Wednesday 25 April 2012

The World According to Bobby & Alec

So here I am, 21st century and all that, kicking and screaming as it happens. I've been writing 'Blog in a Blue Moon' on our website, www.aukids.co.uk for a couple of years now. People were too polite to tell me that technically it wasn't a blog, it was a column. It didn't track day to day murmerings, it tracked highlights. The highlights in my case mostly focus on daily life with our eight year old twins, Bobby and Alec, who have autism. Daily mutterings tended to be confined to my personal Facebook updates.

Bobby, who can speak (Alec can't - yet - watch this space, it's all happening), comes up with at least one hilarious one-liner a day, so the Facebook update is easy. This blog will give me a chance to combine the two - larger highlights plus Facebook one-liners, as well as tell you a bit about my little dudes' context. The World According to Bobby and Alec is a confusing but entertaining place, so I'll be sharing as much of that with you as you want to hear.

The twins, being by far the best things that have ever happened to me, have steered my life in quite a different direction from the distinctly uninspiring cul de sac where it was headed.

I once had a rather bland and 'normal' existence as a local newspaper sub-editor, at the Gazette and Herald in Wiltshire. When I was pregnant with the twins, the news crew, who were a fab bunch, nick-named them 'Gaz' and 'Herrie'. Quite fortunately we didn't continue with those names, although we did whip up a few rubbish ideas before we settled on Robert and Alec.

So anyway, after the normal existence came diagnosis and a second life. I'm now the co-editor of AuKids magazine, a positive parenting magazine for parents of kids with autism. My colleague/partner-in-crime is Tori Houghton. In my opinion, she is the best speech and language therapist in the known universe. Having met her in a professional capacity, we kept comparing notes and decided that there needed to be more upbeat, vibrant, practical info on autism - especially for parents of young kids. So we launched AuKids magazine in 2008. We only did it as a kind of hobby, and then it sort of erupted into a nationwide initiative.

Only this week, AuKids has moved into its first office, which is in Cheadle, Cheshire. AuKids is not for profit and can't really afford offices, but Tori also runs Time Support Services Ltd, a specialist autism support and babysitting service. Time moved into offices and AuKids moved with them. We work with a graphic designer called Jo Perry, of Periscope Studios, who has this amazing knack of reading people's minds and putting their thoughts into pictures. And we have Tim, an adult with autism who helps us with all sorts of jobs, including distribution and research. We're a small team but we like to think we make a difference.

After all that preamble, I'm going to have to go, as The Bobster will want picking up from school. Bobby is being bribed to do his work this week. That's because being autistic, he doesn't really feel the need to pretend he enjoys any work that he doesn't want to do. So he gets well involved with the fun stuff, and sometimes decides to ditch the rest.

His endlessly patient learning support assistant has a number of Aces up her sleeve, including building maths problems around his interest in the Skylanders game. Still, school is very much on Bobby's agenda. Thankfully he likes learning, but the week after half-term is always a bit tricky.

So I've unashamedly bribed him this week. He gets a Skylander Adventure Pack if he has 4 x special good boys. 'Special good boy' is Bobby's own term for being very well behaved. He is currently on 1 special good boy and it's Wednesday already so I don't hold out much hope.

See you soon (or any other appropriate wayof signing off these blog thingies....)

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