Good Advice

I was reading all sorts of stuff over the weekend trying to get ideas on how to help him grow and learn. I’ve read some fantastic blog entries over the past few days by people giving their take on autistic learning. I’ve also read a great, in depth post about autistic learning by Michelle Dawson on the Autism Science Forum.
All this reassures me that Duncan will grow and learn best at home when he is free to follow his interests, when he isn’t stifled to conform to society’s version of normal.

Having them all at home is really nice. I do have to find a better system of storage for al the toys and stuff we have lying around otherwise we will descend into chaos. Or are we there already? So, I’m working out some routine for us. I’ve had a bit of a problem with Lady recently; I keep asking her to do something, like put her clothes away, and she regularly doesn’t do it. I think she always intends to do whatever it is, she just gets distracted. We have to work a solution out because I keep getting angry with her and being a horrible Mummy. Today it happened again and I shouted at her which obviously is not going to achieve anything except make us both feel bad. A little while after she said to me ‘can we make up now?’ and of course I rushed to hug her and told her she is a much better person than me because she always is willing to kiss and make up. She is a very considerate girl.
She had her drama class today so I had the boys to entertain for an hour in town. Every time we’ve done this previously, I have bought a train for Duncan at his favourite shop. Today I told him I would not get him another train, which made him very grumpy. We went into a charity shop which I’d told him had videos. He wanted a Thomas video and when he didn’t find one he was upset and when he’s upset he tends to be noisy. I don’t know if the other people in the shop were wondering why this little boy was ‘behaving so badly’. I considered telling them, he’s autistic, he can’t help it. But I decided not to bother and to just calmly deal with him as I would anywhere else. I did apologise for the noise to the man at the till when I paid for yet another Rosie and Jim video. (Oh good link, Rosie and Jim, there’s a bit where they can type in their names and Jim says ‘hello Thomas’ or whatever. My lot think it’s hilarious!).
They all want a bath now. I suppose Duncan will want to wear his orange jacket. It’s a child’s float suit and he’s been wearing it non-stop for the past few days, usually with a pair of big yellow goggles. He says he’s in Finding Nemo!