You know you have special needs child when......

[ShinyHappyRocketsGoingBANG]

(a thread like this was the first I ever encountered on MN and I cried with laughter and relief. So can we have another one? It's too long ago to be able to find and resurrect..)

You know you have an SN child when...

..everything in your house is getting higher and higher in order to keep it out of harm's way.. so high that even poor-little-short-DH can't reach some things...

.. your storage cupboards are fixed together with hair bobbles...

..you have a whole filing cabinet devoted to the your SN child's various reams of paperwork...

When you get telephone calls from people asking if they can give so and so your telephone number 'for support' (but you know they'll never actually ahve time to call you)

When you realise DS has been carrying a pievce of shiny metal paper in his mouth for four hours and you hadn't even noticed (it's a4 sized too, carried like abeak)

When he crawls round Tesco shouting Googly and you get annoyed at other poeple for doing second glances

when you knowingly dx people in Argos, Asda, on TV, Uni..... and you do it a LOT and just a at glance

When you pack one case for yourselves, one for DS and another for his dietary needs before going anywhere for just one night

Good luck, Chonky!

We do the TV dx thing too. It probably deserves a thread of it's own but there seems to be quite a few TV characters now where you think AS/ASD.

people assume you are the child's nanny because you're far too young to have a child 'like that'

you start fancying justin fletcher aka Mr Tumble

...when your son goes round making an "eh Eh Eh" sound whilst slapping his arma against his sides...and you think its a new stim...then discover next time Sponge Bob Square Pants is on that infact its not a stim...but ds2 copying spongebob!

(then ds2's friend starts doing it...and teacher complains whole class doing it....!!!!)

Peachy...ds2 went round lidl once saying "bibbly Bobbly"...so your "googly" made me smile!

... when you're on volume 4 of hospital casenotes!

... when you watch every single programme about special needs/hospitals etc despite living that life day in/day out!

... when you don't even notice the dirty handprints on the TV anymore

... when your dining table is full of bite marks

... when your washing machine door has huge bolts holding it on

... when your childs bedroom door handle is covered in bubble wrap to soften the noise of it banging repeatedly in the early hours

... when they fall asleep on the floor behind their bedroom door instead of on the bed

when dd can spot anything minutly thomas at 50 paces. and i mean anything, from a tiny soliatary stick to a huge poster, but cant follow a point to something which i think is interesting.

when you rejoice because somethign special is back on cbeebies and you knoiw you can get 20minutes peace and she will actually be still and quiet AT THE SAME TIME!!!!

reading all this...just makes me wish that we all lived in the same street- cos we would all feel at home!

Could you imagine the p[roperty prices of anything adjacent though? Straight down LOL!

yes...we'd get the "Not in My BackYard" brigade getting flustered!!!

PMSL at Peachy at Mrs F. Perhaps we could all live in a street of 'social housing' (I'd have to! Even rock bottomp prices "because we all have 'those children'" would be too expensive for me! )

TeeJaye.. I indentify with all five of those remarks!! How old is your DD/DS and do you have a diagnosis?

And I'm laughing my head off at 'googly' and 'bibbly bobbly' around supermarkets.. (I'm allowed to laugh; I'm doing it in a nice way... DS does not have an ASD but he couldn't even get his tongue round those words. !)

Actually.. you can sort of identify with them.. have just sat here saying 'googly' and 'bibbly bobbly' to myself and it was quite satisfying!! Oh God.. maybe I have an ASD... .. someone/something else to claim DLA for!!

By the way, I do fancy Justin Fletcher.. I have been much derided on MN previously for it!

Another one..

..when the paediatrician tells you at a routine check up that she thinks your child has ADHD on top of everything else, and you and your DH fall about laughing inappropriately...

*Peachy and MrsF..

yes ... a bit like when school tell you that "we're afraid we will have to put your child on school action plus to get the educationial psychologist in"
and instead of shock horror amazement i reply
"OH! Thank you soooooo much!!"and all but hug the senco!!!

when your mobile phone book contains numbers for the physio, consultant, eye clinic, OT, social services (to get the equiment you need ) etcetc

....there are never any cushions on the setee...
....the curtains are always shut
....my wrists always ache

....whenthe plumbers here doing work...and the boys are 'interacting' in their own delightful way...and i am totally 'switched out of it' and just glad that despite the noise and fact that they appear to be killing eachother...that they are 'interacting'....then the plumber comes out to ask me a question and i literally jump a mile as he dsturbs me with bhis quiet spoken request!

(we did both laugh about it ...but i don't think he fully grasped how i could be amongst all that noise...yet jump at the slightest thing!!!)

I found the first thread

Wow!Was your first ever SN post on that thread, Sleepyjess/Severedheads or whatever your name is now?

...when you walk round the house sniffing at 3 small bums to find out who has pooed - and then throttle your dh because he only tells you "It was me farting" after you've checked all 3 children.

Apologies for lowering the tone.

coppertop

Great thread

.....when you get distracted at a park for a few moments and notice a child crying out and automatically presume it's got something to do with your child, even though your child is nowhere near them.

.....when your child will refuse to watch his fave tele programme just because he's missed the first few minutes.

.....when you react with panic when your child gets his first and only every party invite, wondering why he was invited, do they 'know' about ds, was he only invited because it was a whole class invite, are they secretly hoping he doesn't go.

......when you have to dust around your childs toy cars, without daring to move any due to worry of putting them back in the 'wrong' place. That's just playing with fire.

......when you don't have to hide one single xmas present knowing that your child won't even bother to open the flaps to investigate inside the boxes.

....when you can proudly recognise every car badge after having your child point them out to you every single day for the past few years, even though originally the only badge you knew was the car that you were driving.

Shiny, my son is 14 next month and he has '10p Deletion' which is a chromosome abnormality. He has a developmental age of 12/18 months and has had various health problems/operations but he's been well since his kidney transplant when he was 3.

We have a 9 year old son who had a heart condition which required open heart surgery when he was 3 weeks ... but that was a doddle compared to all we'd already been through!

the doll is fed with a feeding tube not a bottle

when you start thinking of inventions you could patent like a portable fenced enclosure so if you on a pic nic etc you know exactly where ds is ..........

Oh yes! That rings true. I wanted to patent a boy's urine catcher! I used to tape the specimin bottle onto the end of a 20ml syringe, stick his winky inside the syringe, tape it to his groin and put his nappy over the top! It worked brilliantly until his winky got too big to fit inside the syringe!

TeeJaye i used to work in a nursing and there are such things for old men so maybe kids too if you still need it...

also you know when your child has sn when you spend more time on here reading these than talking to dh

Teejaye, we've tried the bubblewrap on the door handle but ds just took it off. We thought we'd foiled him when we removed the whole door but now he just flicks the light switch which sounds really loud at the crack of dawn!

Our letting agent came to 'inspect' us last month and when he'd gone dh and I fell about laughing because he hadn't even noticed the missing door. He's never wondered why we've got such a large collection of rugs in odd places either....

TeeJaye

what about this

here