Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “autism”
Welcome to the first instalment of our new Q&A mini-series as part of World Autism Awareness Week. Over the next few days, we’ll delve into the travelling habits of SEND families and answer the question: How do other people do it? First up is Kate Blackledge who microblogs on Facebook and Instagram as The Passable Parent. Kate lives in …
How do I look after myself? This week is Mental Health Awareness week, and it’s probably a question we should all be asking. Life is busy for all parents but for those of us with children who have additional needs, we’re a different kind of busy – endless meetings, hospital appointments and school appointments on top of the day-to-day crazy …
It’s not even 10am and I’ve already made five phone calls to five different medical departments. The first was to chase up Little Bear’s speech and language report following a routine assessment at the end of May. Nobody answered so I’ve left a message and put a note in my diary to ring again in a couple of days if …
He finally got it. After six years, Big Bear received his autism diagnosis last week. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel at the news. J and I were fairly confident that he would get the diagnosis, although you can never be 100 per certain. Still, when you’re sitting in a room with someone telling you your child is autistic, it’s …
This morning, Little Bear was playing with his trains when I asked him to have breakfast. “No, I play train track,” he replied, not even looking up. “First you have breakfast and then you can play with the train track,” I said. “Nooooooooo,” he wailed, stamping his feet on the ground. A full-blown meltdown ensued, which resulted in me picking …
Big Bear has always received homework from school with varying degrees of success. In reception, it was daily reading and weekly maths homework. Maths was a difficult one because not only did Big Bear not understand a lot of it (spherical and cylinder shapes was one of the many disasters), because it was only once a week, the tasks were …
The word autism was always at the back of my mind even before Big Bear was born. My brother has Aspergers Syndrome, and although autism isn’t a genetic condition, it often runs in families. Our journey to autism diagnosis began at our first meeting with the paediatrician, when Big Bear was showing signs of developmental delay. I asked the question …
Anyone who follows this blog regularly or knows me personally will know that we have a problem with sleep in this house. Big Bear is big sensory seeker and a very restless sleeper. He often wakes in the night to go to the toilet and generally likes to start his day between 4.45am and 5.15am. This is not when J …
This was a question we asked ourselves a lot in the year before Big Bear went to school. Do we need an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP)? EHCPs are for children and young people aged up to 25 who need more support than is available through special educational needs support. Written by your local council, they identify educational, health …