Hi, I’m a single autism mum living in England with my 11 soon to be 12 year old son, L, he is officially off school for the foreseeable due to the Coronavirus. L has Autism and is at THAT age, hormones are rife and he has no idea what mood he’s in from minute to minute so it’s gonna be tough and I’m gonna have to be firm and have schedules and plans and not hide in the bathroom with tea! My amazing Mum gave me the idea to do this blog as I need some kind of outlet to stop me losing my sanity.
Like most of us I’m in a bit of a panic on the inside, how will I cope, what can I do to keep L occupied so he doesn’t spend potentially 6 months on his PS4 and become a zombie, one who eats me out of house and home in a time where panic buyers leave little food for anyone else! May I add, he only eats pasta, I mean really, pasta, it’s like gold dust, and he isn’t one of those kids you can feed anything else, he will starve himself until he’s presented with pasta.
So today we spent the morning walking the dogs, L rode his bike while I got dragged along by G, our Cockerpoo, and M, our Labrador, they apparently need to chase their favourite human when he’s on his bike and me being on the other end of the lead’s means nothing to them! After lunch I had a little lesson set up, I had the ingredients and measures set up to make pasta from scratch, L had to read it, figure out what he needed and get it all in the mixing bowl, he did a great job but he thought the TA’s were a bit hairy and not very helpful! By the end of it we had pasta, we were both pretty stunned it worked and I’ve just cooked it and the feedback was great, he loved it, I’m so pleased.
Now I’m sat here trying to get the motivation to cook my dinner, I have to cook twice as after all these years of cooking him pasta sauce I can’t stand the sight of it let alone eat it! Thankfully there are leftovers in the fridge I can make bubble and squeak with. So that’s day 1 so far, we will chill out tonight and have a “normal” weekend (without the joy of cinemas, meals out or any kind of social interaction) and I’ve set out next weeks lesson plans, I use the term loosely, so we don’t just drift along. To think a month ago if anyone told me the situation we would be in now I would have laughed at them! Hopefully we can get out of this as soon as possible and return to normalcy, in the meantime I will try to teach L something everyday, I will have days where I succeed and days where I fail but I will always try and I will be here, present, for him and maybe make some memories we will both treasure
A mum a son and 2 crazy dogs 