Summer success and plans

Houston, we have a problem . . . Well, I do anyway!

Last time I blogged I had to change the account access, and now I can't remember the password! It's set up on Gmail, which isn't the main email I use, and I'm struggling to get a password reminder sent anywhere I can read it . . . for now I can access the blog via my tablet, but can't get into my gmail account at all.  So I'm typing on a *really* small screen.  The prospect of which has put me off blogging for a while.  But it's about time I bit that particular bullet, so here we go . . .

Life is full of ups  and downs, and one of the downs is CAMHs - so far they've been pretty decent with us, only one dodgy appointment and the record was set straight when we wrote to them.  We are so close to the end of M and J's diagnosis journey, I can almost see the finishing post.  So of course this has to be the time our local CAMHs have been told to find 25% budget savings!  We know some of the people the boys have seen have taken redundancy or early retirement, so changes in who they are seen by is inevitable.  I *think* that worked in our favour when J had his ADOS the other week, two fresh sets of eyes seem to have seen things a bit more clearly than those who thought they knew him.  But the down side of this is longer waiting times.

It's been almost five months since M had his ADOS, and we haven't had a follow up appointment.  So my husband called (again!) and asked how things were going . . .

Now, I do understand that losing a lot of staff creates problems, and by all accounts another member of staff is often off sick too, but my understanding has limits.  So it was better that my hubby call, he's far more patient than I am ;)

He was told about budget cuts, longer waits, staff off sick, and then as a concession the lady he was talking to said she would try and send us the raw reports, although they "don't normally do that." A couple of days later we got the reports.  They have more than a few grammatical errors, and it's clear they are meant for internal uses only, but now I can see what happened in the two ADOS assessments.  I feel a lot happier :)

The reports are at great pains to point out that they are part of a larger process, not a diagnosis in and of themselves, and so I'm not going to share the content, suffice to say that it made me happy, then sad, then relieved.

I have no idea when we will get to the next stage, we're waiting to see the Neuro-development clinic, and hopefully when we do we will have a formal diagnosis for each of the boys.

So, that's M and J . . . The next big news is L.

Back at the beginning of May L began a paddle sports course.  He was very nervous, unsure of going at all, it took a lot of talking on my part, and a lot more pressure than I was actually comfortable applying.  In the end he went, with the proviso that he try for two weeks and if he hated it he could stop  going.

He loved it!  As far as I can tell he is actually quite good at the various paddle sports, and has passed the course with flying colours.  This week he has gone to Devon with the group, for four days of paddling mayhem :) At 15 1/2 he is the youngest of the group, but he is happy with that, and has made some good friends.  He's thinking of joining a local club and earning more qualifications . . .

Lastly little miss A.  She is enjoying the school holidays.  She is "playing out" for pretty much all the time we are at home, she has lots of local friends.  For A socialising comes easy, she is a little bemused by all the "best friends" nonsense, and it has been a bit of a shock to her how unkind some of the kids are to each other, but on the whole she is happy and thriving.

Over the summer we have a lot of activities booked with our local ASD support charity, we saw "How to train your dragon 2" with them on Monday, and are going swimming on Saturday.  It's shaping up to be a very fun few weeks :)maybe the start of the school term will give us a bit of a rest!