The Reluctant Scolar

Yesterday was the first day back at school after the half term holidays.

I love the first day back, it's a chance to plan ahead, work out Pip's problems and plan strategies to deal with them. I diligently fill up my diary with dates for meeting the school staff and visiting colleges for his post-18 education. I fire off emails to the school and his day release college, listing my concerns and explaining his most recent anxieties. I prepare the evening meal early in the day, so I have the luxury of knowing everything will be ready when the children get home and I can concentrate on the minor emergencies which will occur. And throughout it all, I make myself pot after pot of china tea in an elegant china teapot, sipping the steaming brew as I plan my life, luxuriating in my sudden freedom.

Around about three o'clock I start to get anxious about Pip's day. Both this school and his last one used to phone parents at the end of the school day, to inform them of any problems. If the phone goes after three o'clock then I become a bit jumpy and I bark my phone number down the line. Friends and family know to avoid me just before home time. My response is illogical and stupid, as Pip always phones me during the day, to list his woes and worries. If things sound particularly difficult then I phone up his teacher, who always reassures me.

But Mondays are never a problem with Pip. Mondays are Pip's college day, where he gets to pretend to be a normal boy in a normal college, except that he studies computing so a number of his classmates also have Asperger's Syndrome. Monday is also Ian, Pip's learning assistant's day at college and Ian fills Pip with confidence and reassurance. He lets Pip slip out to the nearby shop at lunch time, he advises Pip on social problems and he makes sure that Pip understood the lecturer. Even better, Ian drives a Land Rover, one of Pip's most recent obsessions.

Monday is the day when I can concentrate on the other children, which means sorting out Nina's problems and collecting her from her after school piano lesson. That leaves Alex, my most emotionally independent child, to walk home and install himself on facebook for the evening.

Yesterday, I collected Nina from her lesson as usual. She had slept badly the night before and was tired and worried about her English exam the following day. We discussed the book the exam was on, until my head reeled with act and scenes; I was so engrossed in the play that I didn't notice I had taken the long way home. By the time we had driven back into town, Nina was becoming anxious so I changed the subject to the perennial favourite, did Alex remember his key, or was he sitting on the front door step waiting for us?

Alex has an incredibly poor short term memory and is too lazy to develop a strategy to overcome it, relying too heavily on his own charm and sweet nature. Unfortunately, teachers are inoculated against charm early on in their careers. I sent Alex to school at eight, anxious to avoid the disaster which characterized the start of Pip's education. He survived the first two years, then the problems started. Within a month he was attending school part time and I was finding my world collapsing around me. His problems were so similar to Pip's, lack of eye contact, not understanding the teacher, forgetting everything, over-anxiety and unhappiness. Why did I think that I deserved one autistic child and two 'normal' children? We limped through that and the following year, taking whole weeks off, carefully informing the educational welfare officer that things weren't working, then shooting off in the car to visit friends or glory in a walk on the Derbyshire moors.

When we reached the Educational Welfare stage I informed Jay, the children's father. He emailed me back to tell me that Alex's problems explained his recent dream that he was walking along Blackpool beach and could see Alex in the distance, with a strange woman. As he ran to them he could see that Alex's aura was all wrong but he woke up before he could reach them. I read the email, looking for a word of advice or encouragement and realised it really was just a note to tell me all about his own problems and anxieties, which were obviously very important. When I was facing the prospect of caring for two autistic children on my own, along came the funniest email, which entertained my friends and family for weeks. Every cloud, as they say, has a silver lining.

Eventually, I took Alex to see an educational psychologist, who diagnosed specific learning difficulties, verifying all the problems I had observed and listing strategies the school could try. I felt vindicated and confident as I slapped the report down on the reception desk and pompously declared that the headteacher would need to read it. If he did, then he didn't let on, preferring to send out a less than complimentary end of year report. But by then I was indignant and fired back with a three page essay on why the report illustrated the failings of the school. Unfortunately, the mild mannered head of year was in the office when I handed it in. I don't swear and I'm not rude but witnesses described me as very determined and forceful during the interview. At a subsequent parents' evening he winced as he saw me walking to his desk and greeted me with a sheepish 'I didn't think you had forgiven me.' The headteacher, in the meantime, decided to win me over and between us, we turned Alex's school life around.

Alex still has problems, he is a confident and clever mathematician, but always fails the mental maths tests, he forgets his lunch, books, pens and pencils and his behaviour is always only just this side of acceptable. However, in the general scheme of things I'm not worried. He doesn't shout abuse at his teachers, fight his classmates, run away from school or complain directly to OFSTED like Pip does, so what's my problem? Alex still achieves good marks, even though he spends a decent number of lessons working in the corridor and he brushes off detentions and teacher's comments in his organiser.

Three weeks ago Alex got his first comment of the academic year, which to be fair, was a silly mistake on the teacher's part. Her note in the organiser was liberally peppered with spelling and grammar mistakes, so I did what all teachers do under the circumstances – I got the red pen out and corrected it. Perhaps I should have been more circumspect, more accepting of her authority because Alex started collecting more teachers' notes. By that time, it was too late and Alex was already annoyed. Half term came as a relief to me, time to draw a line under the challenging behaviour.

I had totally forgotten about the problems of the previous few weeks when I walked into the house yesterday evening. Alex had remembered his key and had walked to open the door for us when he saw us arrive home. He was walking back to the computer when I asked him 'did you have a good day at school?' It was a mere formality, as I was still too worried about Nina's exam the following day. 'Yes, it was fine, loved the sandwiches,' replied the reluctant scholar. I could tell by his voice that there had been no issues at school, so I turned towards the kitchen.

'Oh,' he half turned 'there was something.' He was so relaxed and the story started so calmly and innocently. 'It was that Mr S. in English. Ben, who was sitting next to me, was talking to me. It was OK, mum,' Alex responded to my increasing attention. 'He was talking about the text we were reading. You can talk about your work. But Mr S. told me to go out and I told him it was Ben who was talking. Ben should go out, not me. I hadn't done anything wrong.' I held the kettle in mid-air as I waited for the reassurance that it had all ended well. Alex was standing by the kitchen door, hands defiantly on hips 'Mr S. said I was being sent out for staring into Ben's eyes. So I just said 'are you dissing my sexuality?' and walked out!' The kettle clattered on the hob and I started laughing out of shock. Nina had come into the kitchen to hear the tail end of the story and glared at me 'you shouldn't laugh, he isn't funny and you only encourage him. He was wrong, you should be telling him off!'

I soon stopped laughing, it's parents' evening tonight and Mr S. is the first teacher on my list.