Ask a silly question...

The other day I, somewhat foolishly, asked my husband what he liked the most about me.

I'm not sure why I asked, it was just an idle moment as we were sitting on our bed having a cup of tea. I was playing working on my iPad, he was probably fantasising about playing for Chelsea or something.

"Umm.." he said, thinking hard. "You're... very organised and you get things done."

"Oh," I said, a little surprised. "And what do you like most about your mother?"

"Well," he said, without hesitation. "She's kind and thoughtful and caring..." He trailed off as he saw the look on my face. It's true, by the way, his mother is all of those things. But 'organised'? That's the thing he likes the best about me?

I turned to face him. "So, your mother is kind and caring and thoughtful. And I'm 'organised'."

I could see from my husband's expression that it was slowly dawning on him he'd fallen into a hidden trap where lurked snakes and spiders and nasty things, all put in there by his, somewhat miffed, wife.

"Er... er.. that's not all I like about you, obviously..." he stuttered, wondering how he got into this mess.

In walks Son1 (14).

"Son1," I say. "What do you like most about me?"

"Well," he said, without hesitation. "You're kind and thoughtful and you do lots of stuff for me."

"Dad says that about Grandma," I said. "He said that he liked that I was 'organised'. I think he likes Grandma more than he likes me."

Son1 looks at his Dad and ruefully shakes his head at his father's schoolboy mistake. "That's not very nice. But then, Mum, wouldn't you like me to like you more than I like my wife?"

I considered this for a moment. "I suppose so, yes."

Then Son1 smirks. "At least, that's what I'd tell you."

One of these males has Asperger Syndrome. Right now, I'm not sure it's Son1.

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Why coffee mornings are good for the soul

Earl Grey and a restorative chat

Being a parent of children with special needs can be isolating. You may have found that your circle of friends has grown smaller as you've struggled with learning about and coping with your child's differences and finding the best help for them. 

Parents of 'normal' children haven't had to go through this and may find it difficult to understand. You feel like you're banging on about your disabled child and boring them to tears or, worse, making them pity you. So gradually, you withdraw and in time you may have found that you have few people outside your family to talk to - and even they may not understand.
You may even find you barely go out at all, because going out with your special needs child is like preparing for a mammoth trek across hostile terrain requiring such careful planning for unseen eventualities that you're exhausted before you get out of the front door.

Teachers may not properly understand or cater for your child's needs. Other parents, many of whom don't know you or your child, may stand in judgement of your apparently inadequate parenting skills.

You may start to feel depressed or unable to cope with the demands upon you. You may wake up every morning, open your eyes and think, "Here we go again". Some parents have described it as being like Groundhog Day and I can totally empathise with this.

I've come late to the party, but in the last few months, I've embraced a partial antidote - the special needs coffee morning. A place where no one pities you because you're all in the same boat. A place where you can discuss your child's behaviour without fear of judgement and where you may even hear some practical tips that have worked for other mums in a similar position. A place where you can talk with like-minded souls about the absurdities of trying to find the right educational provision and the hoops you have to jump through to get it. A place where friendly ears are guaranteed, along with a reviving cuppa and maybe even a yummy piece of cake.

This week (and it's only Tuesday) I've been to two - one I have been hosting at my house for NAS Surrey in Farnham and the other at St Saviour's Church in Guildford, where I was invited to speak about my Special Educational Needs Statementing book.

The women (mainly) at these groups are welcoming, determined, resilient and caring, despite the battles that they have fought or are still going through and the daily challenges that caring for often unreasonable, sometimes aggressive but always loved disabled children brings.

No one judges you, everyone swaps stories, tips, resources and support and it is such a relief to be able to share frank experiences with others, knowing they're not going to be shocked.

After I spoke at the Guildford coffee morning today, Psychologist, David Wheeler, gave a talk. He spoke about how many problems with children and adults are caused by their 'needs not being met'. We parents of special needs kids, more than most, spend so much of our time trying (and often failing) to meet the needs of our children that we have no time or energy to meet our own.
Coffee mornings like these are a good way to meet some of these needs to talk to others, share our stories and knowledge and let off steam.

If you are a special needs parent feeling isolated, why not join a group that has coffee mornings, some have creches - or if you know other parents of SEN/disabled children, have a meet up. 

If you run or know of such a group, why not leave details in the comments - you may well be helping someone.

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The Teen Party - I survived but Youngest almost didn't

So, the day of the much anticipated teenage party arrives. Son1 is cool about it as usual. I am running about checking he's thought of everything before I realise that it's his party and if he can't be bothered to pre-plan, then neither can I.
Apart from, of course, ordering in all the food and soft drinks that will be inhaled by the party goers. This is my job, to be welcomingly silent, remain in the kitchen and produce copious amounts of refreshments.
As I'm setting out cans of drinks (less easy to spill than glasses, I reason), Youngest 12, enters the kitchen. He's not been having a good time lately, his Asperger's has rather taken over.
"I'm going to sit on my bedroom balcony for a bit," he announces. Distractedly, I reply that he doesn't have a balcony. We've just refitted his Technolair but a balcony was not on the specifications.
Minutes later, I hear a rumble and then Youngest falls past the kitchen window, crumpling to the hard patio floor outside.
I shriek and dash out as Youngest picks themself up ambles off. "Oh My God! I screech, what did you do? Are you hurt? You could have been killed!"
"I slipped," Youngest says calmly. It turns out that the 'balcony' was the windowsill and Youngest had slid down the small half-roof under it and tumbled to the ground, falling ten feet. A grazed knee, nothing worse, luckily but my nerves were shot.
I locked his window and poured myself a calming sherry.
Minutes later the first party goers arrived. My visiting sister, unused to teenagers, took herself off to her room and shut the door. Then she evacuated the house entirely for the relative peace of the nearby pub while I tried to ignore the noise level that only twelve teens, girls and boys can make.
I think the party was a success. Certainly Son1 was happy. I shared a glass of wine with some of the Mums at the end and the house was ours again by nine thirty. The Sky+ HD remote control vanished, never to be seen again - no one has admitted responsibility.
Would I let him have another party? Well, yes, I think I would. His friends are all nice young people, polite and respectful. But most of all, I cannot say enough how wonderful it is for Son1, whose ADHD & undiagnosed Asperger's when in mainstream saw him with almost no friends and an angry child. Now, with four years at the right specialist school with intensive social skills training and support, he's doing well and his recent review at school described him as a popular boy. This thrilled me more than any academic success.
I hope that with the continuing support of his school, he can turn these newly found skills into second nature. He's going to need them - he's climbing Kilimanjaro in 2013.

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Coming to terms with parenting teens

Tomorrow is my eldest son's 14th birthday. It already seems like he has been a teenager forever. He now stands a head taller than me and his voice is so deep I am constantly wondering who on earth is the strange man talking downstairs?
These physical changes have taken place over the past year and I, as his mother who has had 13 years of having two little boys, am still struggling to come to terms with the fact that I have one big boy (12) and one young man on my hands.
The job is made more complicated by their Asperger Syndrome. Which aspects of their behaviour are because they have AS and which is just because they are adolescent? It can be hard to tell.
It is also hard to change your parenting behaviour. While it is still necessary to give them firm boundaries as well as love, the position of the boundaries, by necessity, changes.
What is difficult is knowing which boundaries to change and where to move them to. Bedtimes have become more lax. Sometimes he will go for a shower unasked, sometimes he needs to be reminded to wash his hair because it needs it - after all he's getting used to having a new body and hormones as well. I suspect there are plenty of teens this applies to.
Communication is also something that is changing, in that he doesn't particularly want to, at least with us. He's often on Facebook chatting with his school-friends and I sometimes hear his deep voice talking on his mobile late in the evening.
The other week he had some friends over for a sleep-over before we took them paint-balling the next morning. They disappeared into the conservatory where they were sleeping. "Don't you want to watch TV?" I asked. "No, we're going to talk," he replied. When I remarked that he never talked to me, all the boys collapsed into what can only be described as Smash Alien-type laughter.
I know what they were talking about: girls - another area for worry. He goes to an all-boys school but they get together with girls from a nearby girls' school for theatrical productions. My son likes girls very much and they like him back - since he was six up until he went to the boys' school, he always received one or even two Valentine's Cards every year from smitten primary schoolgirls, much to my younger son's disgust.
I have decided the best thing to do about girls is...nothing. Unless he asks. I will just keep my eyes and ears open although as he tends to keep things to himself, this is a challenge.
I am working my way through Thomas Phelan's "Surviving Your Adolescents" and have found that I am making lots of mistakes - such as 'the insightful comment' hoping to instill my wisdom into him, usually when he's stuck in the car with me. This is apparently a no-no. Oops.
I'm also getting some things right as well, which is a relief not to be totally useless. I remember being a teenager and, I can promise you, I was a lot worse than he was and I turned out alright, I think.
I bought him a book, "The Teenage Guy's Survival Guide: The Real Deal on Girls, Growing Up and Other Guy Stuff". "I got this for you," I said, casually leaving it on the table. "You might like it, have a look if you want". I left it at that. It's now on or next to his bed, so it's apparently a hit.
Other boundaries haven't changed, for example, I try to make sure we eat together at the table as often as possible. We had a little talk the other day about how I was going to try to treat him in a more grown up way, although it was hard for me to adjust. Then I said that he would also need to take more responsibility for things within the family. He looked at me sharply. "I'm not that old," he said. I smiled to myself. It's a long journey, this growing up stuff.

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What a Smart Boy!

I know I can gripe about my boys, maybe even poke gentle fun at their amusing ways, but my 10 year old younger son, Giorgio has just made this amazing animation and I wanted to share it with as many people as possible. Makes me think I was born twenty years too soon - just think of the fun I could have had if I'd had more than a pippa doll and a cardboard box to play with... What do you think?

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It weren't like this in my day..

Coming to the end of a long, long, long summer holiday. I haven't written anything for over a month because my children have squeezed out any energy I have as if they were sucking out the last drops from a Capri-Sun juice pouch.
Don't think I don't like having them around, I do. But for two months and four days solid? When everything they want to do besides play on the computer either requires a) great expenditure of money that I don't have, or b) great expenditure of energy that I also don't have.
They've been on a film and animation course (£70 for one for two days) and a make-a-movie course (£280 for both for a week); they've been to Grandma's several times; they've been to Italy; they've been to the park with the dog umpteen times (and complained every single time); they've watched the Disney Channel until they developed American accents; they've had friends over and been to friends' houses; they've been on bike rides and long walks. And now, by September, they are experts on Roblox, a computer animation program for kids where the worst that can happen is to be called a 'Noob'. My eldest son knows every Michael Jackson song word for word (and of course, that means so do we- I can hear it as I type).
The thing is, all of these activities, except the TV watching and computer time, involve an adult, ie, me or sometimes Grandma.
When I were a lass, oop North, I used to spend the summers wandering around the village and meandering through fields and along streams alone or with friends. My sister and I used to play out for hours, unfettered by the irritation of grown-ups, coming home only for dinner and tea (we didn't have lunch in the North-West). We used to call round for friends across the village without a parent needing to be with us.
Even on school days, my mother would leave for work at 8am and we would have to get ourselves to school, home again and start the tea, letting ourselves in with keys that were tied with ribbon around our necks. Now, I'm not saying being a latch-key kids was ideal, but it taught us independence and to make our own drink of juice if we wanted one at the very least.
Is the danger to our kids any greater today than it used to be? Well, yes, it is if you count the increase in traffic and as my kids have Asperger Syndrome, it's not so easy to let them out of your sight. But is the danger of being snatched off the street by an evil-doer any greater? I honestly don't know the answer to that, but I do know that because of the media input, the fear of the worst is much greater than it was when I was a child.
I don't remember my mother ever worrying about us being kidnapped and murdered when she waved us off on a Saturnday morning to walk to Tottington for our ballet class, or of me coming home alone from school aged 7 through our quiet village. She wouldn't have dreamed of walking or driving me to a friend's house unless it was too far for foot travel and not on a bus route.
And yet, even if my children didn't have special needs, I couldn't imagine letting them go any further than a short walk with the dog, and that's only the elder one as he is almost my size.
The question is, does this lack of early freedom do our children any long term harm? Or any long-term good? Again, I don't know the answer but I'm not about to experiment with benign neglect to find out. I would, however, be interested in your views, so leave me a comment if you have time.

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Home Truths

There's no one like your kids to keep your feet on the ground. The other day, I was sitting in front of the mirror in my room, touching up my make-up before going out. My 9 year old son, who has Asperger's, was sitting on the bed.
I pulled my hair back from my face and looked in the mirror as a little voice floated across the room.
"Mummy, don't wear your hair back like that. It makes you look really old."
I turned to look at him, "That's charming," I said.
"No, I'm not kidding, it does make you look old. It's better to have it covering your face. Really."
I said nothing, for what was there to say to that? But he wasn't done.
"Sorry, to say it Mummy, but it's better you know."
"Thank you." I replied, finally.
"You're welcome," he said, happily hopping off my bed, "but don't worry. You still look nice even though you're not young anymore."
And with that, he disappeared, leaving me peering anxiously at my reflection and considering perhaps putting a bag over my head before I left the room.

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