There's a Panda in my Bellybutton

The aim of our blog from the start has always been to offer an insight into living with Autism and Asperger's and to help just one person on their own journey by offering support, guidance and advice. I have been, not quite bombarded, but certainly encouraged strongly to place adverts within my blog to make money from people reading our story and it got me thinking. Should we cash in on Autism? I will be the first to admit that money is tight. It always is and I am sure every single person reading my blog will relate, however setting up our blog was never intended as a way to make some extra cash, however much I sometimes may be tempted.  We want to share our story and pay it forward. I am a big believer in karma. However, I am certainly not against money-making ideas, especially those that fundraise for charities. The National Autistic Society’s excellent marketing idea of jumping on the Loom Bandwagon was genius and I have done my fair share of fundraising events to support t

BLOG NAME When Ryan and I started our blog we ran a competition to design our logo. Ryan chose the winning design and I love it. With our new logo now chosen by the lovely Ryan and during the running of our competition it got me thinking about the name of our blog and why we called it such an obscure name that has nothing obvious to do with Autism at first glance. I don’t need to give you three guesses on who chose the name.  I can’t remember the exact date that Ryan first mentioned Pandas and Bellybuttons to me, but he was around 10 or 11 years old. He woke up one morning and said to me “Hey mum, did you know there is a Panda in my Bellybutton.” I laughed and said that would make a great title for a book and he told me about a dream he had where there was a Panda living in his Bellybutton.   He had said before that he wanted to write a book about his Autism so I suggested he use that title and the rest is a wonderful history of blog posts to date and readers from across the globe. I h

It can be difficult to motivate Ryan to do tasks that he is uninterested in or doesn’t see the purpose of. Sometimes he can be motivated with a reward such as computer time or ‘down time’. Although his verbal responses are very good he finds writing very difficult and needs a lot of time to finish work as the process of thinking about what he wants to write, sending the correct message from brain, down arm to hand and then formulating correct letter pattern with pen gets very muddled and confusing.  It can also take Ryan some time to respond to a question or statement which can come across as though he is ignoring you, or daydreaming, when in fact he is taking time to process what has been said/asked of him and to formulate a response. Ryan has quite a sense of humour but doesn’t always respond as you might expect. Things he says, does or writes which we don’t generally find amusing he might or vice versa (see previous post on neologisms ) .  He can use humour at inappropriate

By Ryan I like photos. Well the detail and how realistic you can get them. Instead of going out and looking at them yourself you can easily just find them, but doing photography you do that yourself. In a good picture I look for detail and how good it looks, which comes under detail actually, lighting, depth, what’s in the background, what’s the main focus of the picture that type of stuff. Possibly my autism has helped me to see the detail in making a good photograph. I looked at it a bit more. I can see deeper into the picture. I get the meaning of it. I can see why somebody took it either for the beauty of it or just for fun maybe. With my photography I am not having to interact with people or do the social thing that I find difficult. It’s a project I can do by myself in my own time.  My photos don’t involve people. I prefer wildlife and landscape photography instead. I don’t take photos of animals even though I like them because well fi

Book Worms In my previous post ‘ Everybody is Different ’ I mentioned a really good book of the same name that I have.  I am quite a book worm and one of those people that enjoys learning and expanding my own knowledge so when I discovered Ryan was Autistic I set about learning as much as I could about the subject so that I could better support him over the years.   List of Recommended Reading What follows now is a list of the books I have read and some I haven’t but are on my wish list.  There is a myriad of books out there and this is a relatively short list as a lot of my reading material comes from websites but I have really enjoyed these so wanted to share them on our blog with our readers and followers. Make School Make Sense The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time Help your Child Succeed at School All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome Asperger Syndrome and Difficult Moments Asperger Syndrome and Adolescence Asperger Syndrome, the Universe and Ev

Since starting this blog I have wanted to talk about my eldest son Owen, but have not known how to go about starting a post about him. As a big believer in fate the perfect catalyst presented itself to me earlier this week and delivered me the perfect post.    Before I present that post I just want to give a bit of background to a tale of two boys.   Two boys that do NOT get along.   We all know siblings fight but our house on occasion has been utterly heart-breaking with the level of dislike and resentment that Owen has for his Autistic brother. Soon after Ryan’s diagnosis I purchased a book titled ‘Everybody is Different. A book for young people who have brothers or sisters with Autism’ by Fiona Bleach. I brought this book for Owen in an attempt for him to better understand the difficulties that Ryan faces.  It is an excellent book and very well written, Owen did read it all with me, but overall it has not helped him to accept Ryan’s differbility . He resents too much the di

  “While little is known about the interaction of ASC and aging, it is generally accepted that adults with ASC 1) tend to be fairly poor self reporters when it comes to health issues, and 2) as a group tend to be fairly sedentary. As such, concerns related to the long term health and wellness of adults with ASC should be at the forefront of any discussion of appropriate services. –The Current State of Services for Adults with Autism, prepared by Peter F. Gerhardt, Ed.D., Organization for Autism Research I have two sons so can only really talk about puberty from a boys perspective in the sense of its effect on Ryan while also dealing with Autism and vice versa how his Autism has affected his dealing with puberty. Puberty is a confusing time for any individual but for Ryan with speech and language difficulties the confusion can be more profound. He is not necessarily able to understand what is being said to him about the changes that he is experiencing, nor can he clearly ver