Morgan’s first year at senior school has been … let us just say “interesting”. He has been given the title of “naughtiest year 7 pupil” which to be honest is more than ridiculous as he is not violent, doesn’t throw things as teachers like so many others etc. As people who know us Morgan is a handful, needs one to one to keep him on track which has had to increase as he gets older and you may have to repeat things several times for him to actually realise that it is him you are talking to and that he has to do something, he has an awesome personality and makes you laugh quite a lot, sometimes he comes out with things you do not expect leaving you with a rather confused expression on your face with only the words “its Morgan” for explanation. We started to have issues from the first couple of days as to keep him focused on anything, the school decided that he would be punished for every little negative in a way to “encourage him to change his behaviour, to remember not to forget things, to concentrate, to make him do his work, to make him do his home work, to make him ‘fit in line with the rest of the pupils as he stands out too much which isn’t a good thing’ … his form tutor. At our first meeting I pointed out that negative reinforcement doesn’t work and how about some form of positive reinforcement instead. After all it is what he is used to; we focus on the positive behaviour, gets consequences for the negative. Consequently the schools way of doing it really worked against them as by the end of the year Morgan no longer gave a shit about anything, his form tutor has been reprimanded for calling him a stupid boy .. After 7 years of trying I have actually managed to get him assessed.. Low and behold he was then referred to the GP and is having his first appointment with CAMHS, much to the disappointment of his form tutor and head of year who up until this point was telling me it was essentially him reacting to bad parenting and needed to make a choice to change. We have been told that so far he may have ASD but needs further investigation. During his first year he seems to of lost respect for a lot of his teachers, but I cannot really blame him and I have come to terms with being the parent of “that child” the child that other children have been banned from playing with, because of course Morgan is responsible for their behaviour as well as his own! The one who never gets invited to birthday parties and who is known as being a bad influence and is well known to the behaviour unit at the school. This makes me chuckle to a little bit as these other kids are still getting into trouble when Morgan isn’t there, including with the police.
Some of things he has been told off for at school this year: i.e. sent out of class and detention
Drawing nipples onto a picture he drew of a male jogger .. he also drew the rest of his muscles
Rapping in a German lesson (about Hitler & Darth Vader)
Putting an elastic band around his face to help him concentrate!
he also got caught for handing out ‘rude’ playing cards to his friends but was actually given a detention for wanting them back, mainly for answering the teacher when she asked him “what did he want them for?”, this is something you have to be careful with you see as he is very honest, so pointed out he wanted to take them home so he could masturbate. The teacher didn’t like this honest answer too much.
I knew I was going to have ‘fun’ with Morgan in senior school but not like this. He is very much still a kid, he doesn’t have the social maturity that others his age have, lives in the moment and he is easily lead. I am ok with this, he will grow up in his own time, if he doesn’t have the social maturity of his peers or that ability to make the right choices when with them then it is simple, he doesn’t go out to play with them. Saying that when he has gone out with friends of his age he doesn’t really enjoy it. All they do is either play on games consoles or want to play fighting. None of which really interests him so he tends to take himself off somewhere to practice his climbing and free running. He is in a little world of his own, plays alongside other kids but not with them and this is who he is this how he always has been and I do not care what the school thinks he is a fantastic kid.
Some of his behaviour hasn’t been the best over the past year but a lot of this it appears to of been more of a reaction to other things that have been going on with his older brother as well as how school make him feel about the type of person he is … needless to say now that these two huge influences are not there his behaviour has improved at home to the point where he has not been on a time out in almost two weeks and is really doing himself proud with his attitude in general. Of course there are still little bits of grr but heck he is a kid so this is to be expected, and as he is 12 on Sunday we are also getting bits of hormone induced.. “I hate the world and the world hates me”
if you have a child going up this year into senior school and may be thinking “they are too young” that is because they are, far too young. You do get some children who are older than their years, my oldest was one of them and settled quite well, you have the ‘smart kids’ who academically are also way past their years and both of these types of kids get on well at school, do well academically and become the poster kids of the school. My son isn’t one of those children.
My son sees the world as an exciting place filled with colour just waiting to be explored, climbed and ready for him to conquer. He sees an object and thinks about its design, he sees what goes on in the world and asks “why?”, he sees things that others say cannot be done and asks “why not?” he has an awesome imagination which isn’t constricted by the rest of the worlds ideas of right and wrong. where people see a hole in the ground, he sees an earth chair ready to sit back in, star at the clouds and watch the world go by, a tunnel to a magickal place, the after mouth of a tunnelling giant mole or where I dinosaur has been, heck we went to the zoo for the first time on Monday and he could go in the monkey house as it upset him to see the monkeys so sad, when we went into the gift shop he was looking for something that wasn’t too much money and when offered the gift he really liked, even though he never asked for it, he actually looked around for a cheaper option. The behaviour people see at school is what happens when he isn’t kept on track, which does take a lot of one to one, but this behaviour is what defines him in the eyes of people who do not know him, that do not give him the chance, they see him running around town with no shoes on, climbing things and see a naughty child . To those at school who cannot understand why he cannot sit still or concentrate or manages to complete more than a few sentences of written work and sees a disobedient naughty child . To those who tell me he isn’t going to get anywhere in life as being creative isn’t important. To those people I kindly say “Fuck you” as my son is awesome and anyone who has met him will tell you exactly the same.
