All Cheesed Out · Wednesday November 29, 2006 by Abbie
We had an early start this morning. Usually Ram wakes much later than me but he woke about 15 minutes after me!
Sometimes he is hungry but one of the things that he finds quite difficult is knowing when he is hungry. We have worked with him a lot try to get him to recognise the feeling of an empty stomach. One morning recently he was in a bad mood when he woke and finally when we were getting dressed he said that his stomach was so empty it was shrinking to a singularity!
So rather than wait until he was very hungry and he finally recognised this, I suggested that we get up early and have pancakes for breakfast. I must also try to get him to eat more in the evening. If I don’t prompt him to eat he just won’t do it.
So Mystery Manor, our ghost story, didn’t get read much this morning, but that is OK because it is more scary in the dark at night!
Instead he decided to watch Walking With Beasts – again! He was always more interested in prehistoric mammals than dinosaurs. He hasn’t watch the tapes for a while, and he enjoyed reminding himself of all the names of the creatures.
Now, I can hear you asking, what does cheese have to do with all this. Well, it started in the bathroom while we were getting dressed. Ram created the CRA; The Cheese Rights Association. Apparently cheese has the right to free speech and to be sold on ebay!
We then had the word cheese put into everything, all day! We had long monologues on the Cheesosaurus, the Diplocheesus, and many, many others. We also had the random word cheese repeated throughout the day.
I look upon this as all part of Ram and who he is. It wasn’t until we got to town to do the shopping and I was pushing him in his buggy (he has weak ankles that hurt when he walks so we have a buggy for when we go out) and he was singing the word cheese to the tune of The Flintstones and we were getting lots of funny looks, that I remembered that he is on the autistic spectrum!
Oh no! He read what I was typing and I am now being serenaded by him singing the same song again.
Excuse me while I just thump him to stop the record from repeating!
That’s better, he has stopped.
Nope. I was a bit premature there. He is now singing it from the other room!
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, in town! After shopping we went swimming. Although Ram stopped singing he was still coming out with cheese and cheese related words for the entire hour we swam. Some are part of conversation but many are just said out loud. Luckily it is only a small pool and everyone knows us and is quite accepting of his behaviour.
We had a really good swim and his front crawl is coming along nicely. I even remembered not to say anything this time so that he would carry on and not stop.
We are going to watch an episode of Planet Earth before bed tonight. Ram always find watching things like this is better done in the dark so that he isn’t distracted by anything else.
I just wish they had such good natural history films in my day. I guess that is one of the great things about home education. We adults can keep on learning too!
But I must get him to eat something while we are watching it. Cheese and crackers? I don’t think so. It will be me that goes crackers if I hear the word cheese again today!
