Busyknitter

Three hot air balloons have just floated past our house, really low. One almost hit a tree!

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There’s obviously been some kind of snarl up on the motorway and approx 100,000 cars have been diverted through my town. I try to take pity on them all as I cruise past on my way home from work

T has destroyed the tea strainer! Now I’m having to remember to leave the puddle of leaves at the bottom of the mug.

Well, the bloke who trashed my bike is being pretty decent about things. He is paying for a replacement for my dear departed Witcomb tourer, all hand built with custom components. He also coughed up for the cost of hiring a bike while we were in Brighton and he’s sent me £50 to buy a second-hand bike to keep me on the road while the new one is being built (it will take about 8 weeks).

Not a moment too soon either. I’ve been riding Mr. BK’s bike for a fortnight. Hes 6′ and I’m only 5′4″! Not a good fit.

 Off later this afternoon to pick up an old Raleigh hybrid bike, which will do very nicely for the time being.

OK, we’ve finally decided what to do about the holiday problem.

 Having a child with special needs changes forever how you handle your daily life, but it also disrupts high days and holidays. Unlike many children with autism, T can spend a night away from home but it stresses him out quite a lot and has to be managed carefully. So while Mr. BK and S were cruising round Greece this last half term, me and the little fella went to Brighton. We did have a lovely time, but it has taken him a good week to get back to anything approaching his normal mellow state. Too far, too long and no access to CBeebies!

Before T, our ideal holiday would involve chucking the tent in the car and driving half way around Europe. Well that’s totally off the menu now (too much daily disruption). Neither do I fancy putting him on a plane for a good while yet. Even if that were feasible, foreign self catering holidays cost a small fortune and we’re really not the hotel types.

 What we need is a way of taking shortish breaks not too far from home that can provide T with a safe and familiar environment. And I’ve just had the genius idea of how we can do this………………a static caravan on a quiet family site somewhere in Lancashire, Yorkshire or North Wales. Lots of folks round here have them and seem to spend half their summers “over at the caravan”.

 This will take a couple of years to sort out and financially plan for.  So, anyone know of any nice sites?

The perfect English summer’s day and the perfect English picnic site underneath Pendle Hill near Clitheroe. A river shallow enought to plodge in and make a dam, a shady field for a picnic, ice creams, a swing park and a pub over the road.

Here’s my boys getting wet:

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Blimey, S is 12 today!

After much procrastination, yesterday I took a deep breath, emptied my piggy bank and took T for a 2-hour consultation at the PECs communication clinic, which is at Pyramid Education Consultants main UK office in Brighton. It just so happened that the consultant who did the session for us was one of the course presenters in Liverpool a couple of weeks ago.

The main objectives of the session were to assess what stage T is at and identify any particular issues to focus on and also to assess my skills in implementing PECs.

Not an auspicious start, as T was in a right ratty mood. He’d had a major, major meltdown earlier in the day and the two of us were still fairly frazzled from that. So for the first 20 minutes he was quite grumpy and uncooperative. You see T hasn’t had any difficulty in understanding the principle of the exchange. I also think (and the PECs lady agrees with me) that he will learn to differentiate between different picture symbols quite easily. His problem is that he just can’t be bothered unless it’s something he really, really wants and it’s made fairly easy for him. So most of the session was spent making the exchange a little bit harder each time, such as getting him to go round a table or cross the room.

The other issue with T is that so far no-one has been able to motivate him to do an exchange for anything other than food; not us, his LSA or his SALT. And that was the breakthrough. By the end of yesterday’s session he was readily running round the table to exchange for all sorts of cool toys. It was just a matter of finding something that got him going. And in T’s case that proved to be shaving foam! Every time he handed over the card, we would squirt a dollop onto the table and T would gleefully dive in and coat himself in it!!!!! I’ve honestly never seen him look so happy and switched onto a game.

The one big lesson for me is that when I get home, I’m going to have to try really hard to clear out the house of some things that T really likes and start to control access to them. Which sounds a bit mean, but we’ve got to give him a reason to want to communicate.