Hyper-vigilance

It masks itself as peaceful slumber:-



The reality is quite different:-







If you enjoy caption competitions and photographs, you may wish to nip along to"DJ Kirkby" over at "Chez Aspie" and test your brain power.

Brotherly love - Dream on

“I am be like!”
“Really! What do you like dear?”
“I bin dun like dah cream!”
Oh no! Don’t tell me ‘bin dun’ is back to haunt us again, one of this pre-emptory terms equivalent to ‘er.’ I look at my little neophobe and his 15 foods. Verily the child doth lie through his little wonky baby teeth.

“Indeed!”

Oddly enough he picks up on my tone of skepticism, as does his brother, who dives in to defend, encourage and elucidate.
“Yeah Mom we are have ice-cream in school today.”
“Ice-cream!”
So much for the ‘healthy food in school policy,’ that didn’t last a whisker.
“How come you had ice-cream?”
“Coz it was Tim’s birthday.”
“Ah.”
“It wuz a birthday treat.”
“Nice explaining dear. Surely he didn’t eat ice-cream?” I ask over his brother's head in a need to determine the real truth of the matter.
“No….he don eat dah ice-cream.”
I thought as much!
“But he did eat dah cream!”
“What cream?”
“Dah cream dat woz on dah ice-cream!”
“Cream on ice-cream!” talk about overkill.
“Yeah an it was real cold, but he ate it anyways……he din scream at all neither but he did his shivery thing………he wuz real brave mom.”

I smile as I think. Is cream really a food or merely a condiment? Does anyone eat a whole bowl of cream? Can you count cream, or would that be like counting mustard as a food?

I look at my boys. The retrieval of the words has the effect of making him relive the experience. I watch as the little one judders involuntarily at the memory and the big one puts a steadying arm around his bony little shoulders.

Bravery awards all round [and rats to the theory of mind.]

Tactile What? Wordy Wednesday

“Geez Wednesday again already! Has life speeded up?”
”And a jolly good morning to you too. No smarmy comments now?
“Smarmy? When will you ever learn to speak American?’
“I’m working on it. I just expect a hard time from you.”
“Hard time? That sounds vaguely rude.”
“Quash the rude antennae, I just slipped into foreign for a moment.”
“O.k. so down to business then. What do we have here? Don’t say I have to guess or I may just have to smack you.”
“Perish the thought! So you don’t think it’s self explanatory?”
“Your Wordless Wednesday posts are never that!”
“Well he’s playing with those winkum dinkum magnet thingummy do dahs.”
“Yup see those and your point is?”
“Well he’s playing. Or rather he was at the time. He was about four. It was a great breakthrough.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“Well ‘play’ can be a tricky thing. Especially if your fine motor skills are poor.”
“I’m not convinced that you know what ‘fine motor skills’ really are?”
“I do, sort of. The ability to make your fingers do what you want them to do, or toes for that matter.”
“Geez. Do I really wanna know what your toes can do?’
“No, you probably don’t but it’s the principal. Control over those extraneous bits and pieces.”
“My fingers aren’t extraneous.”
“Yours maybe not, but for lots of people, especially those with tactile defensiveness, fingers are difficult to control.”
“O.k. so you’re saying two things really, non functioning fingers and tacile…..?”
“Just think texture, how things feel, although it can also be affected by temperature.”
“Temperature too? This is getting awfully complicated. I didn’t come here for a lecture you know?”
“True. Try it this way. Say that being the experienced woman of the world that you are, you reach out to touch an ice cube and the sensation you feel is heat.”
“Er o.k. so you’re saying that……he doesn’t feel what we all feel?”
“In part, it’s more that whatever it is that he does feel, he feels in ten times more intensely than we do, either too many nerve ending or maybe more sensitive. Haven't you ever touched something so hot or so cold you weren't sure exactly what you were feeling?”
“Actually I have! That would be confusing, quite scary in some ways.”
“There you go! You’ve hit the nail on the head again. You get so that you don’t trust your fingers, you want to protect them.”
“So that’s like the kids that wrap themselves up in a coat all day.”
“Could be for some of them but there could be a lot of other sensory reasons too. Don’t want to jump to conclusions.”
“So his fingers are being brave touching those magnet things?’
“Yes, and they’re great because they snap into position. You don’t have to be able to manipulate them that accurately.”
“So all good stuff then?’
“Indeed.”
“You have high expectations?”
“Well you know, years ago I used to say that I hoped that my children would be healthy, happy and normal.”
“Pretty low expectation then. Well I kinda knew you were a pessimist.”
“True but in todays world, I thought that those goals were pretty high expectations.”
“You’ve changed your view?”
“A little bit.”
“How so?”
‘Just one bit. ‘Normal’ is very overrated.”
"Oh and one last thing?"
"Hmm?"
"Why does the photo have 'left hand helps right hand' on it?"
"Ah well I didn't want to complicate the matter with midlines."
"Midlines? What on earth are midlines. I don't have any of those."
"You do! Everyone does. I'll leave that for another time or you can check out "Slice and Dice" if you're feeling brave?"
"Til next week then?"
"Cheers dearies."

I am not princess [translation = but I may have a pea]

I await the day that the boys bodies adjust to Daylight saving. The day that they will wake up at 6 again rather than 5. That day finally arrives. Unfortunately, it is also the same day that the thermostat detects coldness.

I propel myself downstairs to greet the boys at 4:30 in the morning. I detect sound and movement. I am on automatic pilot. I negotiate stairs and propel myself into the kitchen, persuade my eye lids to open, force my pupils to focus through my dirty bifocals. I stand motionless, thus better able to detect the presence of a couple of small people, only to find that they are not there.

Instead I am met by wafts of warm air, tickling my ankles. The heating system has started to work. Cold in California. I must be a barometer! A motion detector? Senile.