Say what?!

We all went up to London this weekend just gone, to visit my family (well, some of them anyway) and let the kids play with their cousin G. On Saturday, the children were all playing rather nicely after lunch, while the grownups chatted round the table. As my sister is an Occupational Therapist working with people with mental health issues (I don't know, she doesn't really know! Nobody knows, but it's sounds like a tough job whatever!) she's a useful font of information for me, seeing as an awful lot of our clients have mental health issues (the sad thing about working in family law is mostly all your clients have major problems in their life. They wouldn't need a solicitor if everything was hunky dory, would they?) so we were discussing some people in generic terms.

Of course, she calls hers patients, and I call mine clients, but basically, in most cases we're trying to get the same things for them. At one point the conversation turned to the perceived difference between deliberate and unconscious self-harm. I said that one case I found really sad was an addict who was the most fantastic mother most of the time. But then she had a relapse, and the baby was in real danger and was taken away. i said I did not see that she would ever get it back, and it was sad, because when straight, she did everything right. Sister S asked if it was as sad when the mother was a fantastic mother except when she had a psychotic episode due to a mental health problem. I said it wasn't, because it was quite possible that mother could be reassessed later, and would have at least some access to their child. Sister S pointed out that shows a decided bias from the courts in what the consider to be involuntary behaviour (psychosis, disability etc) and "voluntary behavior" like drug addiction and prostitution.

I was about to agree that in most cases theses people were not voluntarily doing it when Master A piped up from the other side of the room, "Prostitution? That's what i am"

My sister, other and I all looked at each other then almost simultaneously asked him what he meant:-) He clarified for us, "in the school play. I'm the prosecution" (he is doing Goldilocks in court this year - how cool is that? I always thought it was a bit of an iffy story!). he then went on to tell us how exactly to say it, and spell it, and that we had got it a bit wrong:-) fortunately he did not ask what our word meant, since he hasn't quite got to grips with sex yet, never mind that!

Poor Mstr A. He's good at getting it just slightly wrong enough to be completely wrong in adults eyes. At the beginning of term, all the children in his class had to do a poster of why it is good to be me. They were put up outside the classroom for all the parents to look at. It had a picture of them in the middle and lines off to descriptions of what made them individuals. Mstr A's 1st line went off to "What I like" underneath he wrote "my friends, Tom, Robert, John*, call girls, smiley. For weeks I watched parents go over, look at it, double take, and look worried. I did ask him what it said (obviously). he read it out to me. People I like: Tom, Robert, John and all girls in brackets! Mstr A's writing made the first bracket look just like a C and the last one just like a smiley!

Silly mum!

Still, good news, kind of. We saw the educational psychologist today. She was quite convinced that he showed many Aspie behaviours, and congratulated us on having done such a fantastic job of managing him. she even wrote down some of our techniques for future use:-) She said that it was good that we had spoken to him about it, and that it would be fine to use the word "asbergers" to him, even if it was not actually diagnosed - which is the opposite of what the paediatrician said! Although she was not upbeat about getting an actual diagnosis still. partly because she was very keen not to diagnose. she kept saying it would not get him any extra help on its own and he was managing well enough at school without the formal diagnosis, and it would follow him through life. But also because she said we have managed it so well, some of the behavioural issues are not much of an issue with him, since the management techniques keep it under control. Huh, so we were supposed to let him ruin his life just to get the diagnosis? But a full report from her will go a long way and hold plenty of weight. It's certainly made me feel thatI am not just being a pushy parent anyway, which does worm it's way into my mind every now and then:-) After all, all 7 year old boys are pretty difficult! In a way it's comforting to know he is abnormally difficult;-) Weird huh?