I looove words.
My Wombats roll their eyes when I get excited over discovering the etymology of a particular word. I call them “boxer shorts” moments. That refers to the time when I realised why boxer shorts were so called. (I don’t follow boxing – that’s probably why it took me so long to figure out that rather obvious reference!)
The other day, I had one of those moments. I was thinking about the word “communicate”. Hmm – there’s the “com” bit, meaning “with”, and there’s the “uni” bit, meaning “one”. Maybe. “Making one”? “Making as one”? Or was it something completely different and I was getting excited over nothing?
I looked it up. Sure enough, “communicate” is derived from the Latin “communicare” – “to share, make common”. I was on the right track.
And that’s the thing about communication, isn’t it. It’s a two-way street. It involves giving and receiving information. It can be so easy to leave things unsaid, for many reasons. Some valid, some perhaps less so. We make assumptions about what’s going on. We’re embarrassed about something. We don’t want to over-share or over-question.
In the past few days, the value of honest, frank communication was brought home to me once more in a meeting with a school co-coordinator. One of my Wombats seemed to be having trouble dealing with the world around him. He was negative about what he was achieving in class, dismissive about doing anything at home to help with this and pessimistic about his immediate future. All this fed into a negative spiral which saw him missing school for three days.
We needed to communicate with his teachers honestly, and not pretend that he was home with a bad cold. He needed support, and we could only achieve that it everyone knew how he was feeling about life, the universe and everything.
Within a day, we had responses from three of his teachers, all of them happy with how he was going, but very open to talking over things with us. A couple of days later, his Maths teacher called.
“He hit the ground running in class yesterday,” he told me. “He’s doing just fine.”
Wow! That was not the impression Train Wombat had given us at home.
We met with his lovely French teacher. She too, was happy with how things were going in class.
“I’d never have known he was feeling like this,” she told us. “Thank you for letting us know.”
His Science teacher was full of praise for his work and his potential.
“He can easily do the advanced Science subject next year,” she assured us. ‘He’s a great student. More than capable. Perhaps we can structure things like this to help…”
A few days later we were trying to figure out why he had taken such a dislike to studying Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. I know the language is archaic and it’s a leerve story (Cue tittering from the girls) but his reaction to it was one of visceral anger. We contacted his teacher about our concerns. What an awesome lady. The following day, said Wombat emailed us to say she had given him Macbeth to study. As a Year 11 text, he seemed pleased with the prospect of a challenging read. He guessed that we had been in touch with his teacher, and expressed his gratitude.
“Comm – unicate”. To make common. To share. High functioning autism is often invisible to people during the day, as kids – and adults – do their best to manage the sensory, social and other challenges that are particular to them. By the time they get home, they’ve often had enough. That’s where things fall apart. That’s actually a good thing, in a way. Our Wombats are in a safe environment – hopefully! They’re with people who love and support them, even if we don’t always understand what in particular is driving their responses.
It’s the same with Littlest Wombat. He moans and groans about how dreadful school is. Yes, I know this is often common amongst kids, but our youngest takes this to new heights. Yet his teacher praises his engagement and interaction. It’s chalk and cheese. But we communicate. We send a “weather report” if we’re struggling with him, so the teacher is forewarned. And then usually, everything is completely fine.
Trying to work out what’s troubling your child can be like playing a desperate and elaborate guessing game, when they can’t – or won’t – tell you themselves. We won’t always guess right. But the last week has reinforced again in my mind that there is nothing to lose by communicating concerns with others who work with your children. Who knows – they might often be able to fill in missing pieces of the jigsaw.
So communicate with the teams that support your child. I appreciate this is not always as easy as it sounds. Communication over the years with Dancing Wombat’s school has been fraught and sometimes tense. However, we have overwhelmingly been fortunate in dealing with teachers who are open and interested, who care about their students as much as about their subjects, and who genuinely want to work in partnership with parents to make our kids’ schooling a positive experience.
To do that, we need to have common ground, common understandings, common information. We must be prepared to ‘communicare’.
Until next time, Happy Wombatting!
