The need for speed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047vvbz

Loved this interview with Mikey Brannigan and his parents after he won a gold medal at the Paralympics in the 1500 metres T20 class. Five seconds ahead of the competition!

His dad talking about how Mikey was so speedy, but couldn’t get his head around what was expected of him by the rules of soccer, and subsequently finding his element in running is fantastic. I hope Jake is the same. The sporting gene line from both his grandads has got to strike somewhere, surely…

(I’ve reservations about the news story’s text ‘suffers from autism’, as that’s definitely not our experience with Jake, but that’s another story). 

Image: Francois Nel/Getty Images

Back to school

Jake, along with his older sisters Martha and Beth, is back at school in the morning. He is going into the Reception class at the local Catholic primary – it’s at the other end of the big room where he was at Nursery last year, so hopefully that will keep his anxiety levels down. 

When Jake is worried or afraid, he will either have a meltdown and yell, or he will go into a rapid monologue, peppered with various phrases from TV programmes, normally Paw Patrol at present (nicely lined up backwards earlier today):

It’s very good that both Sally and I work for ourselves from home as we can both take him to school. We’ve been laying the groundwork for the last few weeks, usually being met by ‘er, it’s very kind of you but no’ (from the Gruffalo) whenever we’ve mentioned school. We did however get Jake to try on his new uniform a few days ago, and it went relatively smoothly. Fingers crossed we will all be OK tomorrow. 

School have been great. As with everything, it’s been a slow process but before the summer break, Jake was assessed by the local education authority and a full-time teaching assistant has been put in place to help him and try to keep him focused. 

He’s normally fairly oblivious to the other kids and will play with a few farm animals or some bricks, happily ignoring everyone else. Now and again, he will need to run up and down the classroom, probably repeating some lines from a TV programme and possibly holding up his right hand with his palm towards him, and opening and closing it. 

The big flashpoint we have is when he gets frustrated or feels crowded by other kids, especially if he thinks they’re after his toys. He will push them out of the way unless he’s watched, so we are very happy that he’s got someone watching out for him. She will however have biceps like Rambo and the steely determination of Hannibal by the end of the year. 

Watched the TV movie about Temple Grandin this afternoon. Claire Danes is excellent and it’s an amazing and inspirational story. It’s easy to concentrate on the stress and the worries of our day-to-day life with Jake, but it’s really exciting to watch him grow and to continue to surprise us with new words all of a sudden. Can’t wait to see how he’s going to develop over the next year. 

We are official!

Yesterday, we were finally told (after over two years of appointments and assessments) that Jake is autistic. 

No huge surprise really but there’s something about having it officially diagnosed by a group of people who see a lot of kids in similar situations. We now have it written in black and white. 

It’s a nice feeling. It feels like we are part of something bigger now. It will definitely help Jake practically as it now kicks off a new relationship with the autism team at the education authority. 

It gives us something more concrete to explain his behaviour to other people, and to have lots of conversations about autism. 

It’s a ‘thing’ now. 

Needless to say, it’s sent us off worrying about what life is going to be like for Jake, and what the next stage will be. He starts at Reception on Wednesday – five days a week although Sally and I will take him out swimming and to the library on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings to keep him a bit less anxious. He’s going to have the benefit of a lovely teacher and teaching assistant, and we shall see how he fares with mainstream school. 

Now we have our official ‘label’, I think back to apologising to a woman last year. We were in the cafe of a big store, on the first floor, overlooking the shopping centre below through a great wall of windows. Jake was obsessed with these pretend racing cars that much younger children can sit in to tour the shops, and was staring fixedly at them below. In so doing, he was hanging off the seat of an elderly woman quietly eating her lunch, blissfully unaware that he was also standing all over her coat. I tried to lift him away, said sorry and explained that he was autistic. She looked at the two of us, smiled beautifully, and said ‘maybe, but he’s just a little boy’. True dat, as my daughters would say.