NobbyNobbs

as far as i'm aware pull in as far as you can and slow/stop unless that would obstruct the road so the ambulance couldn't pass (not including traffic on the other side, that's their problem not yours they should be moving over too) or its obviously dangerous. i think the general rule is you get as far in as possible and let the ambulance work out where they are going. if they can't get through you'll be able to see and then you would move off asap or pull in further. they're skilled at their job so it shouldn't be an issue for them and the cars coming the other. unless its obvious the ambulance is not/cannot pass you then don't pull back out/change direction etc, even at a roundabout junction as they're likely to drive straight into you by accident. i've seen an ambulance drive into a car before because the woman decided she hadn't pulled in enough and tried to drive off instead, straight into the path of the ambulance (but then Guildford drivers are crazy)

whats wrong with that? i have 8 tshirts, all the same design, in shades of navy/black and dark green... i have 3 pairs of jeans the same in light/mid/dark blue... thats pretty much it! thats a really good film about how rubbish the attitude towards girls and autism can be.

well after much fighting and begging doctors who said 'no, you're fine' to refer me i got my diagnosis 12 weeks ago, and was promised all sorts of wonderful support and told that i would recieve my diagnostic report within 6 weeks. its now been 12 weeks and still nothing. last week i called the autism unit and left a message saying i urgently needed the report as i have a DLA tribunal in a couple of weeks and need the diagnosis as evidence if i have any hope of winning. no reply. i only have a couple more days to submit the report as evidence before the tribunal, my autism key worker has left and theres no replacement, the person in the autism unit wont answer the phone or respond to my messages apparently the other people in the office dont know if he's in anymore or not and i'm running out of time and options. tomorrow i think i'm going to have to phone the NHS patient thing and see if they can track someone down to post the report to me. i'm also going to have to phone the tribunal and ask them to delay it (which i dont think they will do) to give me more time to get the evidence. can anyone think of anything else i can do? i have to represent myself at the tribunal since the key worker left and really need them to read the report so that i dont have to talk to them about it and have evidence of my issues.

one thing to consider is that often it is getting the children out of the school and into the car that causes the delay. my father does a school run for AS kids and it can take him up to 30 minutes to get all of the children into the car before he can even begin the drive to their houses. apparently one of them regularaly decides he wants to get the bus home, even though it doesn't go to his home. there can also be delays in the morning at the start of terms because another kid in the chain isn't ready on time (that drives my father nuts). that should straighten out with a couple of weeks as the driver wont tolerate it. also, it is incredibly expensive to do a school run (i know from what my father gets paid - but that is relative to the cost of his fuel/security checks etc) so for the LA combining school runs is the only option. what they might be able to do is move your sons position on the pick up/drop off. i know my father has done this before - ie he would pick up your son last in the morning and drop him off first in the afternoon. but that only works if the other kids aren't also trying to do the same!

what materials is it made of? and fit/style? i have a similar problem with tshirts so i know some good places to look!

not criticising you but have you tried to find a maroon jumper that is suitable in shops/online etc? jumpers are fashionable at the moment so the choice should be wider than normal. i can understand that the school shouldn't force you to wear something that is that uncomfortable but perhaps you could try to meet them part-way and then they'll be more amenable to letting you have different trousers, for example. new head always means new rules so it will take time for thinks to shake down. good luck

next are always really good for fashionable shoes with velcro. ive had a quick look and theres a couple of pairs of velcro fastening ones that would probably do for school, as well as a lot of slip ons. velcro trainers are also reasonably in fashion these days (last i checked anyway) and again next had a couple of pairs, otherwise skechers do a whole range of very fashionable slip on and velcro shoes (but you' have to import them from the US to get a wide choice)

medics generally say dont even worry about night wetting until the child is 7, and thats with an NT one! its all to do with physical awareness and the actual size of his bladder, and its not something that can be forced. i know a lot of people who wake their child when they go to bed to take them to the toilet and then think its great that the child is dry the rest of the night, but thats only because they've then got an empty bladder and the amount it can hold is however many hours there are left in their sleep. theres also an issue with the body learning to produce less urine at night, but again they wont look at that (they give medication) until he's older. we had a 9 year old who wasn't dry at night and went through everything to try and get her dry, but in the end it was finding the right thing at the right time that got her to beat it rather than any pressure/bribes etc we had suggested. plus with the advent of drynites its not nearly as much of a problem as it used to be (even if it is rather expensive). its also more normal than most people think so dont be embarassed for him or feel like its something that he is failing in. out of 14 foster kids we've had aged between 3 and 10, 5 have been night wetters!

we've had this one before with a child and it really does get incredibly annoying. after explaining, talking round and round it and generally indulging her fears it got to the point where enough was enough. we sat her down and explained that while we knew she was very worried and we'd always keep her safe we weren't going to listen to her talking about it anymore. we then reinforced we'd be happy to talk about something else, but that we would not discuss X again. after about two days of us saying 'i wont talk about that, what else would you like to talk about?' she gave up and calmed down about it. it still pops up every now and again when something reminds her, and we just remind her we wont discuss it but would she like to tell us about something else instead. i'd give it a go as anything else is pretty unsustainable, you can't take away everything that is red/might cause a fire etc. i was absolutely terrified of fire as a child, wouldn't touch matches, used to wake up in the night and have to go and check that the oven was off and there wasn't any fire in the house etc. i suspect this was because my father was overly enthusiastic telling me fire was bad due to a cousin dying after being in a fire. i gradually grew out of it as i got old enoug to 'play' with fire - campfires, bonfires etc i learned how fire behaved and how i could manipulate it/put it out. (i also learned the hard way how much it hurts after going to poke a bonfire with a stick and burning a charred line across my hand cos the stick had fallen out of the fire!)

i know this is off topic and i appologise to VenusDoom but this needs to be said lisac - while i understand that the majority of posters on this forum are parents of ASD children who can communicate just fine, there are also some who have an ASD themselves. for us it can be extremely difficult to have the confidence to post anything, even in a place like this were we are supposedly 'understood'. to then have you jumping up and down on other posters whenever they give their opinion is extremely intimidating and only makes posting even harder, i already delete most of the posts i write before posting them for fear that they will get a reaction like the one you have just given Baddad. i actually only post on three forums, and since i have no 'real' social life/friends being unable to post here just puts me further into an isolation i'm sure you wouldn't want for your own child. i know you have your differences with Badddad, but please can you keep it to yourself, or to constructive disagreement, if only for the sanity of the ASD posters who have more than enough anxiety without being afraid of being attacked online! VenusDoom - my sister (26) 'hears things' and convinces herself people are out to get her/hate her etc. she has had this since she was a young child. it is a more apparent paranoia than you suggested in your post but you said it had happened before and i dont know what his behaviour is like otherwise. she was diagnosed recently with something like a mild form of bi-polar disorder, but i can't remember the name of it. she seems pretty normal, then all of a sudden we start getting phone calls with her telling us X is horrible and all the people at work are ganging up on her etc. this continues until generally she leaves the job in a fit of tears and gets signed off with depression. for her this happens around once every 3 months, but can happen more or less. does your sons behaviour get worse or anxiety heighten before he has the rage? it might be worth looking into if you can see a pattern in the behaviours.

firstly i would think your son had a tantrum rather than a meltdown. he lost it because he did not get his own way, rather than because there was too much sensory input etc. its perfectly normal for a 5 year old to behave that way and ASD kids can and do also behave in normal ways. our three year old does the same thing in the same circumstance. we put her on the stairs and ask her to think about whether she wants to get dressed or not, then leave her to it. we wont argue with her because we're the adults. after about 5 minutes we go back and ask if she wants to do whatever she was kicking off about, if she says yes and sorry she can go and do whatever it was, if she says no she stays there and we come back 5 minutes later etc. as to hearing things that weren't said, thats an old tactic. claiming someone said something mean to get themselves out of trouble/their own way is a classic most kids learn when they start school and he might just be trying it out at home. again, our 3 year old has tried that one too, as have most of the other kids we've looked after. some children can absolutely convince themselves that something happened that didn't, its something to do with establishing fantasy/reality and can get confused.

ahh. we know that one well. we share our sewer drain with a street of holiday homes and it ALWAYS gets backed up in the summer with the tourists putting who knows what down the drains. that would be fine but when the previous owners built the extension on our house they built it over a bend in said sewer line.. so the house reeks for about 2 weeks at the end of the summer holidays where it is all sitting under the floor. we have access through a drain in the concrete floor and my poor father spends a nice few hours digging out all the stuff if it starts flushing back through the toilets! we're hoing to do the opposite with our fridge, we want to rip out some shelves and put in a big american fridge. we only have a tiny under counter one at the moment and with 6 people living in the house at times it takes a lot of planning to fit in a weeks food. is my job on a saturday to take everything out, clean the fridge and put it all back in with the new stuff. i suspect it was given to me as a job because i'm the only one who remembers where i put everything!

for the first time in 19 years i'm not going back to education! i'm officially a highly intelligent underachiever good luck to everyone starting/going back to university, hope you all have a great time.

when we moved house within the first week our freezer, lawnmower, washing machine and vacuum cleaner had all died. admittedly all were getting on in years but all that 'extra' money we had from the move soon disappeared. 7 years on all the same things need replacing again! but added to the list this time round are the car (undrivable at the moment, full of water from a leaking roof and keeps overheating), the fridge which no longer has a handle and keeps switching itself off and every window in the house these things always seem to happen just when it looks like we might have some 'spare' money in the near future

in my experience when nail biting becomes such a compulsion that its doing real harm that stuff wont work as the need to bite and pick at the nails is stronger than the dislike of the taste. we've tried it with several different children, but they just bit the stuff off along with their nails. one child became very distressed because she absolutely had to bite her nails and the stuff was making something that was a release for her unpleasant. some of them eased out of it when they became less anxious and stressed, but apart from that i've not had a kid thats kicked the habit once it became a compulsion

if it causes bodily damage or pain it is classed as self-harm and you can get a referral to CAMHS for it. then theres the long waiting list but they might be able to help move the anxiety onto something else or ease it.

you should also check if you are required to have accidental damage/repair cover, contents insurance doesn't normally cover things like computers for that so you would need a seperate policy and repair insurance is something entirely different (whatever you do dont take out a policy with the global pc store, the indian meal themed electrical store or anything linked with it (they're the same company along with one beginning with D and the stationary store beginning with S i believe... they're worse than useless and take over three months to do basic repairs (not just me... i know 5+ other people with the same experience)

i think thats a pretty insulting way to view peoples religion. i dont go to church because i want to fit in and actually it is now far more 'normal' to not follow a religion than to. for people that do it is about things far deeper and more meaningful than social pressure. its also very common for people to change denomination from that of their parents to something that suits them better personally. if you're refering to choosing atheism rather than continuing to pursue a religion then i doubt there is any more liklihood of an AS child rejecting religion than there is of any other child as most children question all aspects of their upbringing at one time or another, religion included.

well firstly i dont make a habit of sitting in a room with a diesel engine running... secondly i think you're missing the severity of an asthma attack. you wont die from not being able to smoke inside... i could die if you do. imagine holding your breath until your body is screaming for oxygen and every instinct is telling you that you have to breathe or you're going to die but your lungs wont work, you can't get air in no matter how hard you try. then tell me your 'need' to smoke inside gets equal consideration with me. what compromise do you suggest? smoking areas in pubs pre smoking ban? that was a roped off area with a few tables for non smokers 3ft from people smoking. when you work out a way to keep your smoke to yourself i'll say the ban is unescessary

you speak of your rights as a smoker but fail to consider anyone elses rights. before the smoking ban i was unable to enter pubs, restaurants, cafes, clubs etc because i have severe asthma and the smoke triggers asthma attacks. i have rights too, and since you choose to smoke (even addictions can be undone) and i dont choose to have asthma i'm perfectly happy with you taking your habit elsewhere so i can go inside a building without the risk of suffocating. as it is i still have to dodge clouds of disgusting cigarette smoke where people lurk outside doors smoking in groups, so its not exactly rosy on my side of the ban either. for Warren - i think i'd warn the smokers once with a 'really sorry but i've got to ask you to stop smoking' and then record that you asked and they refused, and leave it rather than keeping going back. unless your job role specifically says you have to remove them.

murderers sometimes feel justified in their actions because they think the person they killed 'had to die' as a result of some percieved injustice. doesn't mean they should get off their sentence or that what they did was right. in his GMTV interview GM said he was looking for evidence that the government was hushing up a new energy system, and he and a group of other people felt that was wrong and wanted to 'out' it. as i said before, AS seems to be the new insanity plea - i'm not responsible for what i did because i have AS' and thats a very slippery slope. we already think of insane people as dangerous, soon AS people will be seen in the same way

your personal apparent hatred of the US is irrelevant to the case. the UK government evidently feels that any punishment given by the US is appropriate or they would not go ahead with it. as far as i know we dont extradite people who would face the death sentence in america, as that would be against our legal morals. him serving his sentence in a US prison is not. your views on the legality of this have been made clear but they aren't the views of the UK leal system and have nothing to do with him having AS all of this use of AS is harmful. if i apply for a job right now and put that i have AS on the form the first thing they're going to think is 'oh, she's like Gary McKinnon'. the NAS endorsement only further enforces that what he did is 'normal AS behaviour', even if that isn't their intention

one could argue that a 4 year old is a professional in father christmas. being a lawyer doesn't make him an expert in a specific case to which he (presumably) has no official insight beyond that released to the public. your obsession with conspiracy and blatant paranoia is getting silly so i'm not going to comment on these conspiracies anymore. he has AS, he's not stupid. firstly you cant possibly know what class of prison he will go to, and secondly your views on US prisons are as riddled in conspiracy as everything else when you have no evidence to prove otherwise. your friend who worked in one isn't likely to present a balanced picture when discussing horror stories. i live with foster kids and could tell you some pretty horrific stories of things they have done but that doesn't mean that is the total sum of the experience, or even the main portion.

i've never heard of an OT giving a proper diagnosis. as far as i know an NHS adult diagnosis involves multiple specialists making an assessment and all agreeing on a diagnosis. i know there are also tests but i didn't have them. for me, it was a psychologist, psychiatrist and speech and language specialist who met to give me the assessment. i suspect private diagnosis is done with less people and more tests.

when i was 4 i was 99.99999% convinced father christmas existed and it was his elves who made the bike i got as a present. doesn't mean i was right, or that i had any evidence to prove it doesn't that statement completely void your arguments about UK prosecution? US computer = US choice to prosecute at the end of the day the real argument is about law, whether you agree with the UK or US penal system, and whether you think it is legal/illegal for the extradtion to go ahead. none of this has anything to do with ASDs so i'm not sure why the media/McKinnons defense keep using it. prison is designed to contain someone in a place away from their normal life so all this support network stuff is just bizarre. as to the lockerbie bomber the crime of terrorism was effected on UK soil and isn't an apropriate comparison because law was completely different and internet crime was basically unheard of so why try to compare those two? the world has changed.