Drama at Dance Class

Well,

I have a busy few days ahead, but first a bit about my weekend. On a normal Saturday Katie, Emma and my partners eldest child will attend their Street Dance club. This Saturday had to be slightly different.

The Reason? Katie. Last week she decided she didn’t want to join in with some of the dancing. She does this most weeks. She loves to dance but can’t seem to stick to the same plan the teachers have. She will dance for a bit then go a little crazy and end up distracting a teacher, this normally leads to Katie having great fun taking this teacher on a walk around the building and messing around.
It appears that last week the teachers had another idea to combat this. They decided that if Katie didn’t want to join in that was fine, but she was to go sit on a chair and watch the rest of them. Katie, being Katie, she was unimpressed by this idea, and upon been asked to go and sit out-of-the-way, threw one of her amazing temper tantrums. This is a first for my poor children’s street dance teachers. Unfortunately this being a first for them, they decided it was best to try to talk sense to her, but still with the same  instruction of go sit on the chair.

In Katie land this type of demand from people will only act to enrage her further. Needless to say after the screaming, stamping and throwing herself to the floor comes the kicking. The poor dance teacher never stood a chance. She was using her tried and tested technique that worked with all the other children, but it was only pushing Katie further and then BAM she gets a kick to the leg.

I have tried to explain to her teachers about PDA and was pretty sure they got it. In fact they run some amazing dance classes for children with autism. Just seems Katie has got them stumped. This performance from Katie earned her a week ban. Not from her lovely teachers but me.

Katie is an amazing little dancer, when she wants to be. She also attends a Drama club in term time. Drama has about the same amount of success as dance. She loves it and always wants to go. I dread picking her up because I know when I get there I will get that look. It’s the look of a stressed teacher. I often spend the 10 minutes before the class ends peeking though the window so I can prepare myself for Katie’s adventures at drama. Normally Katie’s drama teachers starts with

“Katie’s been really good but…she didn’t join in, she screamed, she talked very loudly, she went off and played her own games and distracted the rest of the class.”

These I can cope with. Nothing prepared me for the day I picked her up and was confronted by a really stressed teacher. “Today Katie decided it was a nice day outside” apparently Katie had stated this then opened the door and walked out into the car park. When asked to come back inside by her teacher she stated the same thing. The poor teacher was despairing as to how she would convince her to come back in the room whilst trying to help her assistant control the rest of the children. It seems that this whole stand-off was ended by a parent who had listened at the first session when I explained about the way Katie is. This brave parent took Katie on. She went outside but Katie won’t normally speak to people if they speak to her first. She never has. This super mum managed to play this out and cope with it. She then took my advice from the first session, didn’t make any demands like go inside or else! She got down on Katie’s level and said

“Lets play a game. I’m going to close my eyes, lets see if you can manage to go back inside before I open them.”

Katie’s brain fired up again and she was inside like a shot pleased that she had managed to win this game. I never managed to thank this super mum. I was too busy being slightly embarrassed and apologising.

This is one of my main learning points with Katie, sometimes you have to learn when to not worry about what people think and have fun, being who you are.