Mannify

I've been meaning to reply to these lovely accounts for ages, and what better time than when I really should be writing an essay? Aw, these are lovely, and something to remember when dealing with 'random acts of rubbishness' which is possibly more typical of everyday life

What work do you do, Robert?

For goodness sake, please just tell me to go away and write an essay!!!!!!

Oh yuk, I've just read your other post. No, I'm not a big fan of psychoanalysis myself. It's like, where's the empirical evidence???? Rose (1982) got all psychoanalytic and Oedipal about Peter Pan, and then generalised her theories to all children's literature, ever.

I just keep reminding myself its TMA 06 of 7. Oh yeah, plus exam. When's your exam? Mine's October 15th.

Have only touched on discourse analysis, but it seems an annoyingly inexact science to me.

Soulmates, then!! Printing is another - he costs us a fortune in ink. This forum is a bad influence on me - I really should be TMAing it right now. This times it's What can the study of children’s literature tell us about different models of childhood?

I had to do an essay on Peter Pan earlier this year. I think fjords are infinitely preferable. (I'm back on the big computer, doing an essay).

I can only do a Scottish accent when I'm singing.

Here's the music-only version

Thanks, I appreciate that. He's ok now, but he just does not know how to manage such behavior and I think he was still a bit fragile even this morning. Thank goodness for Ann, his beloved escort to and from school. She brightens him up and knows just what to say. I can't imagine she gets much up from minimum wage, but she is such an important ingredient in Ehs's day. She laminates sheets for him in her own time on his interest subjects (he's also obsessed with all things laminated), sings songs with him, keeps the bus stocked with books she knows he'll like, and buys presents for him at the ends of terms. I would say she loves him. I'm still trying to get hold of the head teachers. I know they're busy, but the issue will burn a whole in my stomach until I manage to tell them.

So maybe you like this

'sleeping with the Enemy' had Brown- eyed Girl on it, and I'm a big Van fan, and 'Benny and Joon' had I Would Walk 500 Miles. Two films and two bits of music which had me entranced as a kid.

Yes, that sums it up. Meanness is something I just cannot get my head around. I find it simply bewildering.

I wasn't sure whether to post this or not, because maybe it'll make me feel even more upset. Anyway, here goes. I went to take Lola for a walk while my husband was making tea with the front door open so that he could keep an eye on our daughter playing with next door's little girl. Somehow, he failed to realise that Ehs had gone out the front door, and I found him sitting on his own round the corner with a load of spit and grass on his back. Two boys had lured him out to play and told him that a lovely teenage girl who's always kind to him was on the field. He was upset that she wasn't, and was quite tormented by it. They both spat into grass and put it on his back. I asked him, "Who did this?", and he said,"boys". I asked, "what did you do?" and he said "No!" in his high-pitched, frightened voice. They then told him they were playing 'duck, duck, goose', one of his favourite games, but just ran off and left him. I'm currently trying to contact their respective head teachers, because although it was out of school time, I feel they should at least know what these boys did.

Grrrrrrr! I'm like that - once woken, forever woken. Grrrrrrrrrrr again.

I'll bore you with my boringness tomorrow. It's been a busy weekend, and tomorrow I have to contact two headteachers about their pupils being mean to Ehs on our estate yesterday. I can wax lyrical about my wonderful children and I really am burstingly proud of them, but it's times like this that bring my feet back down to earth and I'm reminded of the challenges they'll face as they get older (furious emoticon - I'm on the iPad which does not allow for emoticons. Perhaps you'd like to post a furious one for me?)

This is fab. I love steelbands.

Well, it's the rarity that makes it noteworthy.

Ha, well I've news for you, AS - my first son breastfed until he was 3

This is totally off-topic, but I always find this an uplifting line of discussion. Do you have any instances of strangers being unpredictably kind? Here's one of mine. I had loaded lots of shopping onto the handle at the back of my pushchair. My son climbed out in a pedestrian area, making the pushchair unbalance, making the shopping smash onto the pavement, including a jar of tomato sauce, which splattered every where and the bags all split. I was staring at despair at the mess, wondering how I would transport all the stuff home, and wondering what on earth I should do about the tomato sauce. A besuited older gentleman came across and, referring to the tomato sauce, said, "Leave it. There's nothing you can do about that. Just leave it.", and then disappeared into the crowds I really needed someone to say that because it was hard enough working out what to do about everything else, and keeping my son safe. I secured my son back into the pushchair and began trying to find places for my shopping when the gentleman reappeared with a fistful of Tesco carrier bags and joined me in putting all the shopping in. With that job completed, he disappeared into the crowds once more, and I've never seen him since.

I breastfed Ehs until he was 18 months, when he started biting me. I had no idea about his autism at that point and everyone kept saying that if I withdraw the breast, he would soon make the connection and stop biting me. That didn't happen; instead he bit me more and more until I cried in pain, and then he would laugh hysterically. It was very confusing at the time that he was responding with such mirth to my anguish. I now realise that it wasn't my anguish that was so delightful, but the glorious predictability of a reaction .

Aw, Isobel, love, love, love your dogs. When I get around to it I'll post a photo of Lola. She's the same colour as your two and she really does destress Ehs.