Big long catch up!

Dylan feeding an Emu in the Lake District last year

First of all Happy New Year fellow bloggers, its been a while so here is my catch up.

OK, the staples are out…it was not as bad as last time with the pain and the screaming and the crying, but it was still pretty sore and there was lots of Mr Hevs hand squeezing going on.  Bless him he never complained once either.  My head is still full of scars and feels weird and itchy.  My head is still a tad swollen , although not the extent it was when I got my staples out.  I have been making daily attempts to fit my riding hat on my head ever since the staples came out and we are getting there…I reckon another few days and I will be able to ride my horse again.  In the meantime I have been at the yard every day grooming and spoiling him with treats.  Just to be around him at the moment is great and to be able to be at the yard, chatting to my riding friends, watching them ride their own horses, catching up with everyone…it’s been fantastic.  I have booked a riding lesson for Friday with my instructor, just a nice easy walk and trot session to begin with because my leg muscles will be screaming afterwards as I haven’t ridden for4 months.

Horror upon horror I have put on weight too!  People keep stating that “what did I expect laying around doing nothing for 4 months” but I still feel crap about it.  I am not back up to a size 16 after previously being a comfy 12/14 with tone.  It doesn’t help that all my muscle has died and will need retrained and toned up again, this just makes me feel even fatter.  I have had to order some new clothes for going back to work and cannot yet wear the nice items of clothing that my mother in law bought me for Xmas.  It will come off soon enough with regular riding and doing other stuff, I may go to the gym for boxercise classes or similar just to help.  The not smoking anymore is not helping as i am snacking more to compensate although I am very aware of this so try not to do it too much.  I have now gone almost 4 weeks without a cigarette and the kids are very proud of me.  That alone is worth it, never mind the health benefits.

I have become much more aware of the aspergers affect on my son over the holidays too.  I am starting to figure out what triggers his frustrations when he completely shuts down and will climb under his bed rocking himself back and forth and talking to himself.   All I can do is leave him to get on with it until he chooses to come out and talk to me which took several hours after a day at his grans where his gran and his aunt (my sister) were both trying to get him to put his shoes on and leave the house.  The problem was that they were both trying to encourage him, be firm with him, yell at him and threaten him with discipline at the same time while he refused to put his shoes on. His younger cousin was running around with his sister, the noise levels were going up, 2 people were yelling at him and Dylan cannot cope with this, the end result being he shuts down.  He cursed at his Aunt and his Gran and just kept repeating the same “screw you” phrase over and over again until they left him alone.  Mum got really upset, my sister then topped it all off by making the statement “he thinks because he has aspergers he can get away with murder”.  Later I would spend 20 mins screaming at her for this foolish foolish error in judgement..no lets call it what is is…fucking moronic and stupid statement.  I told her if she ever said that to him again she would never clap eyes on him again and I would personally shove my fist down her throat.  I understand that we all have to deal with this and its new to us all, but what a fucking ridiculous statement to make to a 12 year old child.  I have very little time for my sister, she is an ex heroin addict, very needy and lazy and never thinks before she opens her big mouth.  I feel great pity for my nephew who is only 2.

Anyway, enough sister bashing.  We got Dylan home and I tried to speak to him but he was too wired so I left him to calm down and then we had a chat about how he has been feeling .  He got really upset at the thought of making his gran sad and felt bad for the “screw you” comments but said he didnt know why he said it.  He did make it understood that he felt frustrated because there was too much going on around him.  I had a chat with my mum which ended up an argument.  My brother has 2 kids who are autistic with different needs for both of them but he lives 250 miles away and they see my mum twice a year for 2 days if they are lucky.  My mum decided it would be a good idea to compare my child with my brothers children and to say that “Alans kids would never speak to me like that!” to which I stated how the hell would she know because she rarely sees them, she has no idea what my brother deals with having 2 autistic kids, nor can she expect me to be an overnight expert and know exactly how to deal with it all given that I had only found out my son has aspergers a week or so earlier.  We didn’t speak for 2 days and then for 2 days after that every time we did try and speak we would end up fighting.  My mum just cannot accept that I don’t have all the answers for this one, I have to play it by ear and learn how to make it easier for my son, not her.  She is an adult and will need to learn how to deal with this too.  We did eventually make up though but its been a very stressful holiday period this year.

So we have learned that Dylan does not cope well with bustling noises in small places, he is fine at a large environment, say a funpark, but in the sitting room of the house, calm is required to keep him from getting frustrated.  It does help if he is the one making the noise though, as he will happily sit in his room and listen to Linkin Park at full volume while playing his X-Box 360, it just appears to be a probem when it is a noise he cannot control.

We have also learned more about the eating situation – he cannot cope if he feels he is being forced to eat something he does not want to eat. He must decide on his own that he wishes to eat it and no amount of encouraging or bribing will work and this is more likely to make him not want to eat it.  I am not so worried about this as he does eat quite healthy although not varied.  I have decided that next time we go shopping, he will be allowed to write a list of things that he wants me to buy (within reason) and we will go shop for it together. He likes omelette’s (so long as I make it), loves cheesy pasta (so long as Kev makes it), he loves broccoli, chips, carbonara sauce, cucumber, pizza, mince and potatos (so long as his gran makes it).  He will eat cheese and yoghurt too so its not like all he eats is rubbish and e has his favourite restaurant that we go to every month as a family and he loves the pizza there.  He has his best friend at school who he has over during the week and he eats very well so I try and make him something nutritional and tasty in the hope that Dylan will decide that he wishes to try it, this is how he discovered spaghetti carbonara and now he is a huge fan.  So lots of reverse pshychology required for the eating.

We went through a few after school hobbies last year which he started off loving and then suddenly went off.  With the Navy cadets I think it was the staff as he mentioned this to me a few times.  They had no idea how to deal with an aspergers child though and it kinda went bottoms up at the Halloween party when they decided he was helping himself to the sweets beyond an acceptable limit.  I have no idea how this went down as I was not there and messages left requesting they contact me to discuss have gone unanswered, but when he came home he was upset and adamant that he would not be going back.  No amount of coaxing would make him return. We also went through the At Home centre, martial arts and guitar lessons, nothing stuck.  So we are kinda stuck at that one and he hates football so thats a no goer.

It’s a learning process for us all…we have made some progress over the past few weeks.