My boy had a wow of a day

The Aspie teen has had a couple of minor meltdowns - and I do mean minor - with the yelling, swearing and aggro lasting all of 10 mins.
Yes, we thought it was such a lovely change from the hours on end of mental breakdowns he had to endure, too!
There's a couple of things we may be pointing the finger at - the gluten finally leaving and/or the build up of the fish, flaxseed and Evening primrose oils he's been taking.
He's calmer, he's making sense, he's almost back to his old self.
*sigh*
Took him in to see the Rupert Bunny exhibition at Fed Square; found some excellent homeschooling resources for it as it's had some education kits developed for use within schools. The downloads were for both primary and secondary students, very appealing, simple and easy but challenging to the student to use their observational skills in each painting.
He zipped through them without a complaint; fully focused and loving every minute of it, this is how I know he's getting better.
Then he chose some postcards of Rupert Bunny's and McCubbin's paintings, and quickly mentally calculated the cost (correctly), again showing that he's getting back on track.
Then we continued the homeschooling lesson up at the Melbourne Town Hall where they held a free organ concert;  twas fantabulous, the organist David MacFarlane brilliantly and wittily introduced each piece, explaining the strengths, the arguments within the music, who was influenced by what when it was created, etc.
The kid loved it so it was a great success.
The choice to homeschool him 4 years ago has not only paid off for him being able to spread his wings and explore both secondary and uni learning ahead of his peers but it's allowed him to have these hiccups along the way without putting more pressure on him with having to cope with mainstream school, too.

We WILL win, dammit

Aspie teen has stalled, academically, but I refuse to let it frazzle me.
The specialists who are supposed to be sorting out assessments are speaking a mixture of Swahili, Latin and Gibberish apparently, but I refuse to let it frazzle me.
My Dad is becoming more of a child but I refuse to let it frazzle me.
Well, nothing's going to frazzle me today, at least.
Things are so over-whelming but I cannot afford to get swamped cos my boy needs me to be functional, plastering a great grin on my dial, boosting his self-confidence and reassuring him that this, too, will pass.
My mantra has become "Let's get through this next hour in one piece" and, viola! We get to the end of the day without having the armed forces knocking on our door.
This is always a bonus.
Now, I'm off to channel surf pay TV, rugged up on the couch with my boy with his bug (virus) with hot chocolate and the odour of Vick's Vapour Rub and Deep Heat burning nostril hairs at 30 paces.
The First Straw by 311.

Bill Shorten speaks commonsense

When you are bearing the burden of having a disability, or caring for a person with a disability, your ability to fight for anything beyond daily survival is lost.

That one sentence not only proves to me that Bill Shorten has been listening but that it also sums up exactly how I've felt in the past few months, more notably these past few weeks.
We have no idea if this is an emerging mental illness or a manifestation of Aspie teen's autism fuelled by raging testosterone with puberty.
Mental illness or disability - choose your poison cos either way you slice it the system as it stands is screwed.
The rest of the article by Bill Shorten is HERE.

Send in the clowns....oh, wait, I'm here

Thank you so much for your kind words. I really appreciate them, it makes me feel less isolated.
Aspie teen has stretched his Achilles tendon - he actually did it over a week ago at footy but it's got worse to the point he complained of a sore foot Tuesday night; high pain threshold + hypermobility = unexpected injuries weeks later.
Told he may have to consider sitting out the footy season til his body matures a bit more and play next year, depending on how he pulls up after footy this Sunday.
Major meltdown this morning which resulted in a spontaneous nose bleed from high blood pressure.
Another just now - both meltdown and blood nose but in reverse order where the sight of the blood may have been the trigger.
Or it might have been Saturn in the 4th house of Jupiter was the cause.
Dear Holly Robinson Peet "Puberty plus Autism? Challenging!"
I'd say you're being rather understated there, poppet, but Hell, I could kiss you silly for your words.
And though I highly doubt mine is experiencing seizures this article made so much sense, too.
Finally, another mention of almost everything we're going through here makes me feel normal.
Were any of you told of the possibility of seizures at puberty?
There's a fairy godmother flitting about somewhere handing out the goodies for all the teens hitting their hormone bootstraps when the silly old biddy hands out seizures to the Auties/Aspies.
The silly cow flits in, drops a great lump of hormones, rage, hormones, seething emotions, hormones, possible seizures and hormones on the ASD teen in the middle of the night and the next thing you know is you're living Invasion of The Body Snatchers.
Or Shaun of The Dead.
Except I don't do the fence hurdling too well.
I have to laugh cos I'm all cried out from today.