Growl like a bear

It's the end of an era for me. M, my lovely year 11 student who is on the autistic spectrum, came in to finish his ICT course work. We have worked on it together since he was in year 9, and at times it has been a real struggle. Once he refused to talk to me for a whole week, because I had shown appreciation of another students music. Why were they playing music in an ICT class? Because sometimes it's the only way the teacher can get any work out of them. They put on their headphones and behave themselves! M has a hatred of all the other students in his year. He has thought for quite a while that they were out to get him. And perhaps they were, in a way. The noise level the created was certainly a big reason I found it hard to get work out of M. He himself, had to put on headphones very often, just to drown out the racket they made, and to find some peace, his ASD making him very sensitive to noise. Sometimes his own music was too loud. 'Turn it down,' I would mouth to him. His response was often to growl like a bear and turn it down…a bit.

So today we sat and finished off a little bit of writing. Three weeks ago the teacher told me that M was heading for a D, which is a fail. But today, although M growled at me (to show me that he didn't want to work), he completed the tasks and came with me downstairs to show the teacher, who on the spot told us M had achieved a C. Enough to pass.

At the end of the day I found him waiting for me to shake my hand - a line drawn under that particular episode of his life, and an acknowledgement that our mutual respect had allowed us to bob along together to get the work done.

The Sulks

What do you do when an ASD student gets the teenage sulks? How do you know they are sulking? Depending on patterns of behaviour you might imagine they are sulking at you when actually they are sulking about something that happened at home last weekend. Or sulking about something that happened at school three years ago. Which is not to say all ASD students sulk. But one of mine does, and this behaviour is very difficult to penetrate. Yesterday was a sulky day. It was the third day in a row he grunted at me, instead of using words. I knew we were in trouble. How to 'break the spell'? I asked questions - how's everything at home? how have your lessons been today?, is there a problem?, all resulting in a growl. Finally, I reminded him that 'You are the Captain, I am the…?'. 'Cabin boy?' he answered, in his normal voice. It's something I used to say to him 2 years ago when we started working together. I was touched that he had remembered the response. He was fine after that - I think it perhaps gave him back a sense of being in control of his life - so much of what he has to do at school is irksome to him, and annoying, and ASD students often find it very difficult to accept circumstances they are not comfortable with.

I hand-washed my beautiful quilt last night, and it's hanging on the pulley above the bath to dry. It'll need a bit of darning and maybe a replacement here and there. Meanwhile, this is a picture of a beautiful cotton shirt I bought from eBay. It's French, and from the 40s. The collar, cuffs and pocket trims are a lovely duck-egg blue, and it has been extremely well-made with neat little darts at the waist to shape it, and beautiful button-holes (but no buttons). I had bought it intending to wear it as a light summer jacket over a dress, but when it came I found it was just tiny - child-sized. I considered cutting it up for my sewing projects, but it's so lovely, I think I'll hang on to it and use it to display my brooches. What do you think? Should I be ruthless?