Aren't we lucky to be able to use disabled loos?

I have three able-bodied kids and they all use the disabled toilets whenever we are out.  Despite being eight and nearly six years old respectively, both my son's have autism and have to be monitored when using the toilet. It would be difficult for us to go out without disabled toilets.

Spectrum and SEND Sunday #36

Hello, and welcome to Spectrum and SEND Sunday #36,  the place to share your autism, special educational needs and disabilities posts. If you are new to linkies, you can look at my guide on what they are and what to do to join the #SpectrumSunday linky in a bit more detail.

Autism when people are in fancy dress

We were so pleased when our eight year old son with autism started using his imagination. After years of not understanding, Anthony suddenly became Ironman, Batman or the BFG. But it has also come with challenges. And this can be really hard at this time of year when people are going out in fancy dress. Just like Batman's mask is meant to strike fear into his enemies, the same happens for our son.

Wonderful Wednesday: You will never regret being kind

This week's wonderful Wednesday share is a quote shard by the Purple Clover facebook page.  We are always on the look out for autism friendly services or autism kind places.  Often though I think that our kids with autism, in fact the whole family would have more successes if people were just kind more. Sympathetic, instead of judgemental.  Or caring instead of defensive.

Two changes of direction, two write offs

Explaining to someone who doesn't have much knowledge about autism about the impact of a change of schedule on my son is very difficult. When I worked, I used to do lots of events, and one of the parts of this I enjoyed was I always seemed to be able to get over hurdles and unexpected issues well. I had a sort of practical knack not only for what we could do to fix things but also what was important and needed to fixed.

3 healthy happy habits for busy parents

All parents get tired and may find they no longer have the time to themselves they used to have. Whether you are a parent or parent-carer of a child with additional needs, one of the easy things to disappear is how you used to take care of yourself.  Now, kids come first, then everything else, then often mummy's needs are met last.  But I can't afford to fall apart and need easy things to help me stay healthy and happy. So here's a few easy healthy habits I picked up when offered to try Pure Chimp Super Tea.

After 4 million minutes, it's finally time to say farewell to dummies

No, you read that right.  It's taken over 4 million minutes, or over 3,000 days, indeed over eight years for us to be dummy free in our house.  In that time President Obama was elected (twice), we've had several economic crises, Twlilight, the Lib Dems in and the Lib Dems out, Twilight was replaced by many with The Hunger Games and we are on the verge of Brexit.  It's been a while and I cannot even imagine how many dummies we have bought over this time.  There were at least 20 in the house the day they got thrown out - that was last Saturday.

Wonderful Wednesday: The BAPS Blog Awards

Usually my wonderful Wednesday post is a day I take a break and share an inspirational (hence wonderful) post, meme, TV show, advert etc that I've seen online over the last week.  It's covered all sorts but I've found each of them wonderful enough to share and you can see them all here.  In a way this week is the same but a bit different.  My share is about The BAPS Blog Awards.

Being a parent has made me fitter than I thought

OK, so I admit it. I was online, possibly tweeting and definitely not doing anything with the enormous pile of laundry that has taken over the utility room.   My alarm had gone off to let me know it's nearly time to go and get the kids from their various schools but I knew I had one snooze before I really had to leave.