"Specialist schools"

1) If a child sees no positive role models how do they learn what is acceptable in the wider world?
They WILL see positive role models. Teachers, for example. However, my experience with Mackerel is that he is very much drawn to less desirable role models and will be much more influenced by them. It seems to take a LOT of positives to have an effect, but very little negative. In terms of the context, though, he gets much more intense positives with deliberate, focussed teaching of what is acceptable in his current school. And even in less specialist schools, he had the ability to seek out the most disturbed kids anyway.

2) Do you think that a fragile attachment to adoptive parents suffering from blocked care could be further harmed by a Mon - Fri residential placement?
It's not ideal, but would a placement from Monday to Friday with parents suffering from blocked care help his attachment anyway? Maybe, with the break, the parents would be able to regroup and recover so that the weekends were proportionately "better". On the other hand, it's possible that they may find the weekends really difficult. I remember the dread of going to pick up Mackerel after he'd been away for a week at PGL. I felt physically sick going to get him. Maybe it would have been better if it had been regular and with the promise that he was only home for a few days?

With Mackerel, we'd have got payback at the weekends, coupled with the stress of coming home into a different environment and the stress of going off again on Monday. He found change difficult to cope with. We, personally, fought against a weekly placement for that reason and argued for a termly or full time one.

3) How have others coped with their child learning new behaviours from other children?
Well, he could do violence, aggression, bullying, threatening and stealing all by himself. He didn't need anyone to teach him those! For us, it's smoking, drinking and cannabis. Don't know if he's tried other drugs. How did we cope? Some anger, some resignation and some fatalism. It wasn't as bad as I would have expected. I guess I kind of feel that lots of teenagers do those things anyway. We have friends whose kids seem to do them more than Mackerel!

1) I don't think my DD saw positive role models in mainstream, not ones that she could identify as positive. She perceived children who were better than her, who could do things she couldn't do, who were worth more than her. She genuinely believed that every child in her class was bullying her. The only person she talked of as a friend was an older girl with substantial problems of her own; they met in internal exclusion.
Positive behaviour is consistently rewarded at DD's new school. This week, for the first time, she brought home the certificate for being the child in the whole of her school to have earned the most rewards. She hasn't had such a good week in the residential unit, but what she has there is a team of staff to help her sort out her friendships and deal with all the issues of social interaction -- staff who are being paid to be there and get to go home at the end of it, instead of one exhausted mother who struggled even to keep her safe.

2) I hate not having DD here. I fought the LA when they decreed that she should go back to school on a Sunday night instead of a Monday morning because I felt that we needed that time. But I haven't noticed much of a difference in her relationship with me. As Corkwing says, the transitions are hard, but they're less hard than having to deal with them every day. I was warned the weekends might get more difficult, with all the behaviours concertinaed into a few days, but I haven't really seen that. That said, I haven't seen any improvement either, not yet.

3) In our house this question comes down to swearing, which has increased a hundredfold. It is very hard to deal with. I have spent the morning being called every name you can imagine. But I suspect that sort of language would have come anyway, just a little later. And the fact is, she has always called me names of one sort or another.
As far as the things that Corkwing mentions are concerned, I don't think those have been worsened by school. DD is a little young to be dragged into some of them anyway, but the level of supervision makes them all that much less likely. The reduction in her level of independence has pretty much done away with the stealing already, because she has no opportunity to spend money unsupervised. As for the violence, that has always been directed almost entirely at me, so that's unchanged.

What I've got now is a child who has gone from being the troublemaking, non-achieving bane of a mainstream school to the much-praised shining light of a specialist school. She's actually trying to do her best, for the first time, and as a result she's actually learning.
I realise that must mean that there are other children at her school for whom it still isn't working, but for my DD it is the best best thing that could have happened to her. I still don't know if our relationship will hold up as she grows up, but the knowledge that there are places out there where she can achieve and get the support she needs makes me feel far better about the future, whatever it may be.

Good luck Monkey. Hope it works out for you and your LO.

Thank you everyone for your comments. It's really helpful to give DH & I things to consider and discuss.

Mudlark, we need to look at specialist school provision as LO's current school are barely managing to contain her. We've had a pretty frank conversation with the SENCO in the last week and we know that LO is on the verge of permanent exclusion.

We've spoken to various people recently (including SENDIASS) and there doesn't seem to be any suitable schools even vaguely close to us. There are some specialist schools for those with Autism and for those with severe learning difficulties but nothing that seems to "fit".

This residential school is one that was mentioned to us a few years ago by a psychologist. It's a specialist therapeutic school for children with attachment difficulties and that is why we've been to look. If it wasn't such a good match then I'm not sure that we'd be looking at a residential school .......yet.

I've had a few days off work recently and have kept LO off with me. We've had some lovely days and have created some masterpieces (including a life sized model of an Imperial Eagle!) and produced some good work in the process as well as having regular sensory input. However, I refuse to give up working (I have given up so much else and need something for me), I don't have the patience to do this regularly and I don't think I could keep up with the pace needed (she is soooo needy) so flexi / home schooling isn't an option.