Gold Star Student

To my fierce and persistent daughter, who showed everyone what happens if you are allowed to swim upstream

[My daughter, Joni, is in Year 9. She is an AUDHDer. She nearly didn't go to her big mainstream secondary school. We found her a place at a school for children who are autistic just like her but she begged and pleaded with us to go to the local comprehensive school. Joni has always loved learning and wanted to do really well at school. On her second day in Year 7 she said something the wrong way to a girl in her year group and tens of other children came for her. We realised then that her time at her big ‘mainstream’ secondary school might be a real challenge, after all she had spent most of Year 6 under a table in her primary school library. How on earth was this going to work?

But she was committed. She has got many things wrong. Said things the wrong way to both pupils and staff. Bubbled over with anger and physically lashed out. She has disrupted whole assemblies, being chased round the hall by teachers, while laughing and hiding and pulling out projector plugs. She has been misunderstood beyond measure. She has been punished many times. Suspensions, isolations, detentions. She has been laughed at by her peers for her extreme reactions to little things.

Last year, I left her Year 8 Parents’ Evening with sadness at how my daughter, who had always loved learning simply for its own sake, was being branded as a nuisance. I wrote about it here.

This year was a whole different story. This year we have seen the difference that can be made when the adults around the child see them for who they are, celebrate their uniqueness and let them find their own way.

‘Mainstream’ doesn't have to be conformist. Those who like to float upstream should be allowed to.

If more of our Neurodivergent children were able to be themselves I guarantee whole communities would be better for it]

You wake up on a bright September morning and stretch out. Air floats through your blinds and freshens the dull warmth of your sleep. You wear your hair up in a messy knot right on top of your forehead when you sleep and you always look so funny come the morning. So I'm already laughing when you tell me your big news. Your golden ambition.

You tell me that this year you are making an ‘academic comeback’. And you call yourself ‘the academic weapon’. Your words. Your grin is quirkily crooked and not quite aligned with the severe intensity of your gaze. You know you have just been amusing, but you mean what you say.

When you were younger, before they undid you, you found solace in learning and creating. Planets rotating, volcanoes erupting, Romans invading and tissue bees buzzing. You sang in the choir louder than the rest. You circled the classroom flapping your arms with happiness when you saw us at the end of the day. You recited and danced and were free. When learning was real and fun and liberating. Life enhancing.

Gradually that changed into desks lined in rows. High stakes. Blurry requirements hanging quizzically before you. It stopped being real and became a blunt threat. Something to react to. Something to fear. Something to scream at. Something to hide from.

You could only yell or retreat.

You were the only one doing it your way. Different. The other children fell in line. You didn't. You couldn’t. You felt this difference sharply.

This lasts for three years. Your failings are pointed out to you. Over and over. In frequent bursts.

Peer laughter often rattles the fibres of your being.

There are so few who try to understand you. Even less are those who actually do.

It took these slow years for you to recognise that to get to where you want to be, you have to step into your true self. Tread your own path. Swim upstream.

You are still a child. But you are braver than most adults.

All you ever wanted to do was to learn new things. It was your solace and your spark. And for those slow years you couldn't get to it.

So, you step into you. You are an academic weapon. You are making your comeback. And nothing can stop you.

You go back to school and you set out your store. Within a week your teachers know that you are making an academic comeback and that you are an academic weapon. You tell them all. With pride. With ambition. With intent.

You get up on time. Every morning. You tend to arrive late as you get distracted. But that’s ok. You teachers understand that mornings are hard and that you can get ready but you might get caught staring at a wall for twenty minutes (often in the shower), or your jumper might not look right, or your hair might not hang nicely, or you have lost one shoe, or you can't stop laughing from an amusing thought, or you smell something funny or any one of a million things can stop you in your tracks.

Some days you last a whole day of school.

If you do, you sleep until 6.30pm. You have some food. You walk around distracted then retreat to your room. And hide in the darkness. You rarely speak to us. We miss you. But you chose to make an academic comeback. To be an academic weapon. This is what that takes

Some days you do a bit of school and then come home early.

If you do, you will sleep for a few hours but then we might see some of you in the evening. You are a bit brighter. We might watch a quiz. You might wash your hair. But you will inevitably retreat back to your darkness. To hibernation and safety. To rest and healing.

You sacrifice so much to make this work. Whole Saturdays swathed in rejuvenating sleep. I’m not sure they know or appreciate just how much of just being a kid that you let go of to achieve this ‘academic’ feat. There are some days where it must feel impossible. But you don’t complain.

And on Monday you get up. You return. There are still the desks in rows. The bubble of voices. The shrill directives cutting through the murmuring haze of the classroom. The chaos of bodies charging and dispersing still overwhelms.

So, you stop. You retreat. You breathe. Perhaps you rest. But you go back.

…..

Finally, we meet your teachers. This year it's different than last time.

You are now their Gold Star student.

Your academic comeback is on point, you say.

You are right. You are wondrous and real and brilliant and all of the things we already knew. Things that you always were.

They gave you space. They tried to understand you. And they watched you go. You are showing them the brilliance of your light and last they see you.