Tea Room the Twelfth

[RacingSnake]

Come in, come in, to Tea Room the Twelfth! We now inhabit a rambling log cabin, surrounded by mysterious pine forests and mist-covered mountains (but also, strangely) easily accessible by regulars, new-comers and passing bishops, ferried in by Mellors driving the troika. All the usual rules apply and all are welcome!

'Morning all! Will catch up properly soon. (Where's Daisy, btw?)
Spent excellent day yesterday in a primary school being a 'spare pupil' and watching how the day was for the younger ones with an ASC. We got to learn some maths, do some stories, play in the playground and go to the library!! All very exciting!

Teas and coffees available.

Cup of tea would be very nice Amber.

So, how was your day - and how is the school for children with ASC (and, indeed, were there any in evidence and how did they seem to be getting on)

Morning all! I have totally no chance of catching up - but of the 3 posts I read glad to see my absence was noted (waves to Amber)

Hope all are lovely and well or if you need cheering, well, cheer away

Oddly, Amber, I was thinking of you yesterday. I have a friend whose child I think my be on the asperger/ autistic spectrum but I am not sure how to approach it with her - in terms of finding ways to understand him and thereby ease his challenges iyswim - I wondered if you could recommend a book as a good way "in"

Waves back at Daisy, and indeed to everyone else here.

Yup, not too bad thanks.

MT, it's a state primary but has a fairly high number of children with an ASC, hence the need for someone to lend a hand with observations. They're getting on really well - but there's some improvements they could make that don't cost anything and would really help the children to concentrate more, so hopefully my visit was not in vain. So enjoyable!

Daisy, oooo, even hinting to a parent that their child may have a different design of brain is likely to lead to a right old handbagging, from my experience . The National Autistic Society has an online shop with very good recommendations, and indeed much general useful info, so worth a browse in a spare moment, perchance. Impossible to recommend one book in particular, because everyone likes something different. I get on really well with the Tony Attwood ones. Others can't stand him! But there's definitely general easy intro pages for puzzled parents on the website www.nas.org.uk

Wonderful to see you, Daisy! I knew my double-entendre the other day would draw you in, like a moth to a flame!

I'm sure Amber is right and most doting mamas would react to any insinuation that their child was different in any way by reaching for the brick-filled handbag. And in a world which is not always very enlightened or accommodating in its attitudes, I can understand why. In the same way, I think many parents don't want to disclose that their child has a difference of any sort, even when they know of it. This applies (I think) even with the most everyday (for want of a better word) differences. I just took a group of Brownies on a coach trip. Within a few minutes of setting off, two Brownies were complaining of feeling sick and their friends piped up "oh, she's always sick on coaches." Why hadn't the parents mentioned it? Presumably because they were worried I'm refuse to take them. So I can imagine how nerve-wracking it might be to disclose that your child has a more profound difference.

Anyway, I'm rambling.

Tea and cake, anyone?

I've already had a think about school trips MadBad - because DS is, dramatically, car sick. Luckily Joyrides now seem to help about 90% of the time, and he has a bowl constantly in the car to cope with the remaining times... As soon as he's been sick he's fine now as he doesn't have to be removed from icky seat and completely stripped at the side of the road and put into clean clothes... (we also carry a bag of spares in the car, just in case, and on long journeys have two sets ). We WILL TELL SCHOOL before they go anywhere with him, and will give them his travel sickness tablets, and will give ds some bags just in case!!!!!!! (I'm so glad I won't be going on any of their school trips!!!)

Daisy! where've you been???? We've missed you!!! Nice to have you back anyway.

I'll put this bottle of red on the mantlepiece for later if that's OK with everyone?

MadBad, yup. Especially where research shows nearly everyone in the country only knows one 'fact' about autism, and it turns out that one is wrong . Parents are often (incorrectly) frightened that it's catching, that people will think they caused it, that their child will be a 'dribbling idiot' (sorry about phrasing, but that's their concern -not what I call us!), that it means a life in an institution, that it means no marriage or job or future etc etc.

They'd often rather eat their own shoes than look at the possibility of it being an autism spectrum condition. Most people have no clue that only about 10% of us are disabled enough to need constant care for their whole lives, and the rest of us can be enabled to lead perfectly good lives of one sort or another with the right early support and training and facilitation etc. It's the delays to this or lack of funding for this that cause the big problems. Putting their heads in the proverbial sand won't help at all.

DS was travel sick for years. Very glad he's grown out of it

Tea and cake would be lovely. Yes please

I was travel sick and still can feel sick - so was dh, so it was rather inevitable really. We thought that we'd got away with it, but, quite suddenly, at about 3yo, it caught up with avengance (or is that a vengance???)

oh, car sick, don't even start. I am terrible. I "grew out" of it partly but pregnancy put me back to square one and it's not gone away again

I have happy memories of jumping off school coaches and not making it (entirely) and sicking up in front of all the people I most wanted to impress. I never got to sit at the back of coaches with the boys

As to ASD, yes, I will have to tread very very carefully. But I have enough concerns about this child to want to educate myself at the very least....

Thanks muchly. If I sound muffled it's because I am still clasped to MadBad's ample bosom. I do like a nice cleavage. Oh, look, I have found a twiglet in here

pass over some twiglets then young daisy...

Re parents with heads in sand/ strange ideas about ADD .Is it coz I'm a geek, Dh is a geek, my best friend is geek and so is her DH and we both know a lot of other geek families ( all DHs work in same place ( and that place does employ more than an average number of geeky aspies) but.... Friend and I have been thankfully noting the points at which our DS show empathy, react appropriately in social settings, engage in role play and other non ASD typical stuff. Another parent in teh group does have a DS with an ASD and a partner with AS . Maybe we are not a typical group of parents. Maybe we all had the sneaky fear that it might be our* kid who slipped from geeky to Aspie.

• about whom I hope I have managed to share appropriate joy over progresses he has made. and with whom my DS was content to play near until we moved further away and stopped going to same toddler groups.

um, sorry, seem to have got a bit heavy there. must stop that.

Righto- off to say goodnight to a clean boy. DH out singing later, so I may be back if I tear myself away from book.

While we're talking about AS conditions, can anyone tell me whether there is any credible theory/explanation of why three quarters (I think it is) of people on the spectrum are male? Is it chromosomal? Or to do with differential socialisation/labelling? Or none or all of the above?

Is there any more of that wine left?

I shall try not to be too at those with fear that their child might turn out to be like me

MadBad, there is no credible evidence that ASC is in fact mostly male dominated at all. The reality is that most of us girls were, and continue to be, completely overlooked because we generally don't rant, rave, leap and throw a tantrum in public. Terrible generalising in that, but you'll have to forgive me. The girls/women generally only get picked up for dx when we put together 'wrong' diagnoses of anxiety/depression/eating disorders/ocd etc (secondary, due to continued stress from not having the right help) and thinks "hey, a pattern...what underlies it then?" and does an online AQ test etc and thinks "ooo! So that's why I struggle to see body language and process people-info and have specific interests and routine needs etc...!"

Daisy, excellent children's tests shown as examples on the Cambridge Autism Research Centre website - easily googlable.

Yes please for the wine

eek, spelling errors etc in that - you'll have to guess which ones need extra bits/different tenses

Ah, Amber, thank you for the explanation. That's exactly what I was trying to get at when I asked about differential labelling. (There should have been an extra bit in mine too - I had meant to say three quarters of those diagnosed as being on the spectrum ...) There a quite a few other conditions, aren't there, where the diagnosis isn't spread evenly between the sexes?

More wine? And twiglets which have not been fished out of my embonpoint?

Sorry Amber, didn't mean to shock you.

I think in the case of my group of friends the fear is of the extra effort we see it takes to get the right education for a child and then a young person with an ASD who doesn't cope in mainstream . We live in a rural county and the ASD school unit would be 30+ miles each way. not something I would like my child doing.

I don't think it's fear of life with an Aspie in the family. Some of us have that already... All be it one who has survived school, coped with university and is now safe in a scientific job and a family routine they can control( as much as children can be controlled )

Now, back to tea room life. any one for a drink.

Wish I had known more about AS conditions earlier. I feel I may have done a lot of damage to at least two children because I just had no idea what was going on. I didn't know all this stuff about noise, distraction, change ... I certainly did not manage the class very well. An 'expert' coming in to advise could have made all the difference - I had no training or advice.

Mistle, I can visualise MistleChick now. How many children ae in his class?

BTW, we live in Dorset. I have checked a very blurry map and we are outside the settlement boundary and I presume I must lok at rules about 'development in the countryside' (or words to that effect).

Daisy, you can stop rootling in MadBad's cleavage - I have found a new packet of twiglets.

UniS, is it the electrician persuasion that leads to 'geekiness'? I always associate 'geeky' with 'clever' and am rather .

I am also very in any form of transport other than trains. Is some strange link developing - motion sickness is linked to the production of single offspring??

Am, now, after last two posts, wonder if I might know UniS. Surely not? Except with me it's not just DH that works at the geeky place, I do too.

On the subject of DH, he is super travel-sick, Does Not Do Buses. The plot thickens. I am fine unless I read too much in a moving car - as a child I was such a bookworm I was unable to resist and was often avoidably nauseous on car journeys.

Does the tea room have a pie dish I could acquire? Seems like the kind of thing a tea room should have. My pie dish has just had a catastrophic encounter with a mountaineering kitten.

The tea room has, of course, numerous pie dishes, and a number of little china blackbirds to use in them.

I Don't Do Buses - school trips are a nightmare. If ordered to go I have to take very strong tablets. Does not go well with repeated attempts to count 30-odd children on and off buses, in and out of museums, toilets, etc.

Fortunatly, I don't get car sick - although currently seem to have a negative association with planes (after my vomiting episode before christmas), and they make me feel nauseous. My mum (years of school trips) swears by cat litter in a carrier bag for vomiting children.

Would anyone like a khaki dinosaur cake ? DS insisted on cooking them for DH's birthday (tomorrow, tonight he is up the smoke on another jolly serious meeting), but I'd not sure that they are what DH was thinking of for a birthday cake

ummmm, dinosaur cake, mud coloured too. Wonderful, just what any fond papa would like as a birthday cake... surely.

DCMB... dunno. DH isn't supposed to mention on t'interweb that he works there. suffice to say they employ a lot of science grads and people with an unhealthy interest in clouds. Are you in the South West? Can't remember.

I get car sick if MiL is driving no really , I do, shes all over teh place.

I have no hope whatsoever reading in anything but a train (fine on trains for some reason). I can even feel (tearoom version) in a ferry when it is still docked... I think its something to do with the engine for me. Travel bands do help a lot on a boat for me, and on a plane. In the car I just try to sit in the front and not do too much map reading unless really necessary - then I have to have the window open, and even then have to stop and gaze into the distance out of the window at times.

RS - Mistlechick has 20 in his class with a teacher and classroom assistant - so could be a lot worse! But if you're ever doing school visits and a relatively tall boy in reception comes up, tugs your hand and says 'excuse me, excuse me' and then talks to you about a myriad of subjects, possibly including dinosaurs, our dog, what he's done at the weekend, his grandmother, his best cousins, and the party he went to at the weekend, that could well be mistlechick!!!!

I hope that we have a slightly better night tonight - mistlechick had bad dreams last night (I found out tonight that he'd been dreaming of dinosaurs - and they'd had a dinosaur study day yesterday that he'd been extremely interested in) and joined me some time in the small hours - dh had already moved into the spare room suggesting that I'd been snoring (I do have a cold, but on the basis that he snores most nights!) and it took some time to settle him then even more time to go back to sleep - then I woke up early too...

UniS, south west, yes. No pre-requisite for interest in clouds that I can think of ... I think we're safe. It's working where I do that (mostly) means the associations I have with autism are very different to the ones Amber describes - the 'knee-jerk' image that comes to mind is certainly not someone in an institution, but someone who astonishes you with their intellect one moment, but the next sits in rapt intellectual interest while their member of staff explains exactly how they were rude to that person who just called the office. Meanwhile my friend's brother does have autism to a severity which means he does not and cannot live independently, it was actually news to me that the effect could be that profound.

Learning all the time.

I can't live independently, which fascinates people, given what I get up to . But seriously, I can't. Plenty can, though.

Amber -I'm too (I hope you don't mind) - you seem so together here! And all the jetsetting, and organising important, big conferences etc....

MissiG, if you're reading, do you fancy a sit down on the sofa with a mug of hot chocolate and a homemade flapjack (with or without fruit and/or nut)? Anyone else? Mellors is doing a stirling job whipping the cream for the top. Although I'm not quite sure why he's only wearing an apron . Perhaps he's been looking at the bookshelves and caught the title of that Jamie Oliver one....