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Single autistic mother of three awesome autistic kids. These are my anonymous ramblings about life, love, parenting and the rest – emptying my head of the weird, the wonderful and the mundane. Hope you enjoy.

Wednesday 2 November 2011

The end of half term, tantrums and good manners

It was a crazy half term really, even without the illness to start it off. I tried to give DS1 some extra one-to-one time with me - we had a day out with a show and lunch, and we went to a film with a lovely woodland workshop afterwards. This was all very lovely, but in between we had his usual letting rip - with added angst as it had been 3 nights at his dad's because of half term, and because all the activities meant he wasn't getting much downtime. Ah, will the joy of motherhood never stop?! DS2 just got his head down and played with his vehicles as usual - I am very lucky to have such a convenient toddler - he seems to know when its not his turn to yell, although he happily makes his mark when it is, god love him.



I decided to give DS1 a haircut before he went back to school. His hair was all really long apart from the bald patch on the back of his head where he's twisted it out - he twists his hair when he's tired or worried or both, so the bald patch is not a good sign - and at 5 and a half, a comb over seems a bit extreme. My plan was to make it less noticeable by making the hair around it shorter, and it seemed to work - plus there's less to grab and twist. I always think the end of a haircut must be an interesting show for our neighbours. I cut his hair at the kitchen table, so there's always a bit of a fuss to get rid of the hair at the end: First out of the front door is the towel that was round his neck to be shaken in the wind, then the haircatcher I put round him, and then DS1 gets stood on the doorstep and brushed down. It amuses him anyway. DS2 also loves DS1 having a haircut, as he gets away with things he wouldn't usually - he sat for a good half hour removing the handset from the phone and pressing the handset locator button to make it ring. Normally he'd only get 5 minutes of that before I took it off him.

DS2's 'language' is progressing. He has obviously calculated that the important thing in words is the tune, rather than the sound. So 'hm hm' with a downward inflection is 'bye bye' and 'hm hm' with an upward inflection is 'thank you' although he says it the way you do when you've just taken something off someone they shouldn't have. What amuses me most is that he can be mid tantrum about not being allowed to do something (Pour water on the floor, eat the table, climb the cooker etc) but if you give him something, he will stop to do his 'hm hm' thank you before going back to his tantrum. He has obviously decided that just because one is in the middle of a full blown meltdown, that's no excuse for bad manners. Quite right too.

I sometimes get the suspicion that DS2 is just a whole lot more aware than he lets on. The other day in a fit of frustration at something or other, he dramatically swept his arms across the table and sent the bowl of porridge flying, and then looked at DS1 and raised an eyebrow. Should I be worried??

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