Motivate to Communicate

A big mystery was solved today. Archie has been waking up at  night recently. A lot. Of course once he’s awake that’s it. I couldn’t work out why. Then this morning he didn’t wake up until gone 7am and he was not happy. He’d missed the streetlamps. It was light and they had turned off. We knew he had a streetlamp thing going on at the moment. I hadn’t realised he was waking up to look at the things.

Anyway mystery solved, although problem very much unsolved. I am expecting to be woken tonight. It was not a good start to the day. It began with screaming, and the screaming continued. He was not happy. We got into a little routine like this:

Archie: nigh nigh

Me: yes lights

Archie: nar

Me: yes lights when it’s dark

This went on for hours. And hours. And some more hours. Until it got dark in fact. I did take an hour or two out this afternoon and slipped into Waterstones. I’d discovered a huge pile of vouchers I’d put in a safe place years ago so I was able to go on a spending spree without removing any money from the bank account. Perfect.

I only bought one autism book. The one shown above Motivate to Communicate!: 300 Games and Activities for Your Child with Autism by Simone Griffin and Dianne Sandler a speech and language therapist/specialist teacher combination. It’s a little gem of a book. Not cheap- I paid £13.99 for it (although it’s a lot cheaper on Amazon, especially if you buy second hand), but packed full of ideas. I often struggle to think of things to do with Archie, I’m not that creative when it comes to play, and expect to be dipping in and out of this book frequently. Some of the ideas are a little too difficult, or need more language than Archie has, but there’s enough in there to get us started. It would never have occurred to me for example to pour lentils through a water wheel, but I think he’ll love that.

We’ll give it a go.

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