interpret social cues".

"X finds it difficult if too many demands are placed on her" became "X cannot yet cope if too many demands are placed on her".

"X struggles to maintain focus in noisy lessons" became "X cannot yet maintain focus in noisy lessons".

"X struggles to accept direct praise" became "X cannot yet accept direct praise".

You get the idea.

I was fuming by the time I reached the end. A child with PDA becomes an adult with PDA - they don't magically grow out of it. Nor can you educate or nag it out of them. They may learn strategies to get around the difficulties that they have. They may learn to mask very effectively, so nobody else is aware of their difficulties.

But would you say a child who uses a wheelchair "cannot yet walk"? Or a child with visual impairment "can't yet see the board"?

A struggle is a struggle, and a nervous system disability is not something a child will grow out of. "Struggles to" does not mean "is incapable of learning to".

What it does mean, though, is that this is an area in which the person with PDA has to work harder than others, can find it exhausting and dysregulating, may regularly "get it wrong" and needs support to help them to address their difficulties, whether through explicit skills teaching or changes in the way adults interact with them.

I find it particularly disturbing that demand avoidance and discomfort with praise, both hallmarks of PDA which endure into adulthood, have been treated as signs of delayed development which will be reversed in time.

This feels like a way to limit the amount and longevity of support available under the EHCP - if the needs change from something which is always going to be a struggle to a short term deficit, support can be withdrawn as soon as the child seems to be coping.

24/05/2026

The Coke bottle revisited...

We all know how frustrating it is to have to fight for the support which our children need and to which they're legally entitled.

Many of us have had long battles with schools to persuade them to acknowledge and address our children's needs.

We've had parent blame and gaslighting from schools.

We've had unlawful refusals to assess, refusals to issue an EHCP, refusals to send our children to schools that can meet their needs, failure to come anywhere close to complying with statutory timelines, and EHCPs that are so woolly they aren't worth the paper they're written on.

We've been to informal meetings, mediations and tribunal hearings.

There were many tears and frustrations along the way, with schools and other professionals responding with, "Mum's very emotional" or "Mum's terribly anxious".

And eventually, many of us won the provision our children should have had all along.

But now here comes a White Paper that proposes to take away our right to appeal a refusal to assess, to reserve EHCPs for children who fit a predefined set of criteria, to change EHCPs to vague, homogeneous tickbox menus, to remove our right to name the school we think will best meet our children's needs, to put all the day to day, specific provision in an unenforceable plan written by the very people who currently tell us they "don't see it".

Let's have a look at the effect this is having on us.

(Watch to the end - it's worth it!)

23/05/2026

We keep being told that “every child deserves the opportunity” to do whatever the latest thing is.

I’m fully on board with that - all children should be given the same rights and opportunities to find the thing that they enjoy and are good at. They shouldn’t be prevented from participating and learning by factors which can be controlled, such as cost and availability of resources.

BUT - and this is a very big “but” - giving children equal opportunities doesn’t mean all children should be forced to do the same thing.

There’s a vast difference, for instance, between saying, “every child should have the opportunity to play football, so all schools should offer it as an option” and making football compulsory for all children.

Equality says everyone has to play football.

Equity says everyone should have the opportunity to play football if they want to, but nobody should be forced to do it against their will.

Equality says every child has a right to a mainstream education.

Equity says if a mainstream education would be harmful to a child's mental health and educational prospects, they should receive the education that enables them to fulfil their potential, whether that be from a special school, an alternative provision, a flexible timetable, a bespoke EOTAS package or a truly elective home education.

Children are not all the same - they have different strengths, characters, interests and needs.

The same is true of adults, and the career path that suits one would be anathema to another.

The sausage factory model of education, where the same processes are applied to all at the same age and stage, ignores this reality.

Every child should have the right, not just to a one-size-fits-most education, but to the education that works for them.

And that's why "inclusion" should be approached with the utmost caution and not used to replace the specialist provision which many children need.

A lost education is a lost future.

Our children don't have time to wait and see whether the latest experiment will work - they need proper, evidence-based support, and they need the government to listen to those who understand what's needed before it's too late.

22/05/2026

"Mum seems very anxious."

This phrase is often weaponised by schools and used as an excuse not to provide support for children - because clearly their difficulties are caused by "Mum" projecting her anxiety onto them.

But there's a clear difference between anxiety and worry.

Anxiety is often a general sense of impending doom with no clear, immediate trigger.

Worry, by contrast, is triggered by specific, real world issues.

When the issues persist in the long term and can't be resolved, worry can eventually begin to look like anxiety.

But if that feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach, the palpitations, shaking and feeling of rising panic happen as a result of a specific event and the concern is based on past experience as well as present expectation, that's not generalised anxiety - it's a very natural feeling brought on by an external event, and I'm tired of it being dismissed and treated as some sort of sign of weakness or inadequacy in me.

So no, this "Mum" is not anxious.

What I am is upset, deeply concerned and afraid of what's going to happen next, based on past experience.

And that's why I cried this morning when reading a letter from my child's school about their new attendance strategy.

Because even with an EHCP, it seems that every time there's a change in personnel or a change in policy, existing agreements tend to be ripped up and need to be renegotiated all over again.

SEND HUGS

05/06/2026

03/06/2026

02/06/2026

30/05/2026

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