Better than The Brady Bunch :)

Many of my blog readers will be sick of reading how important it is to have friends that "get it" and have heard me wax lyrical on many occasions about the friends I have made on Facebook over the last year and half, but once again I'm going to tell you why this is so meaningful.

Last weekend, two girls who I now consider close friends even though we only met a year ago, came to stay for a night with their three gorgeous sons. We had discussed this visit on our Facebook pages and pretty soon, another two mums decided to pack up their kids and head for the coast on an hour and half road trip to come have a picnic with us on the beach. We all met at my house on the Saturday at lunchtime so we could go to the beach together and off we headed, armed with blankets, towels, food and high expectations of having a great afternoon in good company. The sun smiled on us and when we arrived we parked ourselves close to the waters edge, ready to run as needed. Between us we had 9 children, 2 auties, 4 aspies, 1 under assessment, 1 with dyspraxia and a toddler. Add in copious amounts of ADHD and we were ready for a fun day out...



Before long one mum was shouting for assistance to come take her phone out of her pocket as she was wading out to retrieve her young man who looked for all intents and purposes, determined to head towards Wales without a backward glance. As she managed to drag him back to land he managed to slip out of his shorts, preferring to turn the local beach into a nudist one hehe. We all enjoyed seeing the looks of excitement on our little ones faces as they paddled, crawled, rolled in the sand and did what they do best, be kids. We attracted some looks on the beach but as we are all seasoned elephant hide wearers, none of us were bothered by the attention. At times it was poignant for me to see Munchkin want to play with a little group of girls, but lacking the social skills necessary for her to join in. Despite having a vast vocabulary and excellent speech, she still falters when it comes to joining in with NT kids as she struggles conversationally.



After we had had enough of eating sand sandwiches and the beach in general, we all headed back to my house to let the kids continue to play alongside each other while the mothers were able to chat and relax a little with the front gates firmly closed. It was a very enjoyable afternoon and when the ladies from the Midlands left that evening, there were four nudies jumping on the trampoline until it was time to come in and get ready for bed. Amazingly, all four kiddies settled well that night and us mums sat chatting in the kitchen until the wee hours.



The next morning, all four kids were in fabulous form and we decided to take them to the local play centre where they burnt off some of the copious amounts of energy they store in such small bodies! Afterwards it was off to MaccyDees to meet up with another lovely FB family who were visiting the area and more laughing and chatting over our fast food before the gang all headed back to their own homes. On Sunday night, I sat and realised how quiet the house was now and how I missed the company of the girls and their wonderful kiddies.



Most people would think that having that many kids with special needs in your home would be stressful, but it was quite the opposite in fact. Not having to explain why your child likes to do naked acrobatics or why the ice pop is the wrong colour/shape/brand is very liberating. Not having to explain your childs behaviour or worry that people will think its poor parenting to allow drawing on a brown wall (well it did look like a giant chalkboard!) is so refreshing. It was also lovely to see the "friendships" between the children evolve. Whoever says that all aspies or auties are not interested in having friends is talking through their posteriors... I saw lots of bonding and even if they didn't communicate like NT kids, they were certainly enjoying each others company!

It's all starting to make sense now...

February was a tough month for our house. I received the new OT report for Munchkin which showed up areas that she had problems in that I hadn't realised. There were deficits in her gross motor functions that I as her mother, should have noticed already, but hadn't. Then we had the assessments in Solas...

Almost a year ago, Yani was diagnosed with ADD and Clinical Depression and the HSE put her on Prozac. Nothing improved over time and her symptoms of the "traits" of OCD and ODD were getting worse. Every visit with the clinical psychologist there were queries over Aspergers. I didn't buy it but decided that it needed to be ruled out or it would keep popping up like an unwanted guest, demanding that some attention be paid as it wasn't going away. So I took her to Solas to get answers once and for all.

There we met the lovely Marissa who did a full OT assessment on Yani. I must say, it didn't come as a huge surprise to me to find that she actually had very similar results to Munchkin. Gross motor skills were poor, balance and coordination, pen skills and attention. She had problems with auditory and visual processing. I was told that she met the criteria for SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder). After Marissa explained how this effected Yani, it all made sense. The crying, tantrums, temper, and emotional outbursts over simple things that others don't notice suddenly became clear.

What did surprise me was that they didn't believe that she was depressed, rather that her body energy levels were very low and that her "motor" ran on a very sedentary level. Its not that she's lazy, or tired or not bothered, rather that her body works on a different level to others. It really did make a lot of sense and we were relieved to find there were answers at least to some of our questions.

In the psychology assessment, at first I felt once again that I was "looking" for problems until I spelled out that we were there to rule aspergers out, not in. During the assessment process, as Yani answered the psychologists questions, I realised why the HSE psychs kept mentioning aspergers. Certainly there are things that could raise a flag or two, but on the whole I seriously and honestly didn't think we would get a diagnosis. They ran a cognitive test and did the Vineland Assessment. Unfortunately, her school had not returned their assessment forms in time for our appointment, so we couldn't get feedback at the end, however the psychologist did say that she couldn't rule it out at this time. I was told though, that regardless of the outcome of the assessment, my eldest daughter required a host of therapies including emotional regulation therapy, anger management, mind reading skills etc. I guess I'd better start looking for a second job to pay for those as know that the HSE won't be providing them to her! I'm very angry with myself that I let them just stick my little girl on meds and I as her mother didn't persue her problems sooner.

So we wait as the school was closed for half term and when I chased them up when the school opened afterwards, they hadn't done them, despite having had the paperwork for a week before the break. So we sit in a kind of Limbo til we put the pieces into the final jigsaw to get the full picture...