climbing out of my hole?

Life's been pretty awful recently. I don't really want to go into it here, but I've had better days/weeks/months :'(

But I'm feeling that perhaps I'm not a complete failure after this morning.....

we attended the first session of the National Autistic Society Early birds course today. this is a course for parents of 5-7yr old children with ASD's. Mstr A's just turned 8, so is a tad old (although most there were 7/8) but because it took a while to get the diagnosis for various reasons, this was the first course available.

I was a bit worried, cos Aspergers isn't "real" Autism - Mstr A talks, walks, interacts with the world, attends mainstream school, has not got a police record yet..... It's hard to tell how different he is, because he's our eldest - there is little to compare him to. I have been told by family members that "he's not that bad - its very mild Aspergers if it's there at all", which makes me feel a) that I'm being an unecessarily pushy parent by making a fuss about it, and b) being a crap parent because we have many moments when we don't manage as well as I want to. I thought the course would be full of horror stories of blank faced non-verbals, and have no relevance to us.

I've really pissed work off by taking 10 Fridays off to attend, so the whole thing was a bit unnerving. Also, it was held in the chldren's centre, and no money offered for childcare, or specifications regarding bringing younger children with on either the letter, or mentioned when Aggie took LMD to the initial meeting, so we had her with us again today. As we walked in, the leader said that she shouldn't be there! Then proceeded to repeat that a few times during the introduction>:(

So I'm feling slightly smug. LMD behaved perfectly - she drew pictures, read books, slipped quietly around the adults whenever she needed to get something, and generally behaved so perfectly we hardly knew she was there - showing us to be fantastic parents:)

And, as we went through the details of what is Autism/ASD, Mstr A proved to have rather a lot of ASD behaviours - putting him well within the ASD spectrum and nowhere near the very mild edge of it. It appears that we have just been fantastically good at managing him to keep him as "normal" as possible.

Both we and the school assistant there came away with some good ideas - i asked Mstr A about one of the communication things mentioned and have discovered something new already, which hopefully we can work on. And on top of that, the school held their special needs meeting today with all the professionals in the area, and we recieved a phone call this afternoon to book an appointment to start the whole statementing thing off properly, so the school may eventually get some funding to help them provide that assistant they have in his class most of the time anyway:) Obviously the professionals all also agreed that he does need the help, and I'm not just making it up too.

I have also come to the conclusion that i have to stop lieing to myself, forget the career that really isn't happening - mostly because that is not really what I want, it's what i think i ought to want!, and look for a menial job round the corner to home so that I can be available to Aggie & the kids when they need me, without getting stressed out & without putting up with snipy comments from idiot personnel officers in the city.

Now I just need to find said job:)

Silver lining

Every cloud has one, and I am pretty good at finding it in even the worst thunderclouds.

Mstr A's suspension was a pretty ugly cloud, but it did make me decide to be a bit proactive and get some help. First off, the return to school interview was very good, with a bit more explanation about what actually happened from the school, and no difficulties agreeing the best ways forwards. Now we have that "violent behaviour" tick box ticked, we may even be able to get him properly statemented and apply for some funding for the school to get hi more one-to-one time.

I also spent friday afternoon looking into what help might be available to us. If was a fiarly unfruitful search in that there was a lot of "you may be entitled to..." and "some people can get...", but it did culminate in me contacting social services to see what they could offer.

Sadly, they haven't answered. I mean, it's only been a week since I emailed saying that I didn't now where to turn with a violent son & disabled husband, no money and two younger children to care for...... I've been told that the only way to get an answer is to personally turn up, with kids in tow, and annoy them until they do something about it! I may have to get round to that some time, but I don't feel like it right now tbh!

However, having decided that if we're going to get social services involved in any way, we might as well get them involved in every way, I also contacted the disabilities team about getting a carer's assessment for me. They seemed a bit confused as to whether I cared for an adult or a child, as different teams do the assessments, but today I spoke to a ver sensible woman who agreed I cared for both and therefore either needed a joint assessment or two separate assessments - depending on what the teams liked best. So I am waitng to hear back from them.

I also discovered that I don't have to wait for social services to refer me on to other things, and self referred myself to the local Children's Centre and applied for a family support worker. I don't know what they can offer, but some suport would be welcome:) I think I only qualify for that because of the younger kids, but it may well help Aggie out during the summer holidays.

Finally, although work was not overly impressed by the whole situation, they also did let me have the time, and let me take leave at short notice to attend the meeting at the school. Although I did mention that I was a carer before this, it has made it very official - which will make it easier when I ask for some carers leave later in the year to attend the National Autistic Society's course on managing ASD's. I'm hoping they might let me swap my days for the ten weeks, as carers leave is unpaid, and I need the money. But we'll see.

So now it's just a matter of waiting for everyone to get back to me and see what help they might be able to offer. And see where they suggest we go next....

Hitting home

Mstr A was suspended from school yesterday. He's not allowed on the school premises until Tuesday morning, which means he is missing the end of term party for his after school club (which he absolutley adores and was really looking forward to), and the school fete today.

Yesterday was not a happy day:(

I don't think he's grasped the severity of suspension, despite the fact that I have tried in every way I can think of to explain it, and terrify him into believing that school is his best option by far....

I was at work. I KNOW that nothing would have been different if I'd been at home. But I was at work. He's 7 years old, suspended from school, and I wasn't even there to talk to the teachers.

I spent the afternoon adding up the sums every way possible. If I leave work we would have to sell the house. Renting a property would be more expensive than paying the mortgage, but welfare benefits only cover rent, so that would be the only way to have a roof over our heads. So I'm staying at work. I'm quite concerned about the summer holidays, but.....