Happy Christmas All

Pobby

Nice to see you guys being cordial. You know, we are entering difficult times ahead. With the combined intellect of many here, maybe if we had a "credit crunch " truce we could help each other along what could be a difficult time for some.

Maybe we can accept that houses have gone up in a startling fashion, there have been winners and losers, probally a few more losers on the way.

Dithering_Dad

oldMcDonald wrote: »

Lovely sentiment, DD, but I think sadly contradictary.:D

Anyway, hope all had a Merry Christmas

Oh, I dunno. Depends whether expectations are realistic on both sides

moggylover

SingleSue wrote: »

Thanks for that moggylover..peace reigns at the moment in my house as two of the boys are in the front room (one watching TV and one putting his lego together), the other one has still not risen from his pit :rotfl:

It can be stressful dealing with an autistic child (I have two of the boogers), especially for people like my dad..he had both me and my mum on his case yesterday as he kept making little comments which only wound Joe up even more and because Joe is so overstressed (Josh had his stressed time in the run up to Christmas), we are now not going to the pantomime as planned today...me and Joe would only spend all the time outside the theatre anyway, so pretty much a waste of money.

Joe also has the angelic look which draws people in and then the monster Joe is released as they have got too close :rotfl:

The feeling of wanting to chicken out today is very strong (especially as my sister does her looking down her nose and snorting in disgust thing) but I have never been a shrinking violet and he needs to learn that social contact is normal (to most of us) and to learn to deal with it otherwise I would only be making a rod for my own back in years to come with him being unable to cope in the world at large.

I'm afraid it is quite an unforgiving World for kids that are "different" Sue. My own eldest was diagnosed as "extremely" ADHD at about 3 years of age (after he had wrecked the office of the paediatrician:eek: ) and it would have been very easy to give up on him or put him on drugs. I didn't do either, but taking him to Tesco or visiting was a no-win situation for a long time. My mum and I used to joke that they should make t-shirts for kids like him that said something like "It's not my Mum's fault, she is doing her best, but I am ADHD!" We got there eventually and he is now a lovely lad of 13 who has learnt to control a lot of his impulses, and to concentrate well enough to be doing well at school (not top of the top class, but mostly amongst the top 25% in group 2 with only a couple of group 3 classes) and that after I had been assured that he was bright but would be unlikely to be able to channel his intelligence;) .

It was hard parenting him because one had to be soooooooo strict and unbending, but it has paid off and most people would never know that he had/has problems now.

The little lad at my DS2's school who is autistic was even in the school play. He had trouble staying where he was supposed to be or still, but the other kids valiantly ignored his antics and just carried on and he knew every word of the entire play so a couple of times when kids forgot their next line he would turn around and shout it to them:rotfl: . One or two parents had faces like sour lemons, but I did not think that he spoilt the evening at all but added another amusement level to it all.

I also have a friend whose son has Aspergers and he is on the same rugby team as my DS1 who is 13. He is a lovely lad, although some of the comments he comes out with are decidedly difficult as he is totally honest and doesn't "get" the idea of social niceties:D or most types of humour. However, almost all of the lads find him great and refer to him as "legend" for some of the odd (but essentially quite observant) comments he comes out with, and he really doesn't care at all when we all double up with laughter at something he has said:o .

I think that despite the fact that kids with problems can be really hard work, they come and they teach you very valuable lessons in life and that in many ways they are a gift (albeit a flaming exhausting one;) ).

Hope you manage to get a more peaceful couple of days now and that the boys can settle and enjoy their "safety zones". Have a wonderful New Year - I think you really deserve it.

SingleSue

Aww thanks Moggylover

They are harder work but the rewards when they come are oh so sweet, just before the Christmas holidays, in the last few days before school ended, we had two huge steps forward from Joe. Firstly he took part in the dress down day for the first time ever...and he also took part in the Christmas party without having to run off to his calming room, again the first time ever. He did find it difficult and there was a bit of an eek time during that week where he 'lost' it and he had a chair throwing experience but the teachers have even learnt humour when it comes to that..his teachers words were "Well it's an improvement, he only threw one chair this time...we have progress!"

I can't say I am looking forward to his entrance into high school as his junior school has been wonderful, they have worked so hard to keep him sort of mainstream. All of them voluntarily took on training at the local autism specialist school so they knew how to deal with someone as complex as Joe, they built a special area for him (his calming room) even though he decided he liked the cupboard better (they renamed the cupboard - Joe's cupboard) but they have said the greatest legacy he has left (their words) is that they have now introduced a specialist learning resource centre within the school, staffed by those who had the most input with Joe as teaching assistants, so that other children with complex needs can be taught pretty much in the mainstream setting using the same methods introduced for Joe.

Unfortunately, the education department has decided that Joe has to do a trial of going to a normal high school as he is extremely bright despite his not being able to cope too well in that same mainstream setting. My fear is that all the hard work myself and the school have done over the last goodness knows how many years, getting him to the stage of where he is now showing just how bright he is and being able to 'sort of' be in mainstream, will be completely ruined...when stressed and unsettled, he closes down and then starts to go backwards, plus the chair throwing, silly noises etc increase.

I have put him in the same high school as Josh as their special needs provision is a lot better than James' high school special needs provision and because, so far, Josh has settled well, the school have taken notice of his statement and have been open to different strategies to cope with Josh's poor memory skills...but then Josh was always able to cope in mainstream as long as he had a strict behaviour control, can work to a higher level and not dumbed down to everyone else and was given visual instructions, his problems come when he is given verbal instructions which he promptly forgets and then gets into trouble for..unfortunately his first primary school didn't do this and it got very out of control, culminating in him being permanently excluded from school in year 2.

I sometimes think though that it may have been a blessing in disguise (although that was the final nail in my mental coffin which sent me into a breakdown), as after a year of ferrying him to private tutors, he was given a place in a special unit where they taught him to his level (which was at high school level) and the interventions needed were honed.

He finally returned to mainstream primary schooling in Year 6 and boy did he return.....he had a couple of moments where he was confused as things had not been explained in written form (he didn't know he was playing a lead role in a play, he thought it was a dress up day and refused to dress up!) but at the end of the school year he was voted Student of the Year for his test results, behaviour, niceness to others etc, unfortunately it was all too much for him as the day after, he had a major eek moment and ended up walking out of the school and disappearing, the UK version of an Amber alert had to be given and police cars were trailing all over the town trying to find him.

He also had a couple of nice achievements before the end of term - Best Achiever in Drama out of his year and Best Achievement in DT in his year plus being given a place on the specialist music programme as he appears to be quite a talented musician, instruments and vocally.

Blimey, I have gone on haven't I? Once I start talking about them, I can't stop!

Davesnave

Believe me, Sue, it helps if they throw a few chairs! You get sweet FA if they don't.

My daughter had a pathetic level of support, due to extremely good people skills and compliant behaviour, whereas those who were stroppy had much more one-to-one assistance. I used to advise her to go ballistic whenever she felt like it, rather than bringing it all home to us, knowing full well that wouldn't happen. However, kids who bottle it up tend, eventually, to explode.

In the end we took specialist advice, bought the appropriate resources & my wife taught her reading and spelling for an hour or so a day after school/at weekends. It took a good few years, but we got there in the end. From an MSE point of view, we saved thousands of £ which is what attendance at the Dyslexia Institute would have cost.

I've seen it from both sides though. There have been years when I've had a child with ADHD in my class & no immediate assistance, making it a constant balancing act between the needs of the many and specific understanding for the one. I wouldn't want to give the impression that there are always quick & straightforward solutions.

SingleSue

Yep.

Joe was one of those who would sit quietly in the corner playing with his cars and because he appeared to be well behaved, would get no input.

Then it was discovered that he was at least 2 years behind his peers as he had switched off....it was at that point they decided that something ought to be done and unfortunately, Joe didn't cope with the intervention...he didn't much care about being brought into the social world.

It was that closed off behaviour which made his diagnosis so difficult as when he was young, he didn't fit nicely into the criteria for anything but as the years have gone on, it has become much clearer that he is not a typical autistic child that can be pigeon holed but one where he has a complexity of problems - hence the complex autistic tag.

I have said before that he was non verbal for a very long time, normal speech therapist couldn't work with him and because he didn't have a definate tag, he couldn't access the specialist support (despite the normal speech therapist saying that is where he should have been), so I did my research and taught him myself with therapies mainly being used in America, although we had to start off with a simple version of Makaton and move on from there.

The next problem was his writing, he had a language all of his own which only he could understand. He was getting frustrated as he was doing the work (in his own way) and couldn't understand why others wouldn't accept it, his verbal skills were still woeful at this point so his only way to communicate a problem was to throw something or scream. Writing is still a huge problem with him but it has been discovered that part of his problem is poor fine motor skills so it is being written into his statement that a laptop will be needed at high school plus the use of a scribe for texts/exams.

He is very rigid when it comes to change, even a changed poster in the classroom will set him off or leave him unsettled for days, a change of teacher because of illness is a nightmare..goodness knows how he will cope changing classroom and teacher every lesson at high school, it takes him almost the entire school year to get used to one teacher and be able to move forward let alone several.

He only actually went completely full time at school 18 months ago - he is nearly 11 now.

It has been very hard work with him, not just for me but for his school too, so my relationship with the school has been a close one..we even call each other by our first names!