Soph's School of the Mad: Final Week

My god, it had BETTER be the final week. I have learned much about myself in the last few months, and the main thing is no, I really do not want to be a teacher. But I've done my best, and I don't feel like the older two have wildly suffered academically, and that is the main thing. Alex is a totally different matter. As things stand, they're going back to school in September. Alex will be in year one, Jack in year five and Jim in year seven.

On Monday, Jim did some work on pollination, mainly sniggering about plants DOING SEX on themselves. Part of the work was doing a quiz, identifying fruit and vegetables by the plant. I incorrectly identified a grape vine as 'WINE'. WINE! IT GROWS ON THE WINE VINE!

We tasted honey, we did some pollination using chalk and this amazing diagram:

And we had a really good look at the anatomy of a poppy. Then we declared that we would never look at plant biology again.

Jack wrote a letter to his new teacher, warning her that he has an extremely short temper but "gets over it quickly". The child speaks the truth.

Then me and Jim had a Teams meeting to meet his new teacher and TA for next year. Jim, nervous as hell, ate nine cookies during this half hour meeting and informed the new teacher than people are God's cookies, so he certainly got to sample the madness of Jim.

Tuesday began with a walk to the chemist. Jack proved HIGHLY reluctant to do any work after this, but managed this acrostic poem:

What a wonderful day it was
Everyone outside, playing and shouting
And then, all of a sudden
Thunder destroying everything in its path
Hail knocking people out
Everyone rushed to their homes
Restless and ruined, everyone went to bed

Goth.

Jim started work on his All About Me powerpoint. Highlights included:

On Wednesday, Jack and Alex (with CONSIDERABLE GUIDANCE AND HELP) made some thank you cards for their teachers. Can't help but feel they should be making ME cards, but fuck it:

Do you remember Jim did his SATs (for NO REASON) a couple of weeks ago? Well, he got the results. He got 95 in maths, which is absolutely standard for year six. He got 111 in English, which is AMAZING. Considering he did no revision at all, and did them at home, I think he did astonishingly well and actually feel quite weepy about it. It's hard to replicate school at home, and it's 100 times harder to replicate a SEN school at home, but this feels like external validation that I haven't done a shit job.

His teacher came over on Wednesday to take his laptop back to school, so we got to say goodbye. She's gone above and beyond throughout this whole thing, and has become an extension of our family. Alex told her he loved her on video chat, and then she brought Jim a fig tree for being a STUDIOUS GOOSE. I have to say, he's been remarkably amenable to home schooling, all things considered. I think he's enjoyed the routine:

On Thursday, I was woken up by Alex dropping onto my abdomen on both knees, and then weeping at my wailing. I survived, and tried to get Jack and Alex to watch Blue Planet so they could LEARN OF THE SEA, but they were not interested in LEARNING OF THE SEA, so they abandoned ship. I do not think any of my children will be mariners, unlike their forebears.

Jim's school issued a sports day challenge, which he did in the most grudging, half-hearted way you can imagine. "I WILL NOT DO PRESS UPS" he screamed. "I CAN'T DO THIS" he howled, after two laps of the garden. "THIS IS TORTURE" he wailed as he flapped through six star jumps. He will never be an Olympian:

Then he finished off his Harry Potter comprehension and I ran out of work to give him.

We went to the primary school to say goodbye to the boys' teachers at lunchtime. This was EMOTIONALLY NECESSARY for all of us. When Alex saw his TA, he ran up to her and sat on her knee and we all tried not to cry. He hasn't seen her since March! She took him to see his new classroom and meet his new teacher. We also said goodbye to Jack's old teacher who's leaving the school and their SENCo.

Today, Friday, the kids have had a day off, as they would have at actual school. Alex insisted on finishing his reading program:

THE PRIDE!
The big two are planning on watching ALL FOUR SHREKS BACK TO BACK, and I have sorted out all the stuff they've done, filing much into the bin, turning my dining room back into something approaching a normal family room rather than a school (albeit, filled with Warhammer). Tom's got some time off work- actual time off, not working from home - and I've got a PhD to prepare for.

The last day of reception, year four and year six. What a fucking weird year:

Thank you to Tracey, Claire and Louise for keeping me sane, and thank you to ALL the teachers at Discovery for being superstars.

And thank you, o general reader, for reading my weekly blog of madness. Lockdown has been weird and lonely, frustrating and endless. Way back in March, I posted on Facebook suggesting that families try and have a routine to teach their kids because 'they might end up being out of school for six months', never dreaming that would end up being the case. SEN schools weren't supposed to close. They did. Alex was supposed to be able to go back to school. He didn't. Jack, the one child desperate to go back, was never given the option. It has been a bizarre juggling act of trying to teach them, trying to teach ME to be a teacher, trying to meet their SEN needs, and trying to still be mum at the end of it while also working myself.

If I have to do it again, I will. But I don't want to.

Enjoy your summer. Stay safe. CONSTANT VIGILANCE.

Soph's School of the Mad: Week Thirteen

The fifth and final household birthday of the year took place on Saturday. Alex was FIVE! We went to see his grandparents, and he reacted completely normally to being sung to...


On Monday, I asked him to sound out this word:

"SUN-KUH! CUNT!"

No...not quite.

This week, as the end of term draws near, Jimmy has been asked to do a piece of creative writing so his teachers can assess his English ready for year seven. On Monday, we started with some planning, and also looked at Cinnabar moths. Our garden is OVERRUN with cinnabar caterpillars, but apparently they'll all eat each other soon so we won't have a garden of beautiful red moths. Boo.

Jack's topic this week is SPORT. Ostensibly, the cancelled Olympics, but he has requested to learn more about rugby as well. So...I guess we will.

On Tuesday, a relatively quiet morning. Jim worked on his MAGNUM OPUS, screeching with indignation because I disabled the autocorrect grammar tool on Word. He WILL learn what punctuation means.

Jack had to interview me about lockdown life. He asked some good questions: "Do you like Boris Johnson?" (NEWP), "How much beer or wine have you drunk?" (ONE BOTTLE, JUST ONE). We also took a lovely SELFIE:

God, I need to dye my hair. I haven't been this blonde since 2011.

We also got word on Alex and Jack's class allocations for next year, which sent me into a panicked spiral. HOW CAN HE GO INTO YEAR ONE WHEN HE DOESN'T KNOW WHAT A SENTENCE IS???

On Wednesday, Jim got up at the CRACK in order to finish his Great Work. Jack watched some videos about bullying and nouns. Alex did absolutely nothing, because (and I'll own it), I fucking forgot. Jim can go into this mode of being so absolutely overwhelming that you lose the will to live. Full Colin Robinson style. And on Wednesday, he did this with such FEROCITY that I was close to tears by midday.

I also bought some school uniform. Who knows if they'll ACTUALLY go back to school in September? Who knows anything anymore? What ARE plans? What IS the future? Based on this instability, I have refused to pay £6.20 for a single, tiny logo'd polo shirt, and bought supermarket crap. SUPERMARKET CRAP ALL ROUND. Jim gets to wear black polo shirts next year, because he's in year 7. I don't know who's more delighted: him for getting to wear black, or me because I don't have to do a white wash every week.

On Thursday, Jim edited his Great Work (reluctantly):

And illustrated My Shadow by Robert Louis Stevenson. Jimmy HATES this poem. It is for 'babies' apparently. No taste:

We also looked at how far two metres is.

About four times further than he initially believed.

Jack was asked to do a sport related newspaper frontpage, and WE WENT ALL OUT MOTHERFUCKER:

Look, it's been a really long week and sometimes I like to overachieve on my children's behalf.

Alex has spent the week in a post-birthday comedown. Yesterday, he VERY SLIGHTLY grazed his foot and went around for the rest of the day wrapped in a fleece. Then he fell asleep, so we couldn't get him to bed when the time came. Then he had a bath and WOULD NOT PUT HIS SLIGHTLY GRAZED FOOT IN THE WATER, so spent the bath on one leg, like a fucking flamingo. Sometimes, parenting autistic children is a voyage of discovery and genius. Mostly, it's trying to persuade your kid to do things like PUT BOTH FEET IN THE WATER.

C'est la vie.

FRIDAY, FRIDAY, GOTTA GET DOWN ON FRIDAY. Jim did some beautiful botanical drawing, as he's supposed to be learning about plant biology, but apparently 'already knows it all'. Steady on there, Carl Linnaeus:

Yes, that's the real poppy alongside.

He also has some FEELINGS on time travel.

At one point this morning, I turned to see Jack's book review descending into madness:

QUITE.

Anyway, one more week, and it's mostly a week of doing FUCK ALL, THANK GOD.

Soph's School of the Mad: Week Eleven

Father's Day! Look at this card that Alex DEFINITELY MADE ALL BY HIMSELF, HONEST GUV:

I do love these horrible, smelly males that I live with.

So, Monday. Another Monday, another absolute lack of shit to do. I set Jack to writing a recipe for this ice cream sundae we had at the weekend:

(Sauce recipe here) (Try it, you will regret nothing but your waistline).

Then, I settled down with Jim to do his EHCP review. EHCPs replaced Statement of Special Education Need a few years ago. They are supposed to be reviewed every year, and this is Jim's first review since he started at Medeshamstede. It's also the first review where he's been old enough to have some input into the process:

"Jim, what do you need to be happy every day?"
"EVERYONE TO DO AS I SAY"
"Ah, of course"

On Tuesday, it got hot. And as it got hot, my fucks dissolved. Jack had to write a fairytale with a new ending. I think they wanted cheerful endings, like Red Riding Hood and the wolf making friends, but this is Jack, so instead they got an elephant eating Jack the Giant Slayer, his mother AND the giant. I'm just sad he didn't go with my idea to have Rapunzel's head get pulled off by the incessant clambering up her hair.

Alex finished his first workbook and was SO PROUD to get a certificate:

Wednesday was MATHS DAY. Cue endless screaming howls of dismay from us all. Me because I had to teach maths, Jim because he had to do maths, Jack because he felt like joining in and Alex because there is a noise outside and the windows are open. Having a noise-averse child closing all the windows when it's 30 degrees outside is NOT MY FAVOURITE.

So, we were doing data handling, which I can do fairly well (literally the only maths thing I CAN do). We started off with skittles:

Delicious skittles. This graph was produced:

Then Jim had to do some independent work on line graphs, all the time eating the skittles.

There were no skittles by 10:30am. Jack's there in the background completely ignoring the work he's been set to listen to Spotify instead.Then we all went to die in the sun like lizards, hissing at each other and weeping tears of pure salt.

On Thursday, I had Jim's EHCP review meeting, so everything was a nightmarish rush to get done by 11. We had to do PIE CHARTS, which Jim understood and did perfectly in between screaming like a wounded animal. While I was in the meeting, he wrote a diary entry about cannibals in the Iron Age. He's decided that cannibalism was rife in the period, and nothing will dissuade him, which is very 1900s historian of him. Jack did some maths, and then wrote a factfile on a monster called The Fred of the Daktala Forest in Jackland.

A Fred:

Alex's teacher rang up to talk about how he's getting on since he's staying at home til September. I put her on speaker phone so she could talk to him, and he FLED, LITERALLY UPPED AND RAN. It might be a struggle to get him back into school in a few months. Alex had a play with some thermodynamic putty, which he loved:

God only knows why he insisted on wearing jeans on the hottest day of the year. Weird kid is weird.

Friday, thank God, and it's a dad-weekend for the older two. Jimmy has been HAUNTING me all week, eavesdropping on my conversations, inserting himself into my personal space, appearing at his bedroom window to scream "WHY HAS MUMMY GOT HER FEET IN WATER????" He's not going back to school after all, and I have taken to drink.

First thing this morning, he had a go at doing some prehistoric art using flour, sticks and buttercups:

I think it has a slightly sinister vibe. I like it.

Jack designed a book cover for his magnum opus, which he's been working on for weeks:

And Jim wrote a powerpoint about the Amazon rainforest, which wasn't exactly what he was supposed to do, but he used full sentence so who cares?

Three more weeks. I can do this. I CAN do this.

Soph's School of the Mad: Week Ten

Ten weeks, for fuck's sake. Monday was bleak. After two hours of sleep (THANKS ALEX!), I was  not ready for Monday. I was particularly not ready for Tom to go back to work full time, and yet he has and I am somehow still here. As per usual on Monday, no work was forthcoming from the schools so Jack worked on his story which is now on it's fifth chapter and nothing much has happened. Jim did some Harry Potter and then made chocolate fridge cake:

 Isn't it PRETTY?

Me and Alex made a father's day card which is TOP SECRET. Then the boys played on the PS while I worked, because I am a diligent mother.

I had a bit of a meltdown last week, mainly about Alex. I GRIEVE what he is losing out on, not being at school. All those new experiences and opportunities that I cannot replicate at home. If he wasn't autistic, it wouldn't matter, but he will try new things at school that he will not entertain at home. So I spoke to the SENCo and the head of EYFS and they were reassuring and gave me some advice. My cheap Chinese paints turned up two months after being ordered this week, so we did some car painting:

Jim was doing a random sheet of comprehension and came out with this gem:

Autism is DEFINITELY not mundane.

This week was quite stressful. My little niece had her third lot of brain surgery within six months, to replace her shunt. It went well, she's doing great. My kids have no idea what's wrong with Eliza, and thanks to Corona, we haven't had to tell them. It's not that we don't want them to know, or that we're unrealistic about it, it's that they will FREAK THE FUCK OUT and we'll never talk Jim down. But it does meant that me and Tom are trying not to let on how sad or stressed we are MORE than we would if we were merely homeschooling in a pandemic.

Also, I had to speak to a consultant dentist at UCL about What To Do With Jack's Teeth. Jack has a genetic disorder called amelogenesis imperfecta that means his teeth crumble in his mouth. He's had countless patch-up jobs and teeth out in his short life, and although it's very minor in the grand scheme of things, teeth hurt and teeth are cosmetically important. So, because of corona, I had to take pictures of his teeth, email them to the consultant and then talk about The Plan, while Jack whimpered in the background, terrified the dentist was going to dive down the phone and wrench his teeth from his head. He had his xray this morning (Friday) and had to go in all by himself, again because of corona. But he was very brave.

HOWEVER, in between the stress, Jim produced this:

YOU FOOL

And to FOX Alex, I froze one of his beloved cars and challenged him to get it out.

He poked it about a bit, and then abandoned it to melt in the sun. THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE. Then he smashed the last bit of ice remaining and screamed "I SMASHED IT" joyfully.

For the first time, we also got him to try dressing up, and he was so utterly delighted by the results:

Did you ever see such a happy child?

Jim had to retell a story. He had a go...

I couldn't get his laptop to transmit sound on teams during our weekly lesson with his teacher, so he spent half an hour miming at her and showing her his foot. SO NORMAL HUN.

Friday is topic day, at least for Jim, and this week we were doing the Bronze Age. Ladies and gentlemen, I present, Bronze Age Fred:


And so to the weekend, which will hopefully be less fraught. Jim had a meltdown of such ground-shaking proportions yesterday that I'm surprised nobody called the police. And why? Because he had to put some things away. Truly, he is the most oppressed.

Finally, my children, but old:

Particularly enjoy that I've given birth to the next Bill Oddie...

Pride Rage

TW: sexual assault, rape, trans issues, transphobia, homophobia

So, JK Rowling, a woman who regularly pretends to be a man in her working life for financial gain, has been on the TERF wagon this week.

Some of you won't know what TERF means: it means trans-exclusionary radical feminist. Radical feminism rejects male supremacy, which is good. Trans-exclusionary radical feminism rejects male supremacy while also rejecting trans-women as women. The weird thing about TERFs is that all their arguments for excluding transwomen from radical feminism rely on traditional gender roles for women. TRANSWOMEN DON'T MENSTRUATE THEREFORE THEY DO NOT KNOW A WOMAN'S PAIN. Well, I hate to tell you ladies, but there are a lot of cis women who don't menstruate, through choice or not.
Some of you won't know what cis means. Some of you will think it's a bad word. It's not. It is just the opposite of trans: I am a ciswoman. It says nothing about sexuality, just about whether or not your sex (your bits) match your gender (your sense of you being male/female). Gender expression is much wider for women than men, which may be part of the reason there are more transwomen than transmen, but that's another discussion entirely.

So, JK Rowling is against changes to the Gender Recognition Act. A lot of people are, to be honest with you. The current Gender Recognition Act requires trans individuals to live as their preferred gender for two years, and then go to a panel and prove that they are living as the opposite gender in order to recieve a new birth certificate that says they are male or female. The panel bit is horribly invasive: you have to have a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, you have to have your spouse's permission if you are married, and you must prove you are living as trans. There are only about five thousand people who have changed their gender in this manner in the UK, of a trans population of up to 500,000. This means you have probably shared facilities with a trans person, without a GRC, and you had no idea.

The revision to the Gender Recognition Act proposes to do away with the panel, so if you want to change your gender legally, you can much faster and with much less fanfare.
That's it.

Anyway, JK Rowling and COUNTLESS OTHERS are against this change, and they're probably against it (if they're deeply honest with themselves) because they see being transgender as an aberration. Nevermind the fact that nobody knows what their sex chromosome makeup is unless there's a problem, nor their sex hormone levels; nevermind the fact that other people's genitals are absolutely none of your business, there is a sizeable chunk of people who think that being trans is just wrong. They cannot concieve of it. The same as people used to think being gay was just wrong. So much so, that they'd execute you for it.

But naturally, you can't just SAY you think it's wrong, that would be terrible for business. Especially when you're a beloved children's writer. So, a lot of concerns about the new Gender Recognition Act are dressed up as concern for the children. As it was ever so. Remember Section 28?

JK Rowling and friends are terribly concerned that men will simply say they are women in order to access sex segregated spaces. Changing rooms and toilets are the two most commonly cited examples. "Would you want your daughter in a changing room with a PENIS???" they ask. They don't say "Would you want your daughter in a changing room with a transwoman desperately trying to get changed without flashing anyone, terrified in case she does?" because that would actually humanise transwomen. No, A PENISSSSSS.

And it's ALWAYS transwomen getting demonised. Nevermind transmen, who will either be using the male changing rooms and risk being sexually assaulted by angry men (they do that, unfortunately) or using the female changing rooms while being coded as male and therefore also enraging the women. No, it's always the PERVERTED MASSIVE SCHLONGS IN SKIRTS that get pulled out for this particular argument.

Now. Let's consider what we know of rape and sexual assault against women in general. All stats are from Rape Crisis UK. About 20% of all adult women have experienced sexual violence in the UK. Most victims know their attacker (about 90%). Rapists overwhelmingly get away with it - about 5.7% of REPORTED rapes end in conviction; most rapes are unreported.

So, about 10% of rapes are committed by strangers. I can't find any statistics for what percentage are carried out by transwomen, which strongly suggests that it's such a rare crime that statistics do not exist. But stranger rapes still happen, largely committed by cismen.
Raped in the bathroom at McDonalds. Raped in the loo at Heathrow. Raped in the public toilets. Raped in the leisure centre changing room. Raped at school. Raped at the bus station. Raped in the pub. Raped in a shopping centre.

And these are just the ones that are reported.

Men do not need to pretend to be women to rape women.

Men just need to look like they're supposed to be there.

No rapist has ever walked up to a women's toilet, looked at the sign, sighed "foiled again", and walked away.

Because signs do not protect you from rapists.

If I am being really charitable, I suppose I can see this argument as a desperate hope that sex-segregated spaces ARE safe from rapists. That putting a sign on the door saying "women only" WILL protect them.

But it's Pride month, and I'm sick of this shit.

My little brother is trans. It is not a fucking ten minute thought experiment for him. It's a constant cycle of fear, self-doubt, coming out to new people, coping with being misgendered and deadnamed, arguing with the barber over whether or not he's allowed to have his fucking HAIR CUT, self-loathing, choosing the 'right' toilet, dysphoria, having to deal with other people's shitty whataboutery and "but the CHILDREN" all over his social media 24/7. He's been on the waiting list for the Gender Identity Clinic for more than a year, after having to argue with his psychiatrist to get a referral. He'll probably be waiting another year or more because of COVID, and the lack of clinics.

I am not here for people treating transgender people as a Problem To Be Solved rather than people trying to live true to themselves.
I am not here for people trying to make their lives harder when they are so hard already.
I am not here for people merrily demonising the entire trans community over a hypothetical situation.
And I am not here for these coded messages that trans people are sexual predators.
Statistically, you know rapists.
You're friends with rapists.
You have no idea they're rapists.

Do you know any trans people? Even one?

Soph's School of the Mad: Week Eight

Hey Jim, how was half term?

Anyway, all my kids remain at home, probably for the rest of the school year, please send rum.

Saying that, do you know what the best thing about being the headmistress of a this tiny school is? Declaring your own inset days. After a surprisingly lovely half term of catching up with my actual job, taking up yoga (LOUD LOLZ), the children being relatively well behaved, and going out of Walton for the first time in ten weeks, I really didn't feel like getting back into in on Monday. And since it would have been an inset day if they'd been at school, I  made a decision. The children were pleased.

So, the last half term of the school year. Normally, this half term is an absolute tidal wave of shit to do. Sports day, end of year events, move up day, transition meetings. This year, notsomuch, but with a heavy dusting of question marks and uncertainty. Then there's the whole world being a binfire, which doesn't ease the mind.

Jack met Tuesday with a face of thunder and an attitude to match. He LOATHES maths, he LOATHES writing, he LOATHES subordinate clauses (same, dude), he HATES with a passion. Which was fun. Jim was also tense and grumpy, not least because he had to do two maths worksheets. THE AGONY of MATHS:

One of his activities this week is to try and make a stone age house from sticks (THANKS, THE SCHOOL) so we went to gather sticks at Itter Park, which was RAMMED.

Absolute size of him in his tree.

Jack's work is really DULL this week. "Write a conversation between two of these characters", but the characters are all boring as hell chatty people. So I invented Dave the Ghost and Sammy the Vampire for him to write about. Anyway, they had a lovely chat about their acts for the World Scaring Competition, illustrated thus:

Boo! Woo!

Jim made a robot out of a kit we bought.

This robot ran amok, covering my floor in pen, but it WORKED:

Jack and Alex went on a bug hunt on Thursday, mainly so I could coax Jimmy through some work on time. Time can be a really hard concept for autistic people. Jim has an excellent grasp of time facts like how many days in a week, how many minutes in an hour etc, but no idea how to estimate how time passes. But anyway, the bug hunt:

Alex came screaming in "WE FOUND A SPIDER"

"Oh wow! How many legs did it have?"

"EIGHT"

"And where does it live?"

"In his HOME"

...I mean, the kid's not wrong, but that's not quite what I was going for. This morning, he was running around shrieking "Stay at home kids, or you'll DIE" and when I asked him what happens when you die, he replied "Stikbots fall over". 

Also, through bribery, I finally got Alex to write something legible in a book. He appears to have done one of his developmental leaps lately. They happen every few months - he doesn't develop much at all, and then suddenly starts doing whatever I've despaired of teaching him. This time, sleeping through the night and writing in letters that aren't two feet tall. 

Meanwhile, Jack wrote a story opener about a girl called Lavender meeting a witch chanting gibberish, and Jim decided the only logical ending to Goldilocks is that Goldilocks should be eaten. Can't say I disagree with him:

And so to today, and another week over. This week has been complicated by the sad, but predictable death of my extremely elderly laptop meaning me, Jim and Jack have had to share the desktop. Jim's school are arranging a laptop, but this is taking an age. Tom had to go to actual work today as well. Boo, boo and hiss. Add my THIRD lockdown period (periods should be SUSPENDED in lockdown), and SHOUTING ENSUED.

The first shout was because Jack was asked to write some stuff inspired by a picture and wrote about a boy stranded on a giant baby head. I lost my shit. "APPLY YOURSELF, FOR FUCK'S SAKE", I screamed, in perhaps my finest moment this year. Then I lost my shit anew for no good reason, because Jim hadn't put much effort into his stone age poster. He tried to improve it with some 'facts'. I then wished he hadn't:

I'm not sure cave men invented the word poo, but fuck it, who cares?

The kids also made Lego Stonehenges, which BARELY warrant the title:

Sometimes, I feel like I've got this whole thing down. Sometimes, I feel like I'm drowning. Let us all pray that next week is better.