pearl

Very best of luck - wish I could be there. Will anyone from NAS be videoing it for Youtube? Don't worry about falling off - they've got a net round it

I managed to find this old thread so I thought I'd bump it rather than post on the book thread. Finished it yesterday, & reading some of the comments (including my own ) on here I expected to be shouting at it all the way through. But actually, I really enjoyed it. First off, the family didn't just latch onto horses/shamanism out of thin air. The father trained horses for a living & noticed that his son had an affinity with them long before the trip. Horses, as herd animals, spontaneously submitted to his son as their leader. He also had a good knowledge of & respect for shamanism, having lived in Africa & having a friend who was a shaman. He noticed tangible improvements in his son after riding - calmer, more focused, better speech (I know a couple of other peeps who have experienced this too) and that he also improved following a healing by a group of shamans at a conference in America that he took his son to. But he always regressed fairly quickly. Before setting off on what he himself thought might be a crazy wild goose chase, he went to see Temple Grandin, who confirmed that the constant readjustment of balance required to ride a horse can have some effect on the brain. She also believes that many autists have an affinity to & understanding of animals that NT's generally don't. She knew nothing about shamanism, but when it was explained to her, said that stuff like the rhythmic drumming etc could also have a similar effect. She advised him to go, & add to the sum of knowledge. He made it absolutely clear from the start of the book that he wasn't looking for a 'cure' for his son, but he was hoping for 'healing' for the more disabling aspects of his autism - namely, the constant meltdowns & the fact that he wasn't toilet trained at the age of 6. If the book is to be believed, both things happened within a day of his final shaman healing, just as the shaman said it would. Who knows, it may have happened anyway, but just those two things have produced major improvements in the child's life. They were advised to take the boy to a shaman once a year for a further three years to consolidate the improvement. He also made it clear that he wasn't advocating that people eschew 'conventional' strategies, but maybe consider using less mainstream stuff in conjunction with them. Personally I think it was very risky - it was truly a trip into the unknown - but for them it produced benefits. If it hadn't & the child had been traumatised or damaged by the experience, I doubt the book would have been written so I still have a smattering of scepticism about it all. Glad I read it, though.

And Did Those Feet by Charlie Connelly Another Radio 4 Book of the Week choice - I never get to hear every episode so always end up ordering the good ones from the library. A series of walks by the author, in which he retraces on foot various famous historical journeys. The earliest was Boudica's journey from Essex to Hertfordshire when she led her revolt against the Romans, the most recent the Doolough Famine walk of 1849 in County Mayo, (part of my own family history & what attracted me to the book) when hundreds of starving people walked 15 miles to a country house at the order of famine inspectors, only to be turned away with nothing to eat. Many of them died on the way, more on the way back

It seems to be the word 'gift' that is upsetting everyone. When I read Sa Skimrande's original post, I took his use of the word 'gift' to mean the same as 'strength' or 'talent', both of which are less emotive terms. And his original post was mainly about his own strengths & talents rather than those of disabled people in general. I for one am pleased for him that he is finding positives as well as negatives in his own AS.

I was prescribed Tamiflu when I had piggy pox, & it reduced the horribleness by one day. It was no worse for me than regular flu, had I known that I wouldn't have bothered, but the trouble is you don't know that at the start of it. Oh, & I had absolutely no noticeable side effects from it. A man in our city with no underlying health problems died of swine flu a couple of weeks ago - he'd not bothered with tamiflu & his family was really upset about that.

I'm undecided as to whether Aspergers (as opposed to classic autism) is a gift or a curse. But I found your post very positive & encouraging to read, Sa Skimrande, so thankyou

Sounds great Best of luck

Because I'm absolutely ancient, its really interesting to re-read books I read when young - the books haven't changed, but I have! Case in point is Anne Frank's diary - read it when I was 13 & totally identified with Anne & her struggles with her mother & her closeness to her father. Re-read it recently, & felt sooooo sorry for her poor mother who just didn't 'gel' with her & faced daily rejection from her. And don't get me started on D H Lawrence

If she's a similar age to me she probably completely forgot

Its a book I read & swooned over when I was 16 - then re-read & laughed my socks off when I was 40! Heathcliff & Cathy - it would never have lasted

Hi & welcome, my lad is 20 (must change sig )

Gary Numan is dx'd AS.

Have a lovely time in Notlob (I won't explain why we say it backwards lest it cause offence ) - 'tis only a few miles from my own fair city.

Well done LG!

way

I should probs post this on my Carer's forum - but there are more peeps here so more chance of useful info ... Our analogue signal is being switched off in November, so we are trying to find a suitable digital TV for mum, who has dementia & cannot learn new skills. First off we went down the Digital Help route, in the naive belief that they would provide equipment suited to her needs. Wrong. They installed a digi box & left her with 2 remotes to master. Despite mr p labelling them she was unable to learn how to use them & for the first time in living memory stopped watching her tv. (Given that she is virtually housebound now & can no longer follow the plots in novels this is quite major.) So we got them to take the equipment back, put her back on analogue for the time being & are now considering an integrated digital tv. My question is: does anyone know which is the easiest to use - are there any designed for peeps with special needs? In an ideal world she would have a really simple remote with on/off & channels.

Grrr, don't get me started! Seems to be a countrywide problem K. S's little library in the Wirral has shut, her nearest is a car ride away. We aren't shutting any here in Lancs as far as I know, however the 'improvements' being made are somewhat in the eye of the beholder. Seems to involve getting rid of books, replacing them with computers & letting children run wild so they 'feel welcome'. I was taught to behave in a library. And I'm not even going to start on academic libararies .... Grumpy old woman rant over

waist

stung

Brilliant news K <'> Well done that girl!

ashes

weft

date

At 340 pages I reckon its indestructible LG *thinks hard* values