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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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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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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The mask we don’t talk about It has been one of those weeks. Full, overwhelming, and somehow good all at once. I recorded a podcast and a training webinar for the PDA Society, both out in a few weeks. It meant a great deal to me, because the PDA Society were so instrumental in my
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You put my life into words I opened my inbox this week to find an email from another parent. She had just read my article in Special Needs Jungle and felt compelled to get in touch. She told me I had “hit the nail on the head” and that reading it had made her realise
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Coping is not the same as thriving This week, one of my children needed collecting early from school. Not refusing. Not in crisis. Just overwhelmed, and unable to keep going for one more afternoon. So I found myself juggling a school collection with trying to work, while managing a whining puppy and hoping the neighbours
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It’s been a strange week We landed back in the UK and the heatwave was long gone. I don’t think it’s stopped raining since we got home. I have to admit our holiday didn’t entirely go to plan, which is not unusual for families like ours. We adapt and overcome. We understand fluctuating capacity. We
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The thing we don’t say out loud about the school holidays It’s the half term holiday in the UK, and this can look very different in families like ours. I know there’ll be parents reading this who have spent the last few days barely leaving the house. Because everywhere is too busy. Too loud. Too
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When your brain sends you to the wrong cinema I’ve been thinking this week about capacity. The invisible load. All the things we carry that other people – the ones not living our life – don’t necessarily see, or understand, or really get. It made me chuckle when I thought back to some of the
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