A long Weekend

Saturday morning we decided to all get out of the house together; so we spent a lovely hour on a railway bridge watching out for trains!

We spotted 5 Eurostars, which pleased Samuel no end.

Poor William can’t really see what all the fuss is about and plainly became bored after a short while (he wasn't the only one....)

We’d taken some snacks with us (which cheered Willaim up). Joshua and I sat trying to identify as many different birds songs as we could – as the train track runs through the middle of a large wood – and were very pleased to be able to hear a woodpecker.

When we got back to the car, we found that someone had stolen our front number plate! On the way home we talked to the boys about why someone might have done that, and explained how we would need to report it, in order to protect ourselves, should someone then use the plate as a false plate on a car involved in criminal activity (or more likely, in order to avoid the london congestion charges – there’s a lot of that about apparently).

Joshua and Samuel seemed a bit worried that we might get arrested “by mistake”; William said boldly (remember, he is only 4..) “the police would never arrest me – I’m too cute! They’d just look at me and go “ahh!”

So obviously he doesn’t have a problem with his self esteem! Another plus for home education and never going to school!

In the afternoon we had a visitor, someone who had never met the boys before, and who was quite bowled over by how friendly and forward they seem. They always enjoy introducing themselves to people, and Joshua usually offers his hand in a handshake, which people find unusual in one of “today’s children”.

Something else I firmly put down to home educating and the self assurance it is bringing the boys.

The rest of the day the boys played on the NSECT website which is holding their attention at the moment.

Today has been a tough day. It is 10 months since my Dad died but would have been his 68th birthday. It is also about a year round since we found out about the coeliac disease - though we didn't know at the time just how significant that would turn out to be.

This has made me quite touchy and emotional, which of course the boys have picked up upon. We are already in the middle of one of Samuel’s “low” periods (and I must say thanks to Fiona for reassuring me that it is just something that happens with all aspies, and is not my "fault"), though to be fair today wasn’t really about meltdowns but just a lot of his more unpredictable behaviour, coping behaviours (pulling faces, repetitive noises and actions etc). This in turn I found hard to deal with, so I got more touchy… and the vicious circle went around again.

I felt at one point, asking him to go into his room for some quiet to calm down, that maybe it should have been me leaving the house to calm down!

We had a dinner guest on top of everything, and because they had to be collected (an hour round trip) I had no help with dinner (which tasted fine, but the gluten free lasagne I’d made LOOKED awful, so more stress…) and so it was not as enjoyable for me as it should have been.

We all (just about) managed to sit down to watch Time Team though, which we all enjoyed, and which I hope to do some follow up work on tomorrow.

I'm busy trying to prepare for Tuesday when I have been asked to go in and "train" some of the local police and community support officers on the issue of home education in relation to the carrying out of truancy patrols... could prove an interesting session!