Choosing Words with Care

The first thing to note about this week is that Bobby is acquiring decent taste in music. We've never really had 'tot' music in the car (except for in emergency when stuck in traffic jams). This wasn't down to any particular yearning on my part to Hot House my kids to excel in Eighties music.  It was more the case that car music keeps me sane and always has done. I wasn't ready to kiss goodbye to that small measure of sanity. My car - my music. The rest of the time I have to listen to Furbies interacting with each other, Mario screeching round corners, This Old Man on the keyboard, The Wiggles... The car is the exception.

Having said that, if Bobby likes a tune, he puts it on repeat. And there's only so many times that I can listen to A-ha's Cry Wolf without knowing how the wolf feels.

The second thing to note about this week is that Bobby has been an S.G.B. three times in a row. SGB is Bobby's own term, which has now entered the teaching assistant's dictionary of Bob-jargon. It means Special Good Boy. He gets awarded SGB when he does all his work without fuss.

This week's the first time he's had any SGBs since the start of the school year, which gives you a rough idea of how Year 6 has gone so far. Some work, a lot of fuss. By the way 'fuss' is Teaching Assistant understatement for 'heckuva scene'.

Bobby's Teaching Assistant, M'lanie, has a way of putting things that makes even the most heinous of crimes seem quite innocuous. In M'lanie-speak, the Second World War would be referred to as 'a bit of a row'. Using this understatement, she's never made me feel bad even on the days when she's had to ring me up from school.

JUST CALM DOWN, EVERYONE: Bobby's teaching assistant needs to be a UN Ambassador. She would see to it that all world leaders drink cups of cocoa and live in peace without any unnecessary tantrums.

It's always: "He's a bit up and down." Up and down arrows in Bobby's communication book are all that I need to tell me that she'll be lying down in a darkened room tonight muttering to herself and reconsidering her profession.

You can't underestimate the mental effect that words can have on a parent. If you know your son's been tricky, the last thing you need is someone bashing you over the head with the news with a giant verbal frying pan.

Anyway, I've learnt to read between the lines, and if Bobby's humming to himself at some distance away from me in the playground and not making eye contact when I collect him, I know there will be an up/down set of arrows in his communication book. It's as clear as the guilty look written all over his face.

If I knew why Bobby's been able to get three SGBs in a row this week, then maybe I could influence a positive outcome in the future. Unfortunately, not even Bobby knows why he has had three SGBs. I suspect it's a mixture of me being calm at home (as Alec is less difficult this week) and the SATs practice papers, which he loves. Exams suit Bobby because of the definite structure to them.

He may well be granted extra time for his SATs but it's unlikely they'll grant him an extra week, which is what he seems to be requiring at the moment. M'lanie reported that a maths question goes something like this:

Lanie: "I have two parcels, each cost £1.50..."

Bobby: "Are they Amazon or Ebay parcels?"

Lanie: "Amazon."

Bobby: "What's in them? Is it something I like?"

Etc. etc. etc.

I was speaking about this to Tim on Thursday, as I supported him at his warehouse job. Tim is our researcher and packer and has autism. He works for AuKids and our sister company Time Specialist Support (which Tori runs) and he also works in a warehouse for a High Street chain. He has a support worker there and occasionally I step in.

Tim told me that his problem with maths questions at school was that they didn't look like maths questions, they looked like English. They weren't just numbers - (16 x 4 =) - they were scenarios, like 'I have 5 packet of crisps and 3 friends...' This confused him.

I thought he had a good point. Maybe we need to take one step back and explain to Bobby that there's a hidden maths question here, and that this is what's important, not what's in the box. Autistic people are not great at filtering out which details are most relevant to a situation - it's an inability to generalise and see the bigger picture that can make them struggle.

I had a bit of a chat to Bobby about this, but he corrected me. "No - I know it's a maths question. It's not English!" Durrhh mum.

"So you just like talking about what might be in the parcels then?"

"I don't really want to talk about it."

Could it be that I'm exaggerating Bobby's difficulty here and his main trouble is actually staying on task? Which is why he is very very good at procrastinating?

We'll see when it comes to his next homework.

This week's homework is making a Box Troll. Fortunately, the warehouse shift gave me a good excuse to walk away with some good materials for this little project.

All I can say is, I hope it doesn't require too much of a fuss.