I’d never thought to ask for myself Last week, the National Autistic Society came out and stated, definitively and for the first time, that autism is genetic. You’re born autistic and you’re autistic for life. It’s not something you can catch. It’s your neurology, and it’s inherited, most often from your parents. We’ve all known […]
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But is it actually inclusive? Something happened this week that really made me think about what we actually mean when we talk about inclusion. I can’t tell you the specifics because it involves one of my children and other people who haven’t chosen to have their lives shared in my emails. But essentially, there was
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The return to school has been anything but smooth How’s your week been? I’m not sure whether I’m coming or going, to be honest. I didn’t think it could get more crazy than the summer holidays, but there you go. We made it to day four. Day four, and then everyone crashed out, and that
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They seem fine. But it’s only day one. By the time I send this, this past week will have seen my 20th wedding anniversary, the addition of a new boy to our household of the canine variety, and both of my children back at school. It’s a lot in one week, but then it’s been
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It isn’t attitude, it’s anxiety I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember Kevin and Perry – Harry Enfield comedy sketches, back in the nineties. Kevin turns thirteen and transforms mid-sentence from a perfectly pleasant child into a stomping, grunting, door-slamming creature whose only line is that everything is SO UNFAIR. Perry is his
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Nobody’s dressed and it’s almost midday As I write this it’s almost midday. Nobody’s dressed. I’ve been up since before 6.30am. So far I’ve half cleaned the house, walked a puppy, done training with a puppy, played referee amid full scale sibling warfare, searched puppy poo for Lego figures and cleaned up sick. There’s wet
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You could feel everyone watching I had a conversation earlier this week that reminded me of a few things I think I now take for granted. We’ve been on this journey for so many years, and I’m surrounded by people in a similar position, so it’s only every now and again that I come across
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Some days it isn’t just the shouting I’ve had a lot of families reaching out to me over the past week, and I think a lot of you are finding the summer holidays very intense. I completely understand that, because it’s pretty full on here too. Not in the way it was years ago, but
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When your PDAer becomes the demanding one Something that gets talked about a lot with PDA is demand avoidance. But there’s something else that goes on, often behind closed doors, that isn’t as widely talked about, understood, or even named. And that is the tendency of a PDAer, when dysregulated and distressed, not just to
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When you become the safe person again We’ve reached that transitional phase where my child has finished school for the summer holidays and is now at home. They’re a little older now and are about to move up to secondary school. They’re in a very supportive school, and generally life at home is, within reason,
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