Autism. First Day at School

What a wonderful day my beautiful boy has had.

We started out about 8.30, with me bringing his school clothes down. He refused flatly to put them on. "I'm not going," he said. So I quietly put another shirt on, we had breakfast, and then I sat down with him to write a 'do-list' for the day. This has been something we have been doing every day for the last week, and he is really responding to it.

Our do list read like this:

• 9.00 drop JJ and Max off to school.
• Make bed
• Pull blinds
• go to shop
• Short computer game time
• Get school clothes on
• Snack
• 11.00 Go to school
• Wait for Mum to pick up
• Bigger computer game time

It worked like an absolute dream. He got dressed, and was all set to go at 11. When we got there, our teacher met us outside the room. She has just been to an autism course and knew to keep her voice quiet and keep everything calm instead of trying to gee him up. He got quite nervous at this point and nearly tried to run away, but he did go in with his dad and was ok to be left with the teacher.

Apparently he relaxed after about five minutes and joined in the circle time. When they did some writing, he had read all the questions before the aide could get through them and knew the answer. He passed the aide a pen and said, "Can you write an 8 please?"

Lunch and recess went well. The school has a fantastic sand pit which has always been a favourite activity, so when I went to pick him up, I found him happily digging and sieving.

As I approached, he said to the little girl with him, "Um, Jessie, this is Cecily. Cecily, this is Jessie." He then proceeded to introduce his dad to the teacher as well.

He came home happily and was nothing but positive in answer to our questions about what he had done and who he had met.

So far so good, and I truly thank all of you who have been praying specifically for him today. We'll try again tomorrow.