Really? Has a year just flown by like that?

When I started to write the date on the whiteboard before school started this morning, I was gobsmacked to realise that it was International Star Wars Day. And immediately, my blogpost from this time last year popped into my head. I can't believe it's been a year since then, it feels like about a second ago. If you didn't read it then, go and read it now.

Today, E and I laughed, and wrote the date a thousand times, and giggled and nudged each other every time anyone mentioned the date. We talked about our favourite scenes and characters, we watched Lego Star Wars stop-motion animation youtube videos for our reinforcers after school.

I even relaxed my no-Star-Wars-related-play at breaktime rule (although I was happy to record that he chose to play football instead).

I wish that I could have shared my dear husband's barmy take on tomorrow's AV vote - read it here, it's hilarious - but thought it might be a little over E's head. It took me long enough to convince him that Star Wars was fiction, rather than a documentary.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

More soon on the saga of the new bedroom - but I just wanted to remind everyone to get out and vote tomorrow. Say yes to AV.

Day 7 - Other people's toys

I took J-cub with me to work for the first time today. The boys I look after live in a gorgeous, huge house, which is full of 14 years' worth of accumulated toys. We arrived at 8am, and the boys were still asleep after a hard night's work playing DS. After their Dad had left, we explored the kitchen, utility room, playroom and lounge, and J-cub was beside himself with joy at all these new toys.

They have a lovely play table with a Brio train set, which J-cub didn't really understand but liked picking up the trains and carefully placing them on the floor.

We found an old keyboard under the piano, upon which I gave the boys keyboard lessons when they were little (like most of their musical instruments, their interest waned as they grew older). J-cub sang and banged the keys and made a complete racket, it was lovely to watch. Our piano is currently covered in boxes of stuff, and I haven't played at all since before he was born. I'll have to rectify that soon.

After his nap we made some more racket, which woke the boys and they played with him while I cooked lunch. They found an old box full of play food and spent ages tipping it out, putting it all back in the box, then tipping it out again. After half an hour, one of the boys commented "Babies are tiring, aren't they?" :D

Part of my role involves 'shadowing' my main charge, E, in school. I am technically a teaching assistant, but in a behavioural therapy capacity, whereby I prompt him through his work and his school day in the least intrusive way possible, until he learns through repetition and reinforcement how to do things for himself. I use a lot of gestures which have been adapted from Makaton and British Sign Language, all of which allow me to communicate with him without the other children being aware that I'm telling him to stop pinching his skin or to look at his teacher. I explained to him about the CBeebies programme Something Special, and taught him some of the signs that J-cub uses. Within minutes he was generalising the ABA techniques I use with him, to teach J-cub the signs being demonstrated in the programme. It was amazing to watch.

Towards the end of my shift the boys started to run out of baby-wrangling patience, so I set up a ping-pong tournament to give them a break. It lasted for about 5 minutes, before J-cub decided he wanted in on the action, and stole the ball. We swapped to playing table football, but J-cub swiped that ball too.

Game over!

Happy Star Wars Day

I've elected to stay home from work today and tomorrow, so as not to pass on my lurgy to any other staff/children, and because when I start coughing, I just can't stop, and I'd rather that didn't happen when I'm tearing round a playground trying to keep within eyesight of a hyperactive 10 year old.

I was gutted when I woke up this morning and realised that my decision meant that a) I wouldn't be there on our first day in a new classroom, and b) I'd miss sharing May the Fourth style Star Wars jokes with the boy I work with (E), who has been obsessed with Star Wars for 5 years now. When I started working with him, he and I did not mesh well. We couldn't find any common ground, he resented me replacing his previous favourite therapist, I was too authoritative and found it hard to let go and be silly with him. Every day that I worked, I'd be met with cries of "No! Not you! You're fired!", and I'd have to carry him to our work area in the throws of a full-blown autistic tantrum, kicking, screaming, biting, and pinching me for the first hour or so until he'd given up trying to get rid of me. Our sessions were always peppered with attacks from toy swords and screwdrivers, threats to cut off my head or drill through my hand. He threw a table at me once.

About six months later, he saw The Phantom Menace for the first time. My husband Jamie is your typical born-in-1977, geeky Star Wars fanatic. I've seen all the films a thousand times since we've been together, and gradually grown to love them as much as he does, although I don't think I'll ever be quite as obsessive about the lore as he is. This education, though, meant that at a time when I drove home from work every day in tears, losing all hope of being able to work with and help a child who hated the very sight of me: all of a sudden, we clicked. He started talking about Star Wars. His verbal skills were very limited at the time, but when he found that I could describe scenes for him, and knew character names, and could differentiate ships for him, and had an arsenal of Star Wars toys, books, and merchandise at home which I could bring him to play with, I became, in behavioural therapy terms, a motivator for him. His eyes would latch onto mine whenever we had a conversation, rather than skittering away to stare at the branches of the tree outside the window over my shoulder. He would run to our work table when I called, rather than me having to pick him up and place him in the chair. His verbal skills started improving at an exponential rate, as he found something that he really, really wanted to talk about. He started greeting me with pleasure, and reading on the sofa after work was finished, I had a warm and cuddly boy cwtched up against me, rather than a child who couldn't bear me to touch him.

5 years later, he still loves Star Wars, although Doctor Who, the Beano, all Wii games, anything to do with space and astronauts all feature heavily too. 5 years of spending 30 to 40 hours a week with the same child mean that I miss him like crazy when I'm not working, in a way which you're absolutely supposed to distance yourself from in this kind of work, but which my stupid empathic nature has entirely prevented me from doing. I was on maternity leave last year, and so it's been 2 years since I've been able to be silly, and giggle, and make the same joke a hundred times in a day. And I'm really sorry that I missed today.

May the Fourth be with you, E.