When going to the Hair dressers is Hair -raising!

Getting autistic children to have their hair cut can be a night- mare. We have been let off lightly. Over the years we have generally got away with bribery and lately with a very gentle hair dresser who lives in the village who has been able to occupy my son with her three dogs and a trampoline in the garden which have acted as some form of enticement. At eleven however it has become harder. Last time I strode through the village with my son skulking along behind in his pyjamas and slippers. He thought if he kept them on he wouldn't have to have a hair cut!

As a result I was  dreading the hair cut yesterday. My son had been mumbling about it for weeks and said he would refuse to go. I was not prepared to get into yet another argument with him and said it was his decision whether to come with me to a lovely lady in the village or whether  dad took him at the weekend him to a mens'  hairdressers which he hates!

My son's response  was that I was torturing him. Having his hair cut hurt and it was like asking him to 'cut his throat'. Certainly knows how to make  you feel like a great mum as he sits there with tears pouring down his face!

Anyway we discussed what hurt and one of the benefits of being eleven is that he could tell me it was the thinning scissors that tugged, so we talked about the trimmers which my son has seen a long time ago. We agreed if he would try them and they were OK I would buy a pair so he never again had to go to the hairdressers.

I was feeling very smug ,then ten minutes before our appointment the heavens opened and we had thunder and lightening. My son had a panic attack and couldn't go out and wouldn't let me go either!

I rang the hairdresser who is great. She offered me the trimmers so I literally paddled through the village (it was like a river in the centre two or three inches deep!) and collected them. It took ten minutes and whilst the hairstyle represented something from Edward Scissorhands my son  was fine and his hair is shorter. My husband  has ordered so trimmers today!

It seems that we may have discovered another new strategy for my son!

Faddy Eaters or is it just my cooking?

Well I picked up the book "Can't Eat , Won't Eat" by Brenda Legge, from the library yesterday and already I'm hooked. She is describing my son to a tee. Eats KFC happily once a week but has gone off chips at home. Loves roast dinner but will only eat it on Sundays with a sausage on the side. Otherwise he doesn't like sausages or peas the rest of the week. Eats chicken burgers for lunch every day for a month and then has "never ever liked them", In fact I'm told "I 'forced him to eat them'. Neither does he like Walkers crisps,won't eat a large bag of popcorn because there is too much in the packet. The list just goes on and on
I thought I was going mad.Panic would set in at the thought of making tea. We had a freezer full of food but on past experience it was unlikely my son would like anything.
Initially the ritual of getting up from the tea table and walking out in disgust only happened when my husband wasn't there. I looked at it as a sign of defiance. It wound me up and I had to keep tight lipped so that the rest of us could enjoy a peaceful teatime without anger and aggression.
Latterly my sons 'pickiness' for want of a better word has worsened and has been witnessed by my husband and my parents. In a way I'm glad it isn't just me! You wonder if you are doing something wrong and can be made to feel  like an ineffective parent with an undisciplined child.
He eats chocolates, crisps, some biscuits, cornettos but refuses point blank the offer of a healthy jacket potato or a sandwich. I thought of banning sweets until he ate properly. It doesn't work and Brenda's book is testimony to that, your child just eats even less.
Today we went into a supermarket. Immediately my son walked out because it was too loud and he said he didn't like sandwiches. We've had this before.He doesn't mean sandwiches I learned today in Asperger speak it means " I don't generally like cold food for lunch. I prefer hot and would like a cheeseburger and chips with Fanta please" I got it right and he was happy!
Then one day the weather was so lovely we decided to have a barbeque in the garden. I watched as my husband got out the sausages and beefburgers. "He won't eat them " I thought as my son has refused both for weeks. Tea time came and he promptly tucked into a beefburger and two sausages!
Aspergers takes a lot of understanding and I don't think that I will ever fully get there but I'm trying my best and would love to hear from any of you out there who have similar  experiences!

Diet and Autistic children,

What children need is not new and better curriculm but access to more of the real world; plenty of time and space to think over their experiences, and to use fantasy and play to make meaning out of them." John Holt


Until quite recently my son has happily eaten most of the foods I put before him. Granted,like most children he has a penchant for chocolate and fizzy drinks when given half a chance but he will gobble down an indian curry, a roast dinner or a cajun chicken wrap without much persuasion.
I remember as a toddler he would often go for hours without a drink and it would be necessary to remind him to drink a glass of milk or water if he became too absorbed in his activities. Even now he will often forget he is hungry when absorbed with his X box or computer. However I have noticed that suddenly he 'has gone off' most of the foods he would eat until quite recently. He doesn't like, the beefburgers we have always bought.The sausages taste   'strange'. Even pizza isn't the same as the one we usually get.
I have become quite used to the grimaces of distaste as I place a lovingly prepared meal in front of him ands he rises up silently and walks out the room as though in some way I've offended him. I have tried to ignore it, it's nothing personal and he will get something when he is really hungry and to a certain extent it has worked. However yesterday, having spent a lovely afternoon at the cinema we came home and I offered him a bacon sandwich. The day before his grandma had come round and he had tucked in to two bacon sandwiches and professed the bacon to be 'much better that mums'. There was some bacon left and he accepted the offer but when placed in front of him he turned up his nose and said he didn't like it like that! I bit my tongue and said I would eat it for my own lunch instead. An hour later I was about to pick up his siblings from school when he said he was very hungry. I explained wearily he would have to find something as I had to go out and he went over to a bag of mars bars and took one, I suggested that it might be better to choose something more healthy and then found myself at the end of my sons fist as he screamed and swore that I hadn't offered anything to him to eat! *He was very sorry afterwards that he hadn't been able to control his anger and it is an issue which we need to address as a priority as it is the most debilitating part of my sons autism and will only become harder to manage as he becomes older, but the matter of his eating habits is also of concern as no matter how hard I try his food is 'wrong'. I am considering a nutritionist with experise in Autism, have been to the supermarket today and bought several ready made curries as a back up when we are eating lasagne or chilli and other meals he professes not to like. I have spoken to other parents and learned that it seems to be a common problem with teenage Autistics and I can only researcgh and experiment and find out more about it. My son has learned to make a milk shake today and we have bought a variety pack of cereals for him to eat whenever he is hungry as hunger is no doubt contributing to his bad temper and anger. I will share my experience as we learn together how to keep him fit and healthy and how we cope with his anger issues which to date have not been addressed by the professionals supposedly in charge of my son's mental health due to lack of ressources and inappropriate expertise in our locality. One of the books recommended is Can't eat , won't eat by Brenda Legge so I'll maybe do some reading and see what I can learn!


* I have decided to include reference to my son's anger as it is a common problem with many Autistic children which is not being adequately addressed in many area of Britain and often leads to exclusion from schools'

Home educating Autistic children

The most important degree for a parent of learning disabled children is not an M.A but a MAMA as we advocate as no one else can for our special needs children.

Joyce Herzog  Author of "Learning in spite of labels"


Today I thought I would share a list of blogs which cover Home Education and Autistic children. Recently more and more parents with whom I am in contact are asking about home education as they come across difficulties with mainstream education in England. Some children are reluctant to go to school, some are being bullied,many have mental health problems and have even attempted suicide and many are being excluded because of their aggression.All because the teachers are unable to cope and the children have insufficient support. A recent report showed that whilst by and large inclusion has worked for many children with physical disabilities for Autistic children it has not. The enviroment is often inappropriate, the schools too large and the support inappropriate or too little, All the blogs are the opinions and experiences of the parents involved and may or may not endorse my own ideas, But all Autistic children are different and each needs to be taught in the most appropriate way for their needs so hopefully you will find a blog that helps your child and your family.HAPPY LEARNING!

Computer programming books! My son's latest interest!

Home is the base for Education.

Our school

Although I have opted to home educate only one of my children home education  is far from being my second choice. For me home education has become a liberating experience and  has freed me up from an obsession with good grades at school and not being able to procure a job without them. The major reason my other two children go to school is that they need time away from their Autistic brother, time when they can be themselves rather than carers and time when they can form their own friendships and interests away from home. For a short while I had two children at home,it was an easy choice and one which I would have no trouble making again if necessary. My eldest son was unhappy at school, there were signs of underlying bullying which were not being dealt with and my son was frequently being sent home from school due to being 'unwell'. For a son who has a 100% attendance record things didn't ring true so we opted to remove him from school for a year.Only the other day I asked him what he had learned from the experience. He was able to spend lots of time practicing his drums each day and he is now an accomplished player. He matured and experienced 'real life' and he was given load of opportunity to make new friends both through scouts and Young Carers which introduced him to climbing, indian cookery, kite surfing, camping skills and all manner of activities which he was unlikely to have much access to at school.
Home education gave us a breathing space to establish the right learning enviroment for my son. It became clear however that his brother required so much one to one that my eldest was having to place second fiddle and we considered ways in which he could 'learn' other than at home with me. One of the options was to use a tutor. We certainly went and talked to one but personality played an important part in our son's learning . We wanted vibrant , enthusiastic tutors, un fettered by the 'system' and we found instead disillusioned teachers who had removed themselves from the system in order to 'teach' in what we felt was a typically 'schooley' way. Our second opportunity was a small secondary school in the lakes with just over 200 pupils. My son was offered the chance to spend a fortnight there to see how he like it. He was not committed to stay but he agreed that a fortnight would give him time to get a feel  for the place. Within days it was obvious that he felt at home, the number of children suited him and the ability to offer the children opportunities as individuals was soon evident . He went from an unhappy lad in a huge main stream school to one with a huge social circle of like minded friends, to a school where outings were frequent and where extra curricular courses such as out door pursuits centres , planting trees for the Diamond Jubilee and catering at a local school were available. The school was still subject to the constraints of the national curriculum but my son is happy and knows its limitations. He is also fully aware that he has what it takes to succeed and has become confident in his abilities and opinions regardless of peer pressure. His grades don't matter, the fact that he tries his best does. This year he has opted to go to college one day a week to study Motor engineering and he has identified the type of learning environment that suits him best. Not for him sixth form college with its A levels and academic subjects, vocational courses are more relevant and motivational to him. He has got his own car which he is working on at home and a trials bike and reads everything mechanical in his spare time, his catering skills far outstrip those of his peers, he will be perfectly able to fend for himself when he leaves home! Our home is where he is 'educated', school is the campus where he is educated 'off site".

Don't judge a book by its cover! OR All is not as it seems!

Measuring the hen enclosure

I came home from ferrying the children around today and to my consternation realised that my autistic son who has Aspergers syndrome had spent virtually the whole day on the X box with his friend playing their new Minecraft game. He was so engrossed he had missed his lunch and forgotten to drink the drink his sister had given him.
Having extricated him from his game I suggested he leave screens for a while and we ate tea as a family and spent the evening together. At bath time I was talking to my son about his brother who had walked 36 miles in a sponsored walk that day. Although he had just fallen short of the full forty miles it was his personal best. His previous longest walk being 16 miles for his Duke of Edinburgh."Oh" said my son. "He did more than half again then". I asked how he knew and he explained he had been doing maths all day in calculating the amount of bricks he needed to build his Mansion on Minecraft.It transpired that he had been practising his number bonds to help him calculate more quickly and discovering that his building looked more ascetically pleasing when it was symmetrical which meant using even numbers rather than odd!
My son has always felt that maths is his weak point and he commented that "he supposed everyone else his age would already have worked their bonds out". I pointed out that whilst they would have been taught to memorise them at school a lot earlier than him they would not have fathomed out for themselves how to achieve the answer they needed and that the whole point of home education was to learn for yourself how to do things when you needed them,
We then discussed John Steinbeck and the book that his elder brother is doing for GCSE. I explained that this was an example of something the government insisted children be taught although it may not be relevant to them in later life. I explained that I had been looking into the historical context of the book which was set in California in the 1930's.My son immediately told me about The Depression, the fact that it was the run up to World war 2 and that Roosevelt was the president. We also discussed the effects of the industrial revolution on the farm workers. It seemed that my son already knew more than his elder brother about the impact life in the 1930's had on the author without him opening a revision book or writing an essay.Yet again his general knowledge dumbfounded me! What could have been regarded as a wasted day at first glance had borne much fruit!

Why bother teaching anything when they can teach themselves?

Cooking counts as maths too!

This morning my son was explaining how you could ascertain the direction with a watch and the sun.He had been reading a library book on survival skills on the way to the supermarket. I tried to show him how to do it last year in the garden but he switched off and refused to listen because it was maths! The legacy of school is that the word 'maths' builds up an insurmountable problem in my son's mind and when at school he would hide under the desk or pull the plugs from the computers out of their sockets!
My son then went on to explain that the compass is split up into angles the main pointers being 90 degrees,180 degrees,270 degrees and 360 degrees with the angles also being marked every 45 degrees. He has talked about angles before when teaching himself to skateboard so I've experienced  his way of learning maths and it never fails to surprise me that in many ways formal maths lessons are redundant. I jumped at the unexpected opportunity to explain that the angles inside a triangle added up to 180 and that the angles inside a square added up to to 360 degrees. All this he took it between a burger and a pepsi , as he tucked into his wicked zinger meal at KFC!
Maths is a subjects which at the very least would have caused his face to glaze over or at worst would have caused a meltdown if I'd broached it but because the subject interested him he had fathomed the details for himself.
Once  in the car I glanced over to find him reading about map reading skills and contour lines and once again I found that my growing faith in autonomous learning was being reinforced. The book he is reading is written for the Royal Marines and designed for adults but the content appeals to him so he's reading it!
Every day conversations are an opportunity to learn too. Only this morning my son turned to me as he was watching t.v. One of the characters in an American tv show referred to a 'test monkey'. "Oh he means a guinea pig, mum", said my son showing me he'd taken in the new idiom he had learned yesterday. Words are fascinating and we are always discussing their meaning.Seeing a lad on a mono cycle one day  resulted in a discussion  of what 'mono' meant and a competition to see how many words we could find beginning with mono. We did the same with the word 'sub' when my son asked the meaning of  subversive.
If you are teaching an oppositional child you have to 'find' the right way.It may not be conventional but your child has the benefit of one to one and you have the luxury of as much time as you need and the flexibilty to change tack if your method isn't working! Don't give up!