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...

Leaps And Bounds

Monday morning, and not too optimistic of being able to get the 14 year old up - not one of his (or anyone else's favourite moments...) - but with him being Really Good At Going To Bed On Time over the weekend it was a doddle. Bit of a wobbly moment claiming a sore throat was making it hard for him to get ready, but by then I was running out of time to get him out the door on time - a phone call to school to say he was going in for the 2nd lesson and could they ring me when he got there, with the phone call made in front of him. And off I had to go, to work. And he actually DID get there, because they rang me. He did the rest of the day, so a first was him staying there over lunch instead of coming home at 1pm, and the Really Big Thing, getting the rush-hour bus back. He wanted to do that, and it was all fine.

He's coping so well.... its hard to believe I've been chasing CAMHS for 2 months for their written diagnosis, and dealing with all this official stuff to do with his refusal to go to school. Still can't help wondering how long the fuse will be though...

Onwards

Quick post, as so much is going on and I'm too knackered to write loads.....

After not getting him in for two meetings with the school, we had the attendance manager over here yesterday afternoon to see what would help him feel ok about getting back into school. Big progress, as he stuck to his agreement to speak to her. On a massively reduced timetable, with slots for quiet time catching up on work, or whatever, and definite things to do over lunchbreaks. And a work placement with some graphic designers as a massive inducement. In return for regular attendance. All systems go.....

This morning I woke up in the middle of a stupid panic-overload dream, where I'd got to work and realised I'd forgotten to wake him up. But anyway, today HE WENT TO SCHOOL!!!!

And was happy. He did 2 lessons, and will do 4 tomorrow, and is confident with getting the bus there and back. Nearly didn't get out of the door, so we got to the end of the street, then the next street, then he wanted to stop and pick up a coffee on the way to the bus stop. Which was fine.

So we're back to square 1.5, or even 2, the way it was in September, when he started school on day 4 of the autumn term, and did a total of 6 days. No getting complacent though - there's tomorrow morning, then there's Monday morning. The mood could switch, the heels could get dug in... but lots of praise and encouragement and patience...

That Explains A Lot...

... as the person who used to teach the 14 year old two years ago said of the diagnosis. That teacher was fantastic, and had a lot of time for him. Shame the head teacher maintained the only thing wrong was that he needed to learn to control his anger, and that the senco never managed to produce a copy of the IEP...

Plans...

This weekend has been a full-on one for me. Full of reading blogs, getting perspective, finding similarities... I've broken through the resentment of having to do the legwork of becoming self-taught, and think I might have found some lovely connections...

There's a label "Kids Today Eh" on my main blog, http://trashsparkle.blogspot.com/ giving the picture about how its been going. However I figured that continuing to subtly plonk my ongoing sagas amongst glittery vintage acquisitions and ramblings about biscuits wasn't going to help me find other aspie parents or aspies to link up with. So yesterday morning I got up and tinkered around with Blogger, setting up this second, and so far very sparse blog. The glittery stuff will continue on over at trashsparkle...

The plans? Oh, right. I need the 14 year old to be up on Wednesday, and willing to meet the attendance manager from "his school". 3rd time lucky, and all that. Between you and me I'm just playing the game of not obstructing things for the benefit of the attendance improvement peeps, and will go along with whatever my son wants or does not want. If we can find a way for him to feel happy going there to use the facilities for graphic design, and perhaps a few other things, then great. If not, then more of the same. Which has been staying at home doing very little.

His sleep patterns are cock-eyed; he responds to visual information rather than verbal. In the sense that if I draw him a pie chart of how long he's been awake, etc, he won't argue with it. Any verbal way of trying to put that to him will stress him out trying to find ways of arguing against it. So we're keeping a Chart of Sleep this week - bar chart at the moment, but I might try lots of 24-hour circles. And as I'm crap at admin, and can only fill out forms, write letters, etc when I'm so fed up with them that I do them in anger, I am not expecting miracles. Just for the all-night electricity consumption to subside a little.

Coffee Morning

A "phew" moment: yesterday was a good day. The 14 year-old came out for coffee with me. This was the first time he'd left the house since September.

We discovered, over adding demerara to the fairly awful cappuccino, that we both like Smashing Pumpkins. He wouldn't stop talking about typefaces when we got home.