What a Day!

My daughter had a school trip to Tatton Park today which is pretty exciting in itself but it was also her teacher's 60th Birthday too and to celebrate that and also that she is retiring at the end of this school year while they were on the trip she bought them all an ice cream or ice lolly. How lovely is that?!

Of course, never being one to pass up an opportunity to make a card, I made this one for Ellie's teacher. It does say Happy 60th Birthday on it but you can't see it very well on the photo for some reason?! The little charm hanging off the flower is a dragonfly.
The papers for this are all by Hot Off The Press. I think they are gorgeous and are lovely to work with. They aren't as thick as the K&Co but the designs and colours are beautiful. The stamp inside says "Happy Birthday! How many fingers are you? Shane O'Donnell, Aged 4"
Ellie's says that her teacher giggled when she read it. :-)

This afternoon we had Joshua's statement review. I always dread it and work myself up into a bit of a tizzy over it. We always have to face the headmistress and I can't stand her and she can't stand me. We came to verbal blows over Josh and how the school was treating him a few years ago. I was trying to explain how they could help him as he was coming home very distressed every day (see previous post here for more info) and I was basically told that the school is perfect and that they couldn't possibly do any more than they were already which was incredibly frustrating to hear. Since that day forward we've both harboured a grudge and hate each other with a passion. So the Statement reviews as a result are always very stressful.

Anyway what completely failed to register with me this time around, is that the Head is no longer the SENCO! Hurray!

Last year she was in the process of handing over to Mrs S (Who is our angel and I love to bits because she's so fab!) so they were both at the meeting, this year Mrs S has taken over completely so no headmistress!!!!!!!!!!!

All that stressing for nothing! Bah Bl***y Humbug!!!

I don't mind saying though, it was such a different meeting without her there. It was so relaxed and informal and nice. A complete 180 from all the meetings we've had in the past. The atmosphere was great. In previous meetings it has been so tense and everyone as been on edge and everyone just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. Not good.

The SENCO from the High School was at the meeting this time and she took lots of notes on the points we made about Josh and where he struggles, and what he's going to need a lot of help with. She was so positive, as was Mrs S and Joshua's class teacher that he has now. I came out feeling really good about it all. It made a wonderful change. I'm actually sat here with a smile on my face and not chuntering about it at all which is what I normally do afterwards! LOL!

It's mad to think our next one will be at the High School. Wow! I wonder what that will be like?! Hmmmmm! :-)

An Autism Post.

My Hubby read this article out to me yesterday and I must admit it brought a tear to my eye. It makes me all emotional when people go out of their way to help, especially when autistic kids are involved. It makes you realise that there are lots of good people out there who are prepared to think outside the box in order to understand and help. It just a shame my son's school doesn't share the same mind set. Anyway I thought I'd copy the article from the BBC News website and share it with you. Hope you don't mind. It's such a lovely story.

Thai 'Spider-Man' to the rescue

An unusual disguise has helped a Bangkok fireman rescue an eight-year-old boy who had climbed on to a third-floor window ledge, Thai police say.

The firefighter dressed up as the comic book superhero Spider-Man in order to coax the boy, who is autistic, from his dangerous perch.

Police said teachers had alerted the fire station after the boy began crying and climbed out of a classroom window.

It was reportedly his first day at the special needs school.

Efforts by the teachers to persuade the pupil to come back inside had failed.

But a remark by his mother about his passion for comic superheroes prompted fireman Somchai Yoosabai to rush back to the station, where he kept a Spider-Man costume in his locker.

The sight of Mr Somchai dressed as Spider-Man and holding a glass of juice for him, brought a big smile to the boy's face, and he promptly threw himself into the arms of his "superhero", police said.

Mr Somchai normally uses the costume to liven up fire drills in schools.

Disneyland Paris

We had a fabulous time in Disneyland Paris, the weather was wonderful, the hotel was great and the kids were fabulous and just enjoyed it all so much. It was a really great holiday. However I there was an incident that happened while we were out there that really frustrated me and made me realise that even with the best intentions even places like Disney can get it so wrong and I have to say I thanked my lucky stars that Josh is only mildly autistic and realised how different a holiday it would be if he were more severe.
Let me explain what happened. While Ellie and I were queuing to get on the Flying Dumbos a little boy and his family came up the wheelchair entrance to the ride. The boy looked about 7 or 8 ish and his sister looked just a little bit older. As the boy was wearing industrial strength headphones over his ears I made the presumption he was autistic and had auditory sensitivity hence the headphones to reduce the noise level.



Anyway the ride stopped and a "cast member" let the family in. However before they could get seated they opened the gates for the people to get on who had queued up. The mum with the Autistic child had tried to get him on the nearest Dumbo which happened to be a blue one but unfortunately for her but he needed to go in a purple one. So as she went to find a purple one with him, the dad and sister got into the blue one together. Because the cast member had already let everyone else in, by the time they got round to a purple one someone had already got in it. Now anyone who has had any experience with Autism will know that when a child with autism decides only a particular colour will do, then it really does have to be that colour or not at all, and before you all start shouting "Oh it's just because they are spoilt. I'd just make him go in the blue one and have done with it" Let me explain that forcing that little boy to sit in the blue Dumbo would be like forcing you sit in a bath full of whatever your biggest phobia is. You would scream the place down with fear and that is exactly how the autistic child would react. It is nothing like having a spoilt child!

With all the kerfuffle the mum ended up going on with the little girl and the boy had to wait behind the barrier with his dad. When the ride stopped the Mum did exactly what I would have done and stood by a purple Dumbo and motioned for the dad to bring the boy in. He did and they both got in and were ready to go. Now I wasn't close enough to hear the what was said but a Cast member came over and had a conversation with them and made the boy and his dad get out.


At this point I have to say I wanted to leap over the barriers and slap the cast member I was feeling so frustrated for the poor family. So all four of them had to go back behind the barrier and wait again. When the ride stopped again the cast member still wouldn't let them get on the ride and in the end they left without the boy getting a turn at all. I was really upset and wished I could have done something to help even if it was just to tell the family that I was feeling their frustration but I was stuck in the middle of the queue and they'd gone by the time Ellie and I got to go on.


Why the cast member just couldn't have let him go on the purple one second time around is beyond me but it really shows that although they have access for kids with special needs there is still the lack of understanding as to how specific those needs can be. I did keep a look out for the family for the rest of our time there but I didn't see them again after that. I just hope that the rest of their experiences in Disneyland were much better and that was the worst they had to go through. Like I said at the beginning it made me feel very lucky that Josh is the way he is. Don't get me wrong he has his problems. It wasn't totally plain sailing for us either - we had to come out of Armageddon as in the build up to it we had to practise being scared and screaming and that gave him an auditory overload and he couldn't cope with it and we had to leave. Peej also took him on the Tower Of Terror and they loved it so much they decided to go on again, they just got seated and Josh freaked out and said he wanted to get off so they had to release the seat belts again and let them off. He also refused point blank to do the "Honey I Shrunk the Audience" and there were a few other minor incidents that happened as well but these are just little things and didn't really affect the holiday at all. We can just go with the flow and work round it. We certainly don't have the pressure of having to go in a certain colour. Josh is absolutely fine with queuing up to go on rides and most of the time the general noise in the park doesn't bother him, one or two songs got on his nerves but he coped really well with it but it could so easily be a very different story.

The Worst Year of My Life

This sounds like a rather depressing title for a blog entry but really it's about realising the inner strength we all have inside ourselves to cope when things are at there worst and realising that you can get through it and come out the other side however bad it may seem at the time.

Once Josh got his official diagnosis we started the statementing process. We could have started it earlier had we known how the system worked but we thought the school had to do it and the school said they couldn't start until he had been formally diagnosed. It was either Roz or Claire from the DATA team (autism diagnostic team) at Macclesfield Hospital who told us that as parents you can start the statementing process at any time if you feel your child needs extra help in school or nursery whether they have a formal diagnosis or not. She said we needed to send a letter the the LEA explaining why we thought Joshua needed statementing. She explained that it helps if child in question has a formal diagnosis and if you can get backing from the school too but that isn't absolutely necessary. However as Josh had both then the LEA would be more likely to say yes to assessing him to see if he was eligible for statementing.Now I know some people who have sailed through the statementing process and had no problems at all, but for us it was a incredibly stressful made all the more worse by an un co-operative school and an even more un co-operative teacher (more about her later) Add to that an incompetent, manipulative, unmovable, inexperienced caseworker from the LEA and you can begin to see what we were up against.

I was advised to get in touch with the National Autistic Society and I was assigned a lady called Jo (who is another angel disguised as a human being) she helped me write the letters I needed to write and proof read everything I sent to the LEA to see if there was anything I'd missed or needed amending. Jo recommended that we hire an Independent Educational Psychologist to go into the school and assess what Joshua's needs were in the school environment. The NAS have a list of the Ed Psycs they recommend, ones who kind of specialise in doing these sorts of assessments on autistic kids for the statementing process. They are very professional and will go to tribunal with you (if it gets that far) and will help you argue your case. The one the NAS recommended in our area was fully booked up and couldn't take us on but she recommended another lady called Ann Marie who turned out to be another angel that touched our lives and I think I would have been locked away in the funny farm a long time ago if it hadn't been for her support.

What they don't tell you when you start the statement process is that the LEA have a limited budget for providing help to SN children in schools. So they will go into school and assess your child but then they will offer the minimum amount of assistance and provision they can in order to prevent spending their budget. They will swear until they're red in the face that what they are offering is what's best for your child and will spin you all sorts of stories to support their decisions. If we hadn't had Ann Marie to give us the benefit of her experiences and providing us with the perspective to see it from her side we'd have been brain washed into believing that what the LEA was saying was true. As we'd never seen a statement before when we received the first draft from the LEA to our untrained eyes it seemed fabulous and looked as though Josh's needs were all covered but when we showed that same statement Ann Marie she pulled it to pieces.

For example things which sounded good to me like "Joshua would benefit from access to Speech and Language Therapy" made Ann Marie really mad. She said "yes, he would benefit from it but that doesn't say he has to have it or how often. The SLT could see Josh once a year by that and still be legally fulfilling the statement." Now try and pin the LEA down to changing that sentence to say something along the lines of "Joshua needs to have regular access to Speech and Language Therapy which should be a minimum of once a month" and see how far you get!! In the end, after taking the LEA to two tribunals, I think we got "Joshua would benefit from continued access to the Speech and Language Therapy Service, as deemed appropriate by that Service."

We fought against nearly every written word of his original statement. I lost count of the amount of meetings we had with the LEA to try to agree on the details and how many hours support he would get. In the end going to tribunal was our only option as we'd got to a point where somethings were agreed on but we'd come to a stale mate over the remaining issues and it had become obvious that neither of us was going to budge.

On top of all the stress with the statement and going to two tribunals (the LEA messed up after the first one and we ended up having to go back a second time) we were also having problems with Josh. Josh's teacher that year, we'll call her Mrs. X was an absolute nightmare. Most of the other children in Josh's class found her hard to deal with, so for Josh, she was just the worst teacher he could ever have had. Mrs X would be as nice as pie one minute then shouting and mad as hell the next. Josh doesn't like shouting at the best of times, add that to the unpredictability of not knowing when she was going to erupt you can understand why she screwed him up.

Other things that didn't help the situation were things like:

Josh still didn't have a visual timetable in school even though we'd been pushing for one for over 3 years. Although he had his calender at home which told him what days he was going to school, he didn't have anything to prepare him for his daily routine once he got into school.

Because in year 3 he was now a junior Josh was having to go into school through a different entrance which was around the other side of the school however his classroom was still in the infant part of the building so he had to walk all the way through the school back to the infant end to get to his classroom. This confused and upset him no end and often I couldn't get him into school unless I walked down the corridor with him. Mrs X didn't like that and we ended up having an altercation about it.

When Josh started in Mrs. X's class she admitted to me that didn't have any knowledge or understand of autism and instead of taking the opportunity of the 6 weeks holiday to look into it and research it before having Josh in her class she decided she would wait and "learn through Josh." As a result of this inspired decision (please note the sarcasm here) Josh spent the entire year completely distressed on on edge. He had to be repeatedly taken out of the classroom by his poor one to one on a regular basis each day in order for him to be able to calm down enough to be able to rejoin his class. I think he ended up spending more time walking round the school with his one to one that year than he did actually in it learning anything!

The frustrating thing was that no matter how many times I tried to explain to Mrs X that she could make hers and Josh's life easier by preventing the blow ups in the first place just by providing him with an autistic friendly environment in the classroom, she wouldn't have it and was not prepared to listen to anything I nor Mrs F (JJ's one to one) had to say to her. Mrs X's response was "I already work a 70 hour week! I couldn't possibly do anything more for Josh that what I am doing already" I was so worried at one point because I really thought we were going to loose Mrs F because of the ignorance of Mrs X and the effect that was having on her too. Mrs F was the only thing that was keeping Josh and me going and if she'd left I think I would have gone under. Mrs F is another angel. She was like having a Grandma in school to watch over Josh while I couldn't.

When it came time for Joshua's assessments by the LEA's health professions and by Ann Maire Mrs X didn't like it. She felt these people were judging her too and she made life very difficult for them. She took a particular dislike to Ann Marie and was not only incredibly rude to her, she also refused to allocate any time to speak with her about Josh and then prevented her from spending any time talking with Mrs F who really wanted to help and just wasn't allowed to. I know this really upset her at the time as she felt she had let us down.

The effect being in Mrs X's class had on Josh was devastating. Every day he would come out of school and say he'd had a "Red Day," He would say that he hated school and wished that he was dead. He would then say he wanted me to die so that then there would be no one to take him to school any more and he wouldn't have to go. Josh was a ticking time bomb that year, the slightest little thing would cause him to erupt in a frenzy. He would bang his head on the nearest hard object, he'd stamp up stairs and slam his bedroom door then he would stand behind it to prevent me from coming in but he would continue to bang the door with his foot or his head I'm not sure which. At the same time he would rant about how he hated being part of this family and he didn't think he should live with us because he thought we were aliens and that he just wanted to die so that he didn't have to be part of this world or our family anymore. Now I'm quite thick skinned and I try not to take things like this to heart as I know it's his anger and frustration talking and he soon changes his mind once he's calmed down but I still find it heart breaking to hear, it's not something you expect a child of 7 to say no matter how bad their day has been and I just want to take it all away from him but I can't. What really upset me and frustrated me the most was that it could all have been avoided if his teacher had just taken the time to listen and put into practise what people were telling her.

Even when the statement was all sorted (2 tribunals later) and all Joshua's needs were being addressed in his statement, I still had no power to make the teachers carry it out. I doubted that Mrs B even read it let alone made any attempt to change anything she was doing to comply with his new statement. It was a very hard, upsetting and frustrating year for us all and one I never wish to repeat.

Luckily the year after that Josh had the most fantastic teacher in the world ever. After Mrs X, Mrs S was a true gift. I lost count of the amount of times I told her I loved her and I think her husband was getting rather worried by the end of the school year! :-) The first time was when she told me that she could tell when Josh was starting to get worked up about something and all she had to do was lean over him and a piece of her hair would fall forward. Josh would notice the hair and start playing with it and he would calm right down. It was something so simple and yet it made a huge difference to Josh. I could have kissed her! But instead I just said "I love you" Both Mrs. S and Mrs. F couldn't help laughing me, but it was just lovely to hear that Josh finally had a teacher that understood him and could read him and knew how to defuse him before he'd even realised himself that he was getting agitated. Mrs S gave me back my son and made me realise the difference a good teacher can make by doing "nothing much really" (her words) other than taking the time to understand about autism and I will always love her for that.

A Little Bit More About Autism

Firstly I like to say thanks to everyone who has been reading my posts on Autism and thank you all for your kind words and support too. I'm really not a hero though, I just do what most mothers would do for their children - give love and support and try to understand and help him to the best of my ability. OK so Josh may need a little more understanding and help than the average child but he's so worth it and I've learnt so much from him that I would not have learnt if he wasn't Josh.

When Josh was 2 and a half he started going to pre-school. He'd been going a while when one of the teachers came back to work after being off on leave for a few months after loosing her baby. After a few weeks of being back she asked if she could have a word with me in the back room. My first thought was "Oh my goodness what has Josh done?!" She sat me down and explained to me that her son was autistic and although she was no expert she could see a lot of similarities between her son and things that Josh did. She said Josh didn't give eye contact and that when she'd watched him playing with the garage he walked over other children to get round the other side to get his car without seeming to notice that the other children were there. I think I was just so shocked that I just thanked her for telling me and did a runner with Josh back home. I then sat and cried for about 3 hours. I sobbed my heart out. I'd known for a long time in my heart there was something "wrong" with Josh but so many people had reassured me that boys were always slow to speak or that he seemed perfectly OK to them that I had started to hope they might be right and I was wrong.

What made it worse for me was that the only thing I knew about autism at that stage, was from a programme I had watched about a little autistic boy in Britain that used to bite his own hand and kick his mum. His parents had worked and saved and done fund raisers in order to get enough money together to send their child to a special school in America. When they eventually went back to see him after he had been there a quite a few months they were amazed because he hugged them for the first time ever. I'd just split up from Joshua's dad and was wondering how on Earth I was going to get enough money together to send my son to America and if I got it how would I be able to cope being parted from my son for that length of time. Every time I thought about the separation I would just sob my heart out all over again.

Eventually I pulled myself together and called Josh's old playgroup leader. I knew her from staying to help out at the playgroup when she was having problems with a member of staff just not turning up for work and giving to notice that she wasn't coming in. I knew Rachel had two boys who were both on the Autistic Spectrum and I asked her if she would come up and have a look at Josh and tell me why his new playgroup leader had come to this conclusion, as I must admit, I didn't really get it.

Rachel was brilliant, not only did she point out autistic traits as he was doing them but she also got me to write them all down to show the GP when we went. She explained that the Doctor should refer Josh to a pediatrician who would decide whether they thought Josh was fine or needed further assessment. I'm so glad I had that list because the Doctor wasn't convinced at all that Josh had any problems out of the ordinary. I kept telling her that these were things that someone had pointed out me and she had two sons on the autistic spectrum and if there was something I wanted to know sooner rather than later so I could get him the help he needed. I think because I was so insistent she agreed to refer Josh to a Paediatrician but she was keen to point out that she didn't think anything would come of it.

To cut a long story short, a few years later Josh was eventually diagnosed as being on the milder end of the autistic spectrum/borderline Aspergers. Fairly recently I decided to find out what the difference was between the two as I'm frequently asked what the difference is and I had to admit I didn't actually know. So after much research, and it's not that easy to find out, I now believe that the distinguishing feature that defines whether a child is "mildly autistic" or "Aspergers" is down to whether they have delayed speech as a baby or not. Because Josh had delayed speech he's mildly autistic. However if he'd not had speech delay but still had the traits he has then he would be diagnosed as Aspergers. I hope I've got that right!

Just after we moved to Cheshire Joshua started seeing a speech and language therapist called Rose. This woman will always be seen as an angel in my eyes. She gave me so much insight into my child and gave me so many ways in which I could make his life easier for him and I can never thank her enough for that.

On our first visit to Rose she asked me if I'd had it explained to me what having autism is like. I hadn't, so she explained it to me like this:

You know when you start a new job or you go for a job interview and you feel excited but nervous at the same time. You don't know who you are going to meet or whether they will be nice or nasty. You don't know what questions you are going to asked or what you are going to be asked to do. You know there are certain things they are going to be watching you for and you really don't want to mess up and you need to give a good impression so you are really making an effort to be the person they want you to be. For someone on the autistic spectrum that is how it feels every single day of your life.


That was the first real understanding I had of what Josh's world was like for him. I suddenly understood why he wanted to control as much of his environment as could. This is why Josh always had to press the button on the microwave and would become distraught if I forgot or thought it would be quicker to do it myself than try to distract him from the TV. Josh had to press the button on the washing machine. When we moved here he had to set the alarm when we out of the house. He had to go the same way to pre-school every morning and he had to have a sausage roll on the way back from pre-school every lunch time. It was his way of gaining control of some thing in his life and why he got so distraught when he "lost" that control by someone else pressing the button or setting the alarm or having to go a different way to pre-school.

The first thing Rose suggested was to give Josh a calender to go in his bedroom and to write everything on it. You can get things called PECS which are picture cards to represent different activities that children will do every day and a lot of severely autistic or non verbal autistics use these on a time line to let them know what is going to happen. As Josh was such a great reader we decided not to use these and just to write on his calender what he would be doing each day. At the end of every day we cross off today and talk about whet is on the calender for tomorrow and if there is anything out of the ordinary coming up like a holiday or sports day at school then we will talk about that too.

Once we put this into place Josh was like a different child. We'd only been doing the calender for a few months when Josh stopped needing to press the button on the microwave. If he was in the kitchen he'd be asked if he wanted to do it but if he was in another room and he heard the microwave "ping" as it finished he would be fine with it and would not burst into floods of tears and bang his head violently on the floor as he would have done before. Now, of course, the microwave and washing machine hold no appeal at all. He still has an interest in electronic things and likes to press the button to unlock the car but it's not something he "has" to do, it's just something he likes to do, and that's a huge difference.

More For Autism Awareness

This will have to be a quick post as I need to start cooking dinner in a bit and then I'm out at Bunco shortly afterwards. So, to continue from yesterday...

Josh loves anything electronic always has even from being very young. One of his earliest fascinations was with the light switch. If I could have held him by the light switch on the wall all day he would have been quite happy just switching the light on and off from sunrise to sunset. He thought it was fab. Because of Josh's love of electronics he had bought for him a couple of VTech Early learning computers/laptops which taught phonics and letter names and a few words and through playing with these Josh taught himself to read. When I realised this was what he was doing and I picked it up and ran with it and went out and bought flash cards to help him to learn more words. By the time he started school at the age of 4 he had a word recognition of over 150 words and that was only the ones I knew he knew there were plenty he knew that I had no idea he knew, if you know what I mean.

Having said that, although Josh was and still is a brilliant reader there are two things I need to point out.

One is that Josh doesn't read the individual letters, he recognises the shape, so often when he is reading he will mix up words like would and could because they have the same shape, if you just say "try again" he will repeating the same word each time and it's not until you make him stop properly and then point out the first letter that he will realise his mistake.

Second although Josh reads the words well he doesn't always understand the content. This is very noticeable when reading fiction with inferred meaning. If it's not there in black and white then it's not happening. It is heart breaking to hear him read sometimes because you know he just isn't getting the depth of it. For example Josh read a book recently and as I was listening to him read I knew that what he was getting from the story was, that the boy was reading his essay in the hall in front of some important guests and the headmaster and the boy started to feel sick, this made him cry and he ran out of the hall where he bumped into his teacher and was really nasty to her and that made him run away and get drunk. What Josh was missing was that the boy had actually had a break down in the hall because his parents were going through a separation and the boy was finding it difficult to deal with because his parents were arguing over him and he wasn't seeing his dad enough. The information about the split was there at the beginning of the book but it didn't say that's why the boy felt sick in the hall and couldn't continue reading, it didn't say the boy was having a break down, all these things you need to put together for yourself and unfortunately it is this that goes straight over Joshua's head. When I try to explain to him the things he's missed Josh can't understand how I get that from reading what he's just read.

I'm really sorry I'm going to have to stop there. I should have more time tomorrow so I'll write more then.

April Is Autism Awareness Month.

I spent a lot of time last night reading the blogs of people who are blogging for autism awareness. Reading these blogs made me laugh and they made me cry but they also inspired to share a bit more Josh with all of you and in doing so I hope to do my bit for Autism awareness too.


OK. Where to start? I guess at the beginning is good.


Josh was born in June 1998, it was a pretty normal, straight forward birth with no complications and I was allowed to take Joshua home from the hospital later that same day. I always think myself lucky in that although Josh was my first child I had worked with young children since leaving school and was an NNEB qualified Nursery Nurse. I'd worked in Nurseries and as a sole charge nanny for a family with two daughters aged 18 months and 4 months so I knew what children should be doing at certain ages and stages of development first hand. The thing I didn't know a lot about then was autism.

When Josh was a baby I knew I should be able to distinguish his cries, with the 4 month old I had nannied for I knew exactly which cry was a tired cry, which was hungry, which was give me some attention etc. With Josh all his cries sounded the same to me, I couldn't tell any difference. I thought maybe a was a bad mum, that maybe I should have stuck to looking after other peoples children. Why could I tell the difference between a looked after child's cries but not have a clue about my own? That was Josh's first struggle with communication but it didn't stop there.


Doing the weekly food shop with Josh was always an experience. He would cry from the moment we walked in through the doors of the supermarket to the moment we walked out again. I know now that the poor child must have been having a sensory overload between the lights, the noise, the hordes of people, the shelves slacked high with various different coloured products not to mention the smells and changes in temperature. It's no wonder he screamed, but we hadn't a clue back then and we'd just joke to the checkout lady on the way out that he was just a typical male - hated shopping!

Josh was very late in talking and when he did start he might say a word one day several times but then as quickly as he'd said it it was gone. I thought maybe I'd imagined it and that he hadn't really said that word at all, it just sounded like that's what he'd said but it was just that the words didn't have any meaning to him. My dad was once listening to Josh "talk" and he said "It's like he's got the tune but doesn't know the words." and that's exactly what it was like. Josh had the rhythms and intonation of speech but totally lacked the words to go with it.


When Josh did eventually start speaking meaningfully I honestly thought his first word would be "Cat" I'd have even have put money on it. We had a fluffy cat called fluff cat (of course!) and also two other cats that lived two doors down that came to visit on a daily basis so the house always had at least one cat in it if not two or usually the three. So you would naturally expect being around cats so much that Josh's first word would be Cat or something along those lines. No. Joshua's first word was "there-you-go" said as all one word. Why "there-you-go"? I hear you ask. Well that's what I would say to him when I gave him his cup of juice or a snack. I think Josh liked the rhythm of it, the way it sounded, I don't think he associated it much with what I was giving him at the time.

Shortly after that Josh taught himself to read but I think I'll save that chapter for tomorrow! :-)

A Little Bit On Autism

I was doing some blog hopping this morning and came across a blog called Alien Adventures.

One of the posts on this blog was entitled Autism Awareness - What's in your fridge?
I can really understand where the writer is coming from on this, being the mum of an autistic son myself, so I've asked her permission to put it on my blog and she very kindly said yes. I hope you get as much from reading this as I did. Her whole blog is fabulous actually, she has a lovely writing style (I've been lost in it for the past hour) and I thoroughly recommend checking it out when you have some time to spare. She does crafting too!


Autism Awareness - What's in your fridge?
I read an article on the Internet today by a young student doctor who happens to be on the Autistic Spectrum. He had an interesting view on the way in which most people make friends actually reinforces the stereotypical views of autism. Many people believe that somebody with Autism doesn't want to interact, that it's actually part of the condition not to want to be involved and to be locked into their own little world.

However, this is a misconception. Many people on the spectrum desperately want to be involved and have friends, but have difficulty in knowing the rules that make such friendships possible. They are not skilled in the social necessities of friendship and as such tend not to be at the top of the lists of others when picking friends.

The way most people interact with others is like how I interact with the food in my fridge. I will typically buy all kinds of food I think about eating. In time, some food gets consumed more often than others. Over time, I will purchase more of my favourite foods and ignore the ones that I don't like as much. When it does come time for me to notice the forgotten food, usually because my husband goes to raid the fridge and moans at me about the out of date contents, it will have gone mouldy, and smelly. As a result, the expired food is then thrown in the bin.

How does this relate to prejudice, specifically prejudice against autism? The people we interact with are like the food we keep in our fridge. Occasionally we give a nod to those we may not feel most comfortable interacting with, and they lay forgotten while we "consume" opportunities to socialize with people we are more comfortable with. All the while, our perceptions of those people we have forgotten are decomposed by stereotypes, misconceptions, and ignorance. It then won't be long before those people are permanently forgotten.

Our parents have always told us not to be picky about our food. If we take their advice, we often find that the foods we shunned due to their unfamiliarity become our favourites. Perhaps they should've told us the same message about people.

Retirement Card

This is the card I have made for Josh's one to one. She retires tomorrow after being Josh's one to one for the past two and a half years. We've also bought her a huge bunch of flowers and a bottle of Champagne and of course the mini book. I'm so emotional I just know I'm going to end up in floods of tears tomorrow. She's a wonderful person and we will all miss her very much.

Not The Best Day Ever!

We had a friend of Ellie's round to play for the day yesterday. I'll refer to the child as EF (as in Ellie's Friend) from here on in just to make it simpler. My friend brought EF round at 8.30am while my two were still fast asleep in bed. However once my friend had left for work it wasn't long before Josh and Ellie emerged all energetic and ready to start the day.

I knew we were going to be in for a rough ride, when, about half an hour later Josh announced that he couldn't bear to be in the same room as EF. As Josh had already had his breakfast by this point I suggested he went upstairs to go on the PlayStation as then he would be away from EF. I don't really like Josh going on the PlayStation until at least after lunch but sometimes rules have to give a bit especially in situations like this.

It was all going well until Josh decided he was bored on his own and wanted Ellie to play with him. I pointed out that Ellie could come and join him but then EF would want to come too, would that be OK? I guess it wasn't because at that point Josh flew into a rage, stormed off to his bedroom and slammed the door. He then stood behind it with his shoulder wedged under the handle to hold it up so I couldn't get in, going on about how he hates life and he hates me and he hates EF and it's all so unfair... rah rah rah! I have to admit that I actually like standing behind the door listening to the stuff he comes out with because some of it is really funny and other times it can be very insightful into what it is exactly that's upset him. I listened in for a bit while got everything of his chest while intermittently banging against the door until I decided the door had taken enough of a battering and forced the door open (thank goodness for all those gym sessions!) so that I could try to talk to him and calm him down. Josh rushed over to stare out of the window with his hands over his ears which basically translates as
"I'm feeling very angry right now and if you try to talk to me about what just happened I'm going to get even more angry because I'm not ready for you to talk me out of it yet"
So I didn't try to talk to him instead I told him I loved him and gave him a kiss and told him I was sorry he was having such a bad day. Then I explained that it was nearly 12 o'clock and would he like a chocolate spread sandwich for lunch? All this caught him completely off guard and he forgot about being angry and went back to play on the PlayStation until lunch was ready.

Lunch went well and afterwards Ellie and her friend went upstairs to play on the PlayStation while Josh stayed downstairs and watched a bit of Boomerang. This was okay until EF got fed up with the PlayStation and came down and started watching TV with Josh. As soon as Josh noticed he kicked off big style! Ran off to his bedroom again. SLAM went the door. Chunter, chunter, mutter, mutter, all the way. I did the big "here we go again" sigh and trudged up the stairs after him, leaving EF looking completely bewildered as to what exactly Josh's problem was. I managed to bring JJ round eventually (several suggestions later) by getting him to agree to watched Boomerang on the TV in my room. Luckily as we were switching it on, a film that he really wanted to watch came on so he sat engrossed in that until EF went home at 6pm.

Now if you think that was the end of it you're sadly mistaken that was just the Josh part of it. Oh no it doesn't end there. Throughout the course of the day EF wanted to play outside, but not alone, only with Ellie. Now they played out together really nicely in the morning. They played on their bikes and I'd got the Thomas the Tank Engine tent out and everything and they'd had a great time. However Ellie had decided that once was enough and no matter how much EF begged, pleaded and nagged she was adamant that she was not going to play out again... and boy did EF beg, plead and nag! EF begged, pleaded and nagged Ellie to play out again. EF begged, pleaded and nagged me to try to get me to persuade Ellie to go outside and when that didn't work EF went back and begged, pleaded and nagged Ellie again until she got so sick of it that she told her friend that she didn't like them any more. At which point EF burst into tears.

I suggested EF leave Ellie alone for a bit and then she might want to play again as constantly nagging her obviously wasn't working. Luckily EF took the advice and 10 minutes later they were playing nicely together again. Just in time for EF to be picked up by Dad and taken home.

Lets just chalk that one up to experience and say I've had better days!!




Like today for example :-)

Today was a good day. Started off well, with a cup of tea in bed, brought to me by my wonderful hubby! Now I need to make a slight confession here... because I was having a bad day yesterday I decided to order some new craft stuff to cheer me up, well that and being a design team member for Papercraft Junkies I now get 15% discount on Crafty Carrot.com (sister site to Papercraft Junkies) and Tracey's got a sale on at the moment and I need to be prepared for the Design Team Challenges so it would be kind of rude not to order something wouldn't it?!! Anyway put the order in at about 3pm yesterday afternoon and the postman delivered it this morning!! How fab is that?!! Any day's a good day when you get new craft stuff delivered!





We went off to Stockport this morning to do some shopping and to get the kids out of the house after being in all day yesterday. Josh was in a really good mood until just before we pulled into the car parking space and then for apparently no reason he started getting really upset and refused to get out of the car. When I asked him what the problem was it seems that he was having flash backs to a scary part of a film we let him watch last night, supposedly as a treat, to make up for his bad day. It was only a PG film but I guess after the day he'd had it was just a bit too much for him to handle and it had stuck in his head. I must admit I really thought he was going to win this battle but I eventually talked him into getting out of the car to come shopping with us but he wasn't happy about it. Half way into the town centre from the car park, he was still muttering to himself and suddenly decided he'd do a runner from me. Luckily I saw him about to go and I grabbed his arm before he could get any distance between us. I took him to one side and had a little chat about us all having a bad day yesterday and that we needed this one to be better. I explained to him that if he didn't change his attitude then we were all going to have another rotten day. I said that I didn't like this Josh very much and could I have my nice Josh back. He thought about it for a bit and then he smiled and he was great after that.

We went into Adams to try to get Ellie some more green school summer dresses but it's turning into a bit of a farce, needless to say they didn't have any in the size I wanted, so we went next door to Barclay's and paid some cheques in. Josh found a box of pens that said "need a pen... feel free" on it (or words to that effect) and read it out loud. I asked him if he wanted one and a big grin spread across his face. I passed him one - made his day! If I'd know a free pen would make him that happy I'd have given him one yesterday!! The rest of the shopping trip went without incident other than Josh pretending the pen was a gun and shooting everyone that went past. Ho hum. As they were so well behaved I treated them to a go on the little roundabout that's always in the middle of the precinct.

We called in at the new big Next store on the way back to the car and Ellie chose the funkiest Pepper Pig wellies. They're bright yellow with pink flowers on them. She's such a girlie girl not like her mum!!! I think I may have to take a photo of them before they get dirty and do a scrapbook layout of them. I have some lovely new pink and yellow papers that would go great! Oooh feel a crafty moment coming on....

This afternoon I was gently reminded that it's my turn to chose the theme for the 2nd Challenge for Papercraft Junkies so I've just been and posted my theme on the design Team thread ready for everyone to get stuck into over the coming week. I managed to do two pieces of work for the 1st Challenge in the end which I'm quite pleased with.

If you would like to take part in the 1st Challenge or you just want to check out the Design Teams creations for it then it goes live on Monday 13th August so go check it out!! :-) http://www.papercraftjunkies.com/