The Usual...

Back in December, when I last posted, the 14 year old had done 3 days at school. Of course, real life always kicks in - on the second day he came down with a stinking cold. Although he'd rested over the weekend then gone in on the Monday for day 3, he was out of action and at home for the remaining 4 days of term. Since having the cold he's been fairly tired, and has completely reverted to typical couch potato mode. I know this isn't doing him any good, but this is how he wants to be.

More than anything, I've taken this holiday time off as "time off from having to educate myself about aspergers", and haven't done any further online reading, and haven't been on this blog. This has recharged me; its actually been lovely not having to phone people up, write emails, etc, and to just "be" with the family.

There have been three* nights over the holidays where he's stayed up through the night again, and I've had to remind him that this is depleting his energy levels. Yep, sounds like sloppy parenting, doesn't it... I won't go into too much detail, but around a year ago he won the battle over how much he uses his laptop. I don't want to have to stop myself from being pushed down the stairs again, or to have my 12 year old witness anything like that again, so now we just go with the flow about the computer use.

I'm trying to use positive, uncritical language. For instance, when I hear him coughing, which he will carry on doing rather than getting himself a glass of water. I'll say something like "I heard you coughing. Do you think a drink will help?" rather than "You know you should get something to drink".

No success over the holiday with tempting him out of the house, not even when his dad's parents came to visit on Saturday and offered to take him out. However, I am certain that the hurdle of him being nervous of seeing anyone he knows has been well and truly crossed - during the weekend of the cold starting he went into town with me. Obviously the ulterior motive was getting his contract upgraded - to a Blackberry. Which I couldn't turn down as it was a way of him feeling like he belonged with the kids in his science class. Frowns from those in the "peer pressure is evil and phones shouldn't be in school anyway" corner. Whatever, if its something he's noticed and will feel more comfortable about once he's got the same thing, its one less thing to mark him out as different.

He knows term starts again next Monday, and seems to be looking forward to it. But I'm now on "countdown" mode, and will start doing the clock pie-charts tonight so he can visually see when he's sleeping and when he's awake. This afternoon he got up at 2pm, so we've got a fair way to go to be on track for getting up early on Monday.

A bad and a good bit from the last few days:
Me, trying as usual to do everything at once, got him to have a shower one evening. I asked him to strip his bed first, and told him I'd make it while he was in the shower. Back downstairs, stirring the dinner and emptying the washing machine, I realised something had to give. He came down to ask why I hadn't made his bed and I explained I had a few other things to do at the moment and said if he got on with putting the fitted sheet on I'd pop up in a few minutes to help. I went up and he was sitting on the unmade bed, on his laptop. Asking why he hadn't put the sheet on got the answer "I'm busy". I found myself shouting at him that I thought that was completely unreasonable and telling him what other things I was also doing..... hmmmm.

I put a roller blind up in his room the other day, and thought a piece had been missed out of the kit. It took him 2 seconds to have a look at the pieces I had, and to tell me I just had to put them the other way round. The autistic brain, eh. Marvellous.



*Three? Four? I should really have a chart, but I don't. Slapped wrist...