Thursday 3 May 2012

Early Birds , part 2

We started a course called Early Bird last week. It's put on by the National Autism Society and its meant to help parents learn a bit more about their child and cope with their (the child's) view of the world.

Last week was a bit of a toe dipping exercise, touching on a lot that Sue and I have discovered through Dragonflies sessions and the like.

Tonight we jumped straight in to Communication. It was quite an interesting session and we even have home work!

It made me think about Emily's condition in a slightly different light - as if she's a visitor from another country and can't speak the language. She picks up words and phrases here and there but really has no idea what they mean in context. Kinda reminds me of the Monty Python sketch with the phony foreign dictionaries.


I'm sure "my hovercraft is full of eels" might actually mean something to Emily, but it means Bo Diddly to me.

We also talked about the iceberg method again and discussed that the behaviours you see are only the tip of the iceberg, compared to the symptoms down below.

We're to look at Emily with different eyes over the next week - iceberg-wise as well as dissect her verbal and non-verbal communication.

It's really dawned on Sue and I that as parents of an Autistic child, we're shirking our responsibilities somewhat - this is a full. time. job!
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