Take Each Day By Day

When you meet my son for the first time, his quirky oddball personality doesn’t immediately shine through. Instead you find yourself talking to a very verbal, slightly focused and very knowledgeable four year old, and will often comment on just how much he knows . We are lucky that if we have to ride the ASD train that we have a very high functioning, mild case, as I know it can be harder for some families. Not that we are completely challenge free. However, because of his ASD intellect and the fact that he is quite verbal (I might be inclined to say chatter box if I wasn’t so against the usage of this phrase) people often question his diagnosis. He doesn’t present to people what they expect Autistic to be, so how did we know and what made us question his behaviour? I thought I would compile a few of the flags we had with my little gem, in case you were wondering what to look out for yourself. I am by no means an expert and can only relate to my own experiences. Please r...

Beautiful skies to inspire and calm us!! 

I love taking photos and sharing some beautiful, hopefully inspiring images with you!  Taken with an iPhone. 

True to my word- teachers are on their feet all day so you should look after them! Any for any gents out there I have just spent the last 40 minutes talking to a lovely elderly gentleman who has beautiful feet because he looks after them! 

So like most teachers that are out there, I like to whinge that it is nearly the end of the school holidays. Instead of feeling like the glass is half full and realising I have one whole week of freedom left  -  I look at the to do list. The things I promised myself to do over the summer break to make my life easier, better and a more efficient teacher. Thus far it is list 10 - me 0. So as now that I feel that the fun in the sun is over, I look at a week of getting by butt into gear. If you are like me and staring at at a barrel of never ending things to do for school, maybe we need to shake up that line of thinking. It's not the work that needs to get ready but us, because if we look and feel good, then surely we are better for it! 1) Book a hair appointment - you know you will have no time in the next few weeks, so get it over and done with now. If you have time book a mani and pedi as well and possibly an eyebrow wax. My school has a high turn around of the student...

So I am having a proper anxiety attack today - I have come home after two years and realised that my mother who has been by herself for nearly all of the year whilst my father renovates their new house, is two steps away from appearing in hoarders. In fact if their house was not a seven bedroom, three storey house I think she would be on hoarders.  I am typing this post to stop from having a fight with my mother about it, as my husband is begging me not to start anything. I am torn between wanting to get a garage bag and start tossing things out, to wanting to go home and start throwing things out or having a shower. I have already lied down and cried and now I am just sitting still and staring, trying not to get upset at the piles of rubbish everywhere. It's not that she has disgusting leftover rubbish, it's more just junk - VCR tapes, stuffed toys, cards, photo frames and multiple office supplies.  Every corner is filled to waist level of junk. We had a friend come with ...

Been enjoying getting creative in the kitchen lately! Being on school holidays I feel like I have a bit more time to experiment with things! My little ASDer is loving it in a " my mum's a dork" kind of way!

I  was having a conversation with a friend who is pregnant with their second child and she commented that she really hopes they get a sleeper this time. Thinking I was being helpful I suggested that second time round you are more relaxed so things tend to fall into place, this of course did not go over well as I realise I was suggesting that they were stressed first time round. Several comments later it made me think about the different approaches parents take with sleep and sleep training and the different opinions about various methods. So as a mum who went to sleep rehab with my darling son and worked very hard to get him into a sleep routine, I am not going to add to the many varying sleep styles and methods you could attempt, but I did want to suggest 5 mottos to live by when trying to find something that works for you!  1. Never give up... It took me 5 weeks to create a sleep routine for my little gem. It was hard work, constant and tiring. My husband was great help...

A quick explanation for the succession of blogs and slightly outdated information. I did have another blog/ website with wix.com but for over three days I could not edit or add anything new. It was probably me doing something wrong, but it was frustrating and I couldn’t find anything useful to help. So I jumped ship so to speak – but I was really happy with what I started with so I transferred it over. Happy to be here and hope that this works better that my last venture! xo

So as with everyone on the planet, it has been a time of reflection, meditation and many talks of expectations. One could reflect on the year that has been and make promises and plans to do better but I have never been one to buy into resolutions as I feel like it is another thing that I am setting myself up to fail. I will however look at the miles stones that have come my way this year. There was my little gem being officially diagnosed with ASD. We have been lucky to receive the support that we need to help us move forward with his diagnosis and had the slight comfort that it wasn’t us as parents that was contributing to the negative and frustrating behaviour running rife in our house. It was devastating of course as no one wants to hear that their child is not neurotypical and that there are challenges a head. We have our dark days and I can see more and more the impact that this will have on his life but I pray as the talk of being tolerant and accepting is tossed around ...

Fellow teachers will agree with me that this is a term that is going to be used very regularly in the near future by all educational departments. It is however in my opinion a teaching practice that is not thoroughly understood by all teachers. I tutor a student and his assessment outlines indicate differentiation approaches for the task and they are not really alternate strategies the students can use. For example he had to do a speech and was told that if they needed to they could sit down. This was kind of ok, except that the marking criteria determined that to get an A band you had to use “performance” techniques in presenting your speech. Another example is that I have hear other teachers not at my school say  "I’ll give the lower class 3 questions and the top class 6 questions." How does this help if the lower class is not able to access the same amount of information through questioning? I was lucky enough to attend a course outlining the idea of differentiation a...