No one knows your child like you do. You see the child, not their SEND label. Certainly, children with SEND are just as ambitious as their peers. Yet, children can too easily be unseen, unheard or misunderstood. That’s why having an insight into how your child experiences their world can give clarity to their school challenges. Understanding your child’s thoughts, feelings, and challenges can help you better advocate for them at school.
Produce a Portrait
A portrait is a representation of a person. It shows their likeness to the world, portraying them in the way they wish to be shown. As your child’s advocate, it can be useful to think of understanding your child like producing a portrait.
Start With The Outline
The idea of the portrait is to capture your child’s strengths and challenges. Start by considering what you think are their:
- Likes and dislikes?
- Strengths
- Challenges?
These could be in or outside of school, or both.
Add The Background
Try to answer, what’s your child’s educational story so far? Creating a background can help you see patterns in your child’s strengths and frame their challenges.
Keep in mind that children at school are not children at home. Indeed, your child’s teacher’s perspective on how well they are progressing, interacting and behaving during school time is invaluable. As such, what are the concerns their school has raised, and or what are your concerns regarding school? Are they regarding your child’s…
- Understanding, learning, achievement or progress in school?
- Communication and interaction?
- Sensory, physical, emotional, social, mental health or behaviour?
- Difficulty accessing facilities?
Consider keeping and updating a record of your child’s assessment information, academic results and teacher’s comments on homework.
Include Shadow
Understanding whether there’s an underlying reason for your child’s school challenges adds depth to the overall picture. Your child may or may not have a diagnosis. If they do:
- Add any observations made by professionals.
- Include any common challenges posed by the condition.
Yet, you may suspect your child has an underlying condition. Moreover, children can have ‘co-occurring (co-morbid)’ conditions. As SNAP* explain, “‘Co-morbid’ is a scary word but it just means other conditions that are likely to exist along with the main diagnosis, or biggest area of need.” In any event, if you suspect your child may have an undiagnosed underlying condition, collect together your evidence.
In addition, if any health or social care agencies have been involved or your child is on an Education, Health and Care Plan, add any applicable observations made by professionals.
Add Detail
To more fully understand your child’s strengths and challenges, you need insight into their individual experience. The easiest way to put yourself in their shoes is to simply ask questions and listen.
To gain accurate and useful insights, your child needs to feel able to say what they want without judgement. To put it differently, try to empathise and aim to ensure your child’s feelings are validated.
Take into account that children can have difficulty expressing themselves with words. If what they are saying doesn’t make sense, be patient, actively listen and let them clarify. Questions could include:
- How do they describe their personality?
- What are their interests, and what do they enjoy doing?
- What would they like to do or be when they are older? Why?
- Are they proud of something they’ve achieved?
- What is their favourite lesson, and which do they wish they had less?
- What did they most enjoy and least enjoy at school today?
Aim to be curious, and probe into their answers with follow-up questions that contain what/where/when/who/how. For example, “When you couldn’t X… What did you do next? How did that make you feel? Who else was there? Where did you turn for help?” What’s more, try talking about their feelings, as how they feel can be revealing. For example, asking, “What did you least look forward to doing today?” can provide a different perspective from “What did you find hardest today?”
Should they mention physical symptoms, try asking clarifying questions. Young children especially can find it hard to identify and label their feelings. Instead, they may report feeling unwell or sick.
Remember, listening is more than what they say verbally. Observe your child’s body language, and if their mood or tone of voice changes. Indeed, these signals can help you direct your conversation towards or away from significant areas.
You can contrast this with the outline you produced. You could be surprised at how their self-perception differs from yours.
Blend The Colours
Your child’s time at school and home are interconnected. As such, observations to take note of could include:
- Your child’s social interactions outside school. These could reflect how they interact with their school peers.
- If and how your child’s disability or medical needs affect their day-to-day tasks.
- If and how your child is affected by changes in their environment. Environmental factors can influence some children’s emotions and behaviour.
- If and how your child’s emotions and behaviour are impacted by disruption to routine. After all, a school day is broadly based on routine.
- Your child’s learning and problem-solving skills, coping mechanisms, and regulation of their emotions and behaviour. Consider – How well is your child responding and coping with challenges at home? Are there any challenges they avoid?
- Any repetitive behaviours and patterns. In particular, if these either follow or precede school days with certain events, lessons or tasks. If these patterns are consistent, you can explore why to understand what the trigger is.
In addition, it is beneficial to monitor your child’s mental wellbeing. The following could indicate issues at school:
- Trouble with sleeping.
- Stress, anxiety, or heightened emotions surrounding their school day.
- Feeling unwell before leaving for school.
- Avoiding going to school or bunking off.
Fill in the Gaps
Portraits are snapshots of an instance in time. All children are constantly developing and learning in different ways, at different rates. Likewise, the challenges your child faces may change over time. To illustrate, from year 9, their school will begin focussing on preparing them for adulthood. As such, it’s useful to add new layers to the portrait, keeping it updated. Simply, re-follow the process.
Put on Display
Ultimately, the portrait is a useful tool for representing your child as their advocate. It can help you see (and even foresee) your child’s challenges and understand why they exist. Certainly, it can provide a greater perspective on your child’s views about school.
Keep in mind that your portrait may differ from the school’s. Working together, you can define primary needs, when challenges are occurring, and how they are impacting your child’s progress. Surely, a clearer picture helps focus the area for intervention where support can be placed.