Aggression, and home ed inspectors ;0)

Joshua is working through a SATS maths paper with me at the moment. We both agree that maths is the one subject where he has not progressed at all in the last year, and so we're trying to look into that together. I'm aware that I'm pushing him a bit, but he has agreed he needs it, and so there are a few serious conversations going on at the moment about life, the future, exams, jobs, hopes and dreams etc.

William continues to amaze me with his maths - the reception level on Education City is far too easy for him, yet I can still tell that the literacy stuff is not really sinking in that far yet.

Samuel has been a bit unsettled the past few days. I'm not sure why. It may be cyclic because William has been AWFUL. Very aggressive, and he has really hurt Samuel on a number of occasions.

I'm wondering how others, with more than one aspies/ASD child, manages. Do you find that they are very violent with each other? I worry because I know William has no concept of what he's doing, and could easily do something hideously awful - hitting his brother with a hammer or something - without any compunction. Its the stuff that keeps me awake at night, and is also something leading me to consider more and more applying for DLA. William is a serious handful now, and the family is having to work hard to deal with it.

However, he remains just as cute as ever, and still makes me chuckle, when I watch the way that he potters through life in his own little vacuum!

Yesterday Roarke worked all day on the office, sorting out the electrics (after he tried plugging it all in Monday night only to find it fused the circuit!), and then starting on the plaster board for the walls. I managed to find a few minutes to do a bit of work for him, but we are so seriously behind now that its quite frightening.

I did some more baking. For those asking for the recipes, I'm going to chose the lazy option and just point you to where I've been getting some of them! I cannot recommend this blog highly enough - Pig in the Kitchen. All dairy, gluten, soya and egg free recipes - bliss for me as those are the exact same things I'm avoiding! I can recommend the rolls, the carrot cake, the courgette cake, in particular!

But I will also post some others I've found, soon, honestly...

For the past 3 or 4 days, Jonathan has started to go three hours between each feed. Although he is slowly eating a bit more, he hasn't dropped any feeds - he has his solids then has his milk almost straight afterwards! Its only the mid afternoon, and evening feeds that are milk only.

The nights have also been better, except last night, when he has "colic" for the first time in a week - no idea why.

He also cut his fourth tooth today!

Today we had a visit from the new person at Bromley LA responsible for "dealing with" home educators. I take home visits as, as a local contact, that's my way of sussing out how the person relates, how they carry out their visit, and what they might be doing that we might not like!

It went reasonably well; I was very aware this year just how hard it is to "evidence" learning when you are autonomous... unlike her predecessor, the lady was filling in the form that she is provided with, with subject headings, and so kept asking questions like "so what about history? how do you cover that?"!

At the end I gave her a complimentary copy of School Is Not Compulsory, and arrange to have a meeting with her, with my "official" hat on - at which I shall make sure she's read the new Guidelines!