It’s been a strange few weeks. The youngest has had exams and has had to choose GCSE options (how can my baby be this old), and the eldest has settled well into a new job which, when you have ADHD isn’t always the easiest thing to do. Apart from that, life carries on. We keep watching for triggers when we’re out, and we do all we can at home to make like as easy as possible for all of us, but it is a rollercoaster of trivial things that can make or break a day.

Our youngest is very sensitive to tastes and smells, so he tends to eat a lot of beige food with fruit thrown in for a bit of healthy eating – and I think this is a teenage thing as well as an ASD thing. Most teens would live on beige, bland food that is 95% carbohydrate, with a token amount of protein and fruit/veg. I think this is partly because they need the energy to grow, but also so much is changing in their lives, with their bodies and in their heads, that comforting, safe food is a stable thing for them. Anyway, I digress…..

On Sunday he woke up, didn’t want to go to rugby but was persuaded – partly because the team was short of players this week as it was the beginning of half term so some were away, and partly because all he had done on Saturday was get washed and changed into clean PJs and then had slothed all day watching trash TV (which was fine as it was the first day of half term). We get to the club, and he was asked to play in a completely new position (for those of you who know rugby, he’s normally 2nd row or on the flank, on Sunday he was fullback), and he played the best he’s played for weeks, got lots of compliments and left the club smiling!

We then went to a local farm shop for dinner, vegetables and to raid their deli counter for lunch. There was a lovely smell when we walked in because there was a local producer giving away samples of a hand made curry mix. J asked me to try some, and I did, and then (brace yourselves here) he asked to try some. THIS HAD ONIONS AND PEPPERS IN. He didn’t just sniff and lick it like he normally would, he put the covered naan bread in his mouth AND ATE IT!!!!!!!! And then, he tried the other sauce! To any parent of a picky eater, this is like finding gold at the end of a rainbow. Suffice to day, we bought a jar of the sauce and had it for dinner last night (and he still ate it).

But, ASD being what it is, the rollercoaster took a downward trajectory yesterday. We went to The Tropical Butterfly House near Sheffield as they now have a male sloth living in the butterfly house, and Mum and I wanted to go & see it. We paid to get in (not cheap, but not too bad if you were going to spend a few hours there), and then as we walked through the entrance, I could feel the anxiety building. There were people. There was noise. There were toddlers running round. It was half term, so this was to be expected. We went into the butterfly house, and saw the sloth, but it was even noisier in there, so we didn’t look at the sloth for very long. We came outside and there are lots of other animals there, so we started looking at these. The people were an issue still, but looking at the animals were fine. However, they have plastic dinosaurs at random places round the outside area. Cue ranting about how we don’t know what they sounded like, some had feathers not scales, and why were they here?

It got worse…..there is an animal walk through area where they have agoutis and wallabies and you can get up close if the animals want to come near – great idea and a good set up. At the back of this enclosure was another dinosaur….and a cave man. The anger that we got from this was huge. It was bad for education, there were no dinosaurs living with cave men and women, anthropologists have shown that the skull and neck anatomy of Neanderthals has the space for a voice box like ours so they could probably do more than just grunt…….and so it carried on. It was not a good trip, and we were done within about 40 minutes.

I persuaded him to stay for a drink, so at least the anxiety and anger weren’t the last feelings he had there, and he was quite cheerful on the way home, and we didn’t have a meltdown.

Today we are off to an art gallery to look at paintings by Leonardo de Vinci. Fingers crossed there are no plastic dinosaurs there……….