Where did the Internet go?

The baffling disappearance of the Internet is annoying to most of us, but to young autistic children it can lead to a meltdown or act as a trigger to them heading towards a bad headspace. It is incomprehensible to them how their shows can be there one minute and gone the next, replaced with the never ending circle of doom, which instills a brief moment of panic in me as I tentatively await the fallout. This morning however I had a welcome reprieve from the above, as I was the first one up and I had busily prepared a morning of online learning for them. I then attempted to connect with YouTube....to be met with a black screen and my lesson plan in tatters. No problem, I threw the remote in the drawer and made a dash to the school room. 

The children emerged from their rooms and tumbled down the stairs in quick succession and greeted me with 'What we doing today mum?', 'Can I have free tv mum?', 'A for Adley Mammy!!!'. Once the cacophony had died down I put my cunning plan in action. 'Right children', I cheerily exclaimed clapping my hands together and herding them into the school room, well away from the offending useless piece of tech in the living room , 'Sophia, find us on the world map, Kira here's a new workbook for you, and Xander what are the days of the week?'. Boom, they were excited and happily squabbling over who was sitting next to mummy. 

Kira loves English and happily completed her workbook in Phonics aged 5-7 which unlocked her certificate of completion, so she was very proud of herself. She was in a reading mood so she read five books to me in quick succession. As she was being cheeky and choosing 'baby' books, well below her reading ability I switched up the activity and gave her different tasks to complete in each book to stretch herself and she loved the challenge. In her Paw Patrol books she had to point out any adjectives she noticed, with Thomas and Friends, she was concentrating on the rhyming pairs on each page, and told me the nouns on the pages of Spot the Dog. She wandered off then with her practice clock, looking at telling the time within the first half hour. 

Sophia had found the UK on the map as our home land, and pointed out there's a big clock there (Big Ben). I then asked her to find Asia and pointed out where her Aunty is living, she was in awe how far away it was and how much land was in between the two destinations, but she took it in her stride as she knows she can video call her whenever she wants (technology is awesome when it decides to work). She then read 'I love my mummy' perfectly to me for the first time whilst snuggled in my lap for a cuddle and completed half a dozen pages of a maths work book aged 5-6.

Having then played outside with their friend next door for over an hour, it was time for part two of the day, still without Internet connection to the TV or my phone. Sophia did an Abc spelling test, and she thought it was so clever that I was using the alphabet to produce her spellings. She said she could spell like magic now, working out her 26 spellings easily, using varied methods of decoding, phonics and word families. 

Sophia is by far the most dramatic of all my children and she has just learnt to say this word (as I frequently describe her as thus, with very good reason). So she is now calling her siblings out when they act in a similar fashion, 'Oh Kira, you are so dramakick' followed by roll of her eyes and a flick of her hair as she nods to me sagely, for she's all grown up now, approaching six-going-on-sixteen. The irony was lost on her however when she stopped mid admonishment, to shriek 'My tooth, my tooth is coming out, oh my goodness me, they'll be blood everywhere!', running out of the room at speed whilst we all laughed at her. Apparently her third tooth has started to wobble but once she realised that there was no blood involved she was incredibly excited about it all. 

Sophia has always loved to draw, she spends hours of her free time honing her skills. Last year I showed her drawing tutorials on YouTube, and this year I have official drawing books for her to learn different techniques and to encourage her to move away from stick figures which feature heavily in her drawings. I was impressed by her first efforts today and she loved the new challenge. 

Xander had a day pottering around the house, making a mess, emptying cupboards, drawing making dens, creating stories to himself role playing with toys. He also readily counted 1-10 in English, Spanish and Japanese and whenever he talked about a colour he named it in at least two languages. We practiced the days of the week, and started learning his left from his right. We sang heads, shoulders, knees and toes whilst we waited for dinner to cook, and he impressed me by spelling Bingo and Blippi to me stright, rather than within the song. Recovery from transplant wise he is building up his muscles and stamina, and rediscovering his bottle, so he's drinking the majority of his milk orally now which helps me out massively in regards to pushing fluids through his stomach tube. 

The Internet decided to randomly behave in early evening so Kira and Xander settled down to watch Blippi and Baby shark. Sophia took herself off to a quiet room to play a Disney Princess story app on her Amazon fire tablet, where you get to record your own stories using the Disney characters and reacting to the background. She's really good at it and is a natural story teller, displaying a good level of self confidence. 

It was a good day despite technology failing me miserably in my teaching endeavour. No matter, we powered through and had a fun, busy day, with lots of positivity, and personal achievement. I hope you enjoyed this post and hope to see you next time. Stay safe. 


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