Autism - Charles and me

Chapter nine Becoming a Prefect 25 th July 2014 One evening after school Charles rang me all excited and told me he had just been accepted to be a prefect at school. I didn’t even know he had applied for the position! It involved helping out after school, showing parents round for new intakes and helping with charity events at the school. I was delighted. He then went on to talk about the next term in September when the school was going to be taking students out of school for PE to our local leisure centre to play games of their choice. Once the lesson had finished pupils would be making their own way home. That bit worried me a little as he wasn’t used to the roads yet and as the journey was over a mile away I would have to make sure he would be safe. I didn’t comment about it at that point as he was excited. I just said, ‘That’s fantastic, son, come to the car and we can talk all about your news.’ He swung open the car door, threw his bag on the back seat and continued, ‘

Charles has now been at Portsmouth university for two weeks and is enjoying his freedom and his course. I never thought that this day would come but I am so proud of what he's achieved and it proves any thing is possible. I do hope this blog has helped people and given them hope. Chapter nine will be on here soon. :) Here is just a little something about music to keep you going. Charles did have music lessons at school and I think music really helped him feel relaxed but he never practised anything at home so I never really got to see what he was capable of. So I decided to take him for private lessons to see how far he had actually come. He began learning the Guitar but changed his mind on a regular basis. He now and still has a fantastic rapport with his tutor,  and plays whatever takes his fancy on the day. At the moment he’s enjoying playing the drums. His tutor begins by playing the piano to a specific song, then Charles will jump in playing the drums to his heart’s con

Chapter Eight Lessons  Charles loved learning new things and was always enthusiastic about going to school. He embraced most subjects he took, including history, science, math, cooking, music, drama and geography were just a few. He even enjoyed French and Spanish but as the work got harder he fell behind so he had to give these subjects up. He had one-to-one in certain key subjects, especially if they were practical lessons, science being one of them. He would get so excited about experiments and without listening fully to instructions would start messing with the Bunsen burner and mixing chemicals. This obviously worried the staff in case he set fire to the room. At one stage they said they may have to consider taking him out of science, but once Mrs Allen, his class room assistant, had had a word with him the school gave him another chance. It was the same with cooking; he’d become so excited about the lesson and wanted to add his own ingredients to recipes or pick som

HAPPY CARD Charles made a card for me and said that it was called a happy card. On the front were the words, ‘I love you mommy,’ and on the back there were several empty lines where he said I could write down what was making me sad. Then when I had finished I could give the happy card  back to him and then he’d give me a big hug and all my worries would be gone. J

Chapter seven SENIOR SCHOOL When Charles was leaving primary school I was given two appropriate schools to look at. The first one I didn’t like the look of and the second, even though it was well suited it would have been a round trip of over two hundred miles a week traveling for him, so I decided against it. I wanted him to be able to get to know the people and area where we lived as we had only been here twelve months. So at the last minute I looked at our local schools and my instincts lead me to a school less than a mile away from our house. They did cater for autism but not on a large scale. Well, I looked round, spoke to the staff, got outside help and decided to give it a go. This is a letter I sent to his head teacher at his primary school just six months later! 29 th November 2010 Dear Mr Tuft I know it’s been a while but we did talk briefly about me letting you know about Charles’s transition, so here it is.  Things started off okay and I was under no ill

Chapter Six -  SPORTS 2007/2008 SWIMMING BATHS From a very early age Charles loved the swimming pool, and showed no fear of water. I did get him goggles and arm bands but he kept taking the arms bands off as they irritated him and he said it stopped him from reaching the bottom of the pool. He got frustrated with me and the school because we couldn’t teach him how to swim in an afternoon. Once the school had taken him for a couple of terms I took him for private swimming lessons with a man who specialised in teaching special needs children to swim. The classes were smaller, calmer and they had more individual time for Charles. He preferred to be beneath the water than on top, which was worrying for me but the tutor was very good with Charles and he made fantastic headway. He managed to swim front crawl, overarm and back stroke, all while he had conversations with himself in the water. He swallowed half the baths, but it never deterred him. He achieved many badges and cer