God how I wish there were clones of you everywhere. The people that visit ours are lovely, they have been amazing and are so good to keep on with our son anyway in a non official capacity, but I hate that there isn't any support for children with ASD out of school. If that is right for them, then why don't they deserve the same support?!?
The support in schools here seems to be inadequate as far as I have seen. I pushed eldest's school for support, to listen to me, but they kept saying they'd make an appointment and it didn't happen so eventually, when school became too much for him, I took him out. It was the only thing I could do, it was a choice of forcing him to stay in a place where it was making him so anxious he was making himself ill, or remove him from the situation and do our best at home, so that's what we did. He started at a placement a short time ago which are super understanding of him and the support he needs, and have offered him a course in catering which to my surprise, he really wants to do. Surprised because he didn't show any interest in cooking before. But this is wonderful for him, it's just such a shame school couldn't have been more proactive.
Youngest son is extremely close to us, he's particularly clingy with me and hates it if I leave the room so at the moment, I can't see him being ok. Perhaps a little later on, things always change and I suspect he will become less clingy to me at some point, especially as he's started to show some interest in playing with other children. So it may be that this overrides him wanting to be glued to me, and if so, we shall give school a try. If it isn't right for him then we can always come back to this.
With our daughter, she just doesn't show any interest in other children, so I don't think this will be a distraction any time soon for her. She also hasn't any fear, she doesn't know what danger is and this really frightens us. Most people don't seem to understand this, they just think of it in terms of she wouldn't think twice about eating something off the floor or something like this, whereas what we mean is actually she's really intelligent, she's a thinker and figures things out quickly, and wouldn't think about walking into oncoming traffic, which she did once when my mum left the safety gate open. Or she will do things like get into the bath and start the taps without knowledge of hot or cold or the fact she could drown, another incident which happened whilst my mum was babysitting ... she doesn't understand DD in the slightest. She's clever, but danger goes over her head so to send her somewhere where we can't watch her all the time while she's like this is absolutely terrifying!
Anyway, I'm sorry, I'm going on and this is meant to be your test thread! Thank you, I think you're brilliant. I wish there were more of you in the world
