Anger

I have found that the best time to talk with Ram about serious things like emotions is after we turn the lights out. Sometimes I am very sleepy and don't do justice to the conversation, but last night in the dark I did pay attention.

I don't know what started it, but Ram suddenly become very angry and tearful. It turned out that he was angry because when he gets angry he is not allowed to hit people!

When he was much younger he did hit people, and we couldn't leave him alone with other children younger than himself. There would be no warning, and it wouldn't necessarily have anything to do with anyone else. He would just come frustrated, and as the only two emotions he had at the time were love and anger, he would just suddenly lash out at the nearest person.

He has learned that hitting people is not appropriate, and we keep a selection of boxes for him to smash when he feels the need, but it seems that it is no longer enough for him. Mind you, this could be because I am now saying boxes to move all our kitchen things into while the carpenter finishes the kitchen that I started 12 years ago!

The boxes actually take up a lot of room and look messy sitting there waiting to be bashed, and I know that Dxh doesn't like them there, but Tony Attwood recommends keeping things like that on hand. He calls it part of the tool box for coping with Asperger's. So the boxes stay.

I thought that martial arts might be a good way for Ram to expend some energy and frustration and he has always been interesting in them, but has refused to go to classes. I know that they wouldn't suit him as he can't function when there are people around him. I suggested we get someone privately, but he said that would only work if he already knew them.

So I put out a call on the Education Otherwise email list, to ask if anyone knows of a video or DVD that we could use to learn from. There are a lot of different people on the list, over 2,000 of them in fact, so I was pretty sure someone would come up with something, and they did!

I will let you know if it all works out!

Today being Sunday and no Dad around, we had a quiet day recovering from Saturday when Dad is around. Ram loves his dad, but finds it tiring to have him here.

As the weather wasn't that good, we caught up with some TV. We watched the last two episodes of Paul Merton's China. I wonder if he knows that there are all these home educated families out there using this series as well as his series on the Silent Cinema, as educational material.

I guess that makes Paul Merton one of our teachers!