Love You More

As I mentioned before, we're supposed to keep a log of the autistic things R does each day, to present as evidence when we apply for his statement of special needs. I made up special sheets and found a clipboard to attach them to, but it sits in the kitchen, mostly unused every day, collecting coffee mug stains. We find it hard now to recognize what an autistic behavior is because as far as we can see, all of it is autistic, like a pattern in a stick of rock. What should we write? "R spun the wheels of an object for 15 minutes today…. R didn't eat anything that wasn't made from pigs, bread, or sugar today… R failed to make conversation today beyond saying, 'May I have some ham, please?'" (It has to be said that G, his speech therapist, is pleased as punch he's picked up the "May I?...?" construction, making him the first child she's ever worked with who got that this early in his development.)

I know it's very important we keep this log, but I keep putting it off, like I do with filing my tax returns or working out expenses. Also, knowing that we need to accentuate the negative behaviours – the biting, the tantrums, the refusal to recognize the common laws of social etiquette - all the time depresses me. Instead, I want to note down the positive things he does, like helping to bring in the groceries, or showing imagination by pretending his toys are alive and want drinks or nibbles of his toast. He's taken up a particularly cute habit lately of holding one of his many Thomas the Tank Engines toys up to his face and grinning at it, then laughing and declaring that "Thomas is funny," as if Thomas has just made a face at him or told a particularly ribald joke.

I don't think he's going to lack a sense of humour. He finds slapstick on TV hilarious already, but is also amused by silly games. At bedtime, we have a fun little routine that works with rather than against his echolalia (tendency to mimic heard phrases) to amusing effect. I say, "love you," to him, and he repeats back, "love you," in a cheerful little voice. Then I say, "I love you more," and he repeats it back with the exact same intonation. Then I say, "No, I love YOU more," he repeats that back until one of us gives up. I think he knows what love means. If he doesn't, sheer repetition ought to familiarize him with the concept.

Further Reading

T and I have been a bit slack about watching films about autism lately, but I've been cranking through books on the subject. I go on Amazon to buy a particular title and due to their fiendishly effective recommendations widget, after I buy one I end up buying half a dozen more. I now have several shelves of autism-related stuff, most of which I don't have time to actually read, between work, helping D with the kids, and other commitments. But it's somehow reassuring to own them.

They fall into roughly three categories: self-help advice books, non-fiction memoirs, and fictional books about autistic characters. Of the advice books, I've lately bought two different ones about toilet-training and two on working with food issues. One of the books on toileting is called, I shit you not, "The Potty Journey." What is it with autism and the word "journey?" I'm growing to hate this insipid, self-important word, which also happens to remind me of one of my least favourite 80s Californian power-pop bands, so regrettably revived of late by "Glee."

Like so many advice books for parents of autistic kids, "The Potty Journey" looks like it was designed on a home-publishing programme with too many breakout boxes, scary-looking charts, heavy-line faux-naif illustrations, and cutesy, quasi-comic fonts. The reader is constantly advised to keep a journal of all the autistic child's wees and poos and the times of the day they occur. (We also have to keep a journal of R's more autistic behaviour in general for his statementing application. He will be the most documented child in East Anglia soon.) How can I ever have a dog and keep up all this recordkeeping too?

I've sort of skimmed over the ones about food issues, but basically the advice boils down to: 1) be patient, 2) keep making new stuff, no matter how discouraging it is when they reject it, and 3) don't get too worked up about it, they won't starve. Which is true, R isn't starving and even though it's a pretty limited diet it is a fairly balanced one. Having said that, we're very worried that all our local supermarkets have stopped stocking Plums' Spinach, Parsnip and Basil puree, which is nearly the only vegetable dish he'll eat. T is having his PA investigate buying a thousand pots of it to keep in storage in case they discontinue the line.

Two of the memoirs I've read recently were excellent, and I recommend them to anyone who might be reading this blog with a kid with autism. The first, "Joe: The Only Boy in the World" by Michael Blastland, is by the parent of a little boy, the titular Joe, who's clearly a much more severe case than R. Joe barely speaks, will only eat Sainsbury's Spinach and Ricotta Tortellini, and is so obsessed with children's videos he breaks out of his house and goes storming into neighbours' homes if he's had even a glimpse of a video he wants to see. Author Blastland, Joe's father, explains how Joe even got himself hit by a car while on one such quest, which led them to homing him in a residential special school because they just couldn't cope with him anymore.

But the pain and suffering are less the issue in the book than Blastland's very considered, coolly reflective contemplation of how Joe's difference forces us to consider what being human is, from a philosophical, psychological, and even evolutionary point of view. Here's a sample:

"The events in his life are sometimes mortifying, sometimes comical, poignant or weird, but above all for me now, they are fascinating. Fascination is one of the great consolations of this life of his, otherwise so frustrating, and I prefer that kind of consolation to pity; but thinking about Joe's uniqueness pays doubly, with a deeper understanding of all our humanity than I could ever achieve by dwelling on my own.

What makes him fascinating? In part, seeing what we have in comparison to what he lacks. He makes much that we take for granted appear suddenly luminous, and we see equally starkly where we would be without it. As one eminent researcher put it, Joe's condition teaches us 'nothing less than the people-ness of people.'

As the sample above suggests, Blastland also writes beautifully, and I felt continually humbled by his graceful, darting prose while reading the book. Now a producer for a Radio 4 programme, Blastland obviously studied philosophy or psychology at university and the training shows. In the end, it's much less a misery memoir than a sui generis essay on the nature of consciousness, told through the prism of one parent's love for his strange, enigmatic child.

I also recently loved and read "Send in the Idiots: Stories from the Other Side of Autism," by Kamran Nazeer, who was himself diagnosed as autistic at a young age, didn't speak until he was three years old, but now is a policy advisor and civil servant living in the UK. I'd quote a chunk but I lent my copy to N, R's one-on-one teacher, to read over the summer. Suffice it to say, it's also brilliantly written, and also very funny in places.

The deal is, Nazeer went to a special nursery in New York City when he was very young with other children with autism. Now grown and with a strong desire to find out what happened to his former classmates, he looks them up four of them. One has become a successful computer programmer who often talks through puppets and has a violent temper. Another is a bike messenger in Manhattan, who has a complex relationship with his male lover who over-fetishizes his autistic lover's gifts, throwing up all sorts of fascinating material about how neurotypicals sometimes romanticize the autistic. Another schoolmate has become a speechwriter, and he and Nazeer become good friends although he illustrates how difficult friendship is even for high-functioning people with ASC. Finally, one former classmate, a girl, has committed suicide and Nazeer visits her parents in a quest to understand what went wrong for her.

I can't recommend Blastland and Nazeer's books more highly – both great reads, both intellectually stimulating as well as emotionally compelling. The fiction I've read recently is much less impressive. I've two recently, both perhaps not by coincidence murder mysteries, both by Americans, and both about single-parent families. One was called "Eye Contact," by Cammie McGovern who according to her author's note has an autistic child herself. In it, single-mother Cara (you never learn how she supports herself, which bugged the shit out of me) has a son named Adam who apparently witnessed the murder of one of his schoolmates, so she and the cops struggle to get clues out of him although he's barely verbal.

The other book I read was "House Rules" by Jodi Picoult, because someone offered me 50 quid to review it, knowing I had an autistic kid. In this one, the autistic person is a teenager who -- because of his inability to make eye contact and a bunch of circumstantial evidence -- becomes the main suspect when his tutor is murdered. Picoult, who writes these big airport novels you always see fat women reading on the beach in the summertime, clearly did her research, but fucking hell it was a grind to read. I guessed the twist by page 200 (it's like 500 pages long) and then slogged through to the end in the interests of journalistic ethics.

I found in both books the need to paint mothers of autistic kids as ferocious, brave lionesses rather annoying, smacking of flattery, self-flattery in McGovern's case and of subjects interviewed in Picoult's. I was also deeply annoyed to find both books trotting out that old, deeply discredited theory that MMR vaccinations may have triggered autism. It's just simply irresponsible to keep printing this rubbish. Also in both books, the autistic kids are on gluten-free, casein-free diets which the Americans seem to be obsessed with as the cure-all for autism, although there's very little evidence they work at all. But I suppose it's a good thing popular fiction is making the condition better known and understood for a mainstream audience. I just wish people read more books like Blastland and Nazeer's.

Pets

Like a lot of amateur bloggers, I sort of lost momentum, and real life, in the shape of a big bunch of work and travelling, intervened. Now the itch is back. I’m staying home until August, and it’s been good to hang out with the family for a change instead of a lot of twitchy, harassed journalists. T and I had a lovely time travelling abroad together in June – I went for work, and he took an opportunity to sunbathe fairly guilt-free for a week.

The kids coped pretty well at home with D while we were gone. We Skyped them a bit, and R got a bit upset sometimes when we had to sign off (“no no no no no no…” he says heartbreakingly every time I say I have to go now), but little E seems to take it in her stride. The other day is a case in point. D and the kids drove me to the local train station so I could come up to London for 24 hours. I leaned through the car doors to give each a kiss goodbye and R, spotting the overnight bag, immediately twigged I was off for some time. “No no no no no no…” he pleaded, interspersed with little shouts of frustration, nearly making me cry. E, on the other hand, bossily instructed me to close the door and waved cheerfully. “Bye bye, mummy!” she said happily. Later, D asked her if she knew where her parents were. “In London,” she said. “What’s daddy doing there?” asked D. “Working,” said E. “What’s mummy doing?” “Shopping.” Little tyke’s got my number.

R turned three at the end of June, but we didn’t have a birthday party because we had a big naming day party planned for the middle of July. So for his birthday, I made a chocolate cake (roughly equal proportions of cake and frosting, just the way he likes it). He’s totally sussed the blowing out the candle trick. He’s also worked out how to tear wrapping paper off presents, and looks avariciously at every new, brightly wrapped parcel. T’s parents got him an electronic drum kit, which E, a little Karen Carpenter in the making (hopefully without the eating disorder) commandeered straight away. Naturally, he liked the remote-control car I got him the most.

R is going through a mildly aggressive phase at the moment, with me mostly. He’s really cut down on hitting or kicking his sister, and hardly ever thrashes at adults, but he bites me a lot, either when he’s excited and wants to play, or when he’s cross at me manhandling him into his chair for meal times, or trying to put his nappie on, or for just making him do anything he doesn’t want to do. I try to put him in the naughty box or make him have a timeout every time he bites me, as advised by FAE, but sometimes there just isn’t time.

Also, I’m starting to wonder if he’s getting too big for manhandling. If he doesn’t want to do something – like eat – perhaps we should just let him decide. In fact, we’ve had some successes in letting him set his own agenda a bit. During one breakfast he refused to eat and kept insisting on being allowed to get down from the table. Finally we gave in, and 10 minutes later he decided that, as breakfast was waffles that day which he loves, he did want breakfast after all.

He’s also getting better with animals. We went to some posh people’s house so T could play in a cricket match, and there were two spiky little terriers there. R immediately waded in and started giggling maniacally while trying to kick them. I think he thinks they’re big cuddly toys and he likes to see them move, so he kicks them, not getting that that hurts them because of his problems with empathy and theory of mind. Finally one had enough and jumped at him, barking madly, just when my back was turned for a second, no doubt after some kind of provocation from R. I think it may have nipped him, but we couldn’t see any bite afterwards. R screamed hysterically. T and I tried our best to console him (which took a while) but we were both secretly hoping he’d learned a lesson to be a bit more careful and wary of dogs, especially ones he doesn’t know. Strangely enough, ever since then he’s been more cautious around them, but thankfully still takes just as much delight in watching their antics.

We had to put our beloved cat Kylie down about a week ago. I ushered the children in to say goodbye to her before we took her for her last ride to the vets. Even then, R tried to bash her to make her move, which broke my heart in all sorts of ways. E, by way of contrast, was very nice to her and said, “Bye bye Kylie!” in a very sweet, solemn voice. I’m not sure if we’ll get another pet for a while. I think it’s best to let R grow up a little more first. Everyone seems to think we should get a dog and that that would be the best choice for R. The thought of walking the thing every day fills me with dread, because I’m fundamentally lazy and sedentary. Wouldn’t a gerbil do? Is there a pet you can get that’s doesn’t need walkies but is very robust and forgiving? Maybe a robot gerbil. Now there’s a business opportunity…

At last

I reckon R wasn’t even a year old yet when I first noticed something was… not exactly wrong, but different. He didn’t seem to be responding to his name the way he should do. His powers of concentration on favourite toys and pretty sparkly things were preternaturally strong. The far-away look in his wide-set, marine blue eyes, which only rarely look at you, put me in mind of fairy child changelings, creatures from other worlds with half a mind to go back there as soon as they can book the next flight.

When R was about 11-months-old, a friend of a friend came over with her little boy A. The two kids were only three weeks apart in age, but little A was already talking, feeding himself, and on the verge of walking, and R wasn’t even close. They develop at different rates, the other mother reassured me. She’s not just a schoolteacher and therefore understands kids but she’s also a better mother, I thought to myself. Maybe R is a bit thick I thought. Maybe he has Asperger’s or autism, I said aloud. Nonsense, said A’s perfect schoolteacher mother. I’ve seen autistic kids and he’s nothing like one of them. I put the thought to bed for another few months.

T would have no truck with the concept anyway. They just develop at different rates, he said, echoing our GP, the health visitor, his parents, my parents, and everyone else who met or knew of R. And look at how good he is at using a walker, T pointed out. Little A was terrified of the thing, and R can do three-point turns in it already!

So here we are, nearly two years later, and we finally have an official piece of paper with NHS letterhead and everything that says yes, R has an Autistic Spectrum Disorder. I have an overwhelming urge to shout “I told you!” at someone, but the words taste like ash in my mouth.

I feel strangely desolate about getting the diagnosis. We knew it was coming. We urged them to get on with it. I thought I, perhaps more than T or anyone else, was psychologically prepared for it. When Dr L finally said it, after Dr M had finished going through the ADOS assessment’s findings, I felt nothing but relief at first. And then minutes later I was crying and asking them if they could reassure me again (because I already knew the answer) that it wasn’t because I’d not taken good enough care of myself when he was in the womb. I admit it – I smoked some cigarettes, I drank some wine, I went to film festivals and got myself incredibly stressed. No, she reassured me. It’s not my fault. But if still feels like it is.

T, on the other hand, seemed to take it all in his stride. I think he went through the grieving more thoroughly last year, when the realization that R probably had some kind of autism drove T to give up drink for good so he could deal with it better. The other night T said he’s glad now that the next time someone says, Are you sure? He’s still very young, i.e. please don’t tell me there’s something wrong with your child because I don’t know how to handle the pity for you and I don’t want to know it, he can say, yes, we are sure now.

The Octopus and the Box

22 April 2010
Haven’t updated this for ages (not that there’s all that many of you reading who don’t know why), but just in case there’s anyone out there who doesn’t actually know me, the reason is because I’ve been in the United States for an extended trip, which was further extended by one day due to the unpronounceable Icelandic volcano erupting. So I’ve had 11 days away from T and the children, which has been sad and a little lonely but also refreshing in a way. I’d thought when I left that I’d do lots of writing while I was out there, especially when it became clear there was no chance T would be able to join me in New York. But as it happened I managed to fill the days with meeting people, seeing movies and wandering around. In the downtime in Oregon I watched old episodes of Glee I’d downloaded. It was all strangely blissful.

According to my sources back home in England, the kids are alright. In fact, I could see for myself during the video calls I made through Skype while I was there. Whenever I got through to them, E appeared rather unimpressed with the whole event and more interested in playing with the blocks I’d left in my office where the Skype connection is set up. R, however, was delighted to see mummy and all through the call would keep clapping and waving and blowing me kisses to me. T reckons he missed me more but didn’t show it as much, whereas E was more obviously clingy and needy.

The big news is that in my absence the Naughty Box finally arrived. This is a cage-like structure that we had a builder colleague construct so that when R does something unacceptable, like hit E or bite anyone, we can put him inside to show him there’s a consequence to that sort of behaviour. I was initially upset by the idea of doing it because it was too uncomfortably like putting one’s child in a cage. However, FAE gave it her blessing, and T argued quite rationally that there was no real difference between the box and putting R in the room where the freezers are but which he sees as no real punishment because he just spends his time in there pushing at the catflap, getting things out of the fridge and pulling books off the shelves.

So the Box arrived last week. D explained to me that it was no time at all until R did something naughty requiring use of it. She plonked him inside and walked away, no doubt to return taking care of E. She left him five minutes or so and then went back to check on him, expecting R to be teary and cross with frustration.

Not at all. Much like a wily octopus at an aquarium who kept stealing fish from a neighbouring tank that an ichyologist friend once told me about, he’d managed to climb out of the Box, go and get a toy from the play room, and then climb BACK in the Box where he sat out the five minutes quite contentedly playing with the retrieved toy.

Back to the drawing board, I guess.

Lovaas schmoovas

7 April 2010
Now, onto the assessment yesterday. First of all, I was in a total flap about it because not only did we sense this would be quite an important meeting, but also I had managed to lose the bit of paper that told me what time it was happening at. Usually that wouldn’t be a problem because I put all important dates (as well as many unimportant ones, like the birthdays of people I barely know) in my Outlook diary, but somehow amidst all the chaos of upgrading my computer to Windows 7 and reinstalling Microsoft Office, the diary entry about the appointment managed to get lost completely. I had a horrible feeling the appointment was at 9am, so we had R breakfasted and ready to go by 8:30, at which time the unit opened for business and I could call them to check what time his appointment actually was. It turned out not to be until 2pm.

Although the breather was welcome, this created all sorts of problems about what to do with E while we were with R at the unit. D, our heroic nanny, stepped into the breach and offered to take E with her while she went to babysit the family of three girls she used to mind full time but who she only sees on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons now. I said I fully expected E to come home with painted fingernails and lipstick, but I draw the line at mascara. E had a marvellous time playing with the girls, especially the youngest one who seems to think of E as some kind of living doll whose utter cuteness is only marred by the occasional need to have her nappy changed.

We got R to his appointment right on time, which is at the same NHS facility where he has speech therapy so he thought he was going to see G, his lovely speech therapist, and started asking for her straight away. Instead we met with Doctors L and M, the consultant psychiatrist in charge of our assessment and the educational psychologist respectively.

Dr L is an efficient woman in maybe her 50s with close-cropped hair and a friendly but strictly professional manner. For some reason my gaydar blinks with her and I think she may be a lesbian. Dr M is a younger woman who looks partly South Asian. I hadn’t really warmed to her brisk, stictly professional manner back in November when we first met her, but she seemed more likeable this time - smilier, kinder in the eyes, more open to explaining what they were up to.

The object of the appointment was to do a videotaped assessment of R mostly for Dr M’s sake so she could look through it and review his social, communicative and play skills based on what she saw there and earlier at his pre-school. Dr L held the camera and I was a little concerned she wasn’t using a tripod, but I suppose they’re don’t need Barry Ackroyd levels of quality here. We were told to hang back and let them get on with it at first as they watched him react to the room full of toys, but in the end we interacted with R quite a lot and talked to them throughout.

As I mentioned, Dr M had observed R at his pre-school and written up a report about her findings, which she gave to us to read later. She played with him with some blocks, pretending first that a round, cylindrical one was a car and then gave it to him with a “your turn.” He copied her. Then she pretended to drink from the same block, as if it were a cup. Again, he copied her. I’m guessing this was to test his aptitude for imaginative play or maybe just his ability to imitate behaviour, and it looked like it was all going swimmingly.

Next Dr M got out a bubble-blowing gun and started blowing bubbles. R looked a little taken aback, but intrigued and with lots of coaxing from me and T he came forward and tried popping some tentatively, like they might bite. Then Dr M blew up a balloon, which excited him, but when she let it go and it flew around the room he freaked out. Given that the next day he was happily playing with a mechanical chicken that made a noise equivalent in decibel levels to the Fall playing on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury, it was an odd reaction, but you never know what he’ll be spooked by. The remote control car she got out next was just as loud, but he loved that, although he preferred to play with the car on his own.

She also got him to choose which he wanted: sweeties or biscuits from a couple of boxes, using the exact same verbal formula ("which one? You choose.") that G uses in speech-therapy and he got that right away, although he preferred to feed his sweetie rewards to his daddy rather than eat them himself.

A key test involved me trying to get his attention just by calling his name and then getting him to look at something interesting just by using my eyes, not pointing. That he didn’t get. The only way I could get him to look was by shouting his name several times, touching his arm to get his attention, and then waving my finger at the object in question like I was trying to land an airplane with invisible flags.

After about an hour, it was all done. The doctors fetched their diaries and we set up an appointment for a feedback meeting on the 27th of April to discuss their findings, at which R won’t attend. I asked when we were going to get a diagnosis at last, and it turns out it will basically be on that day, although they were still kind of cagey about it and kept trying to explain that there is a particular procedure they have to follow with all this. It was all very redolent of social worker-speak or lectures from Health & Safety officers.

But we pushed a bit more and I said that I expected that we’re going to have a diagnosis of autism at the high-functioning end. Dr L nodded her head, and later T said he remembered that she said something like yes, that she verbally agreed, but I can’t remember her actually saying those words. I suppose it doesn’t really matter – we’ll find out on the 27th.

Dr M said that she was going to recommend that the school focus more on getting him to concentrate on tasks and finish them because he flits around so much when he plays, although we noted that he can concentrate on books being read to him and favourite DVDs for quite long periods, it’s just that new environments like their examination room and school are too exciting. T and I conjectured later that they may tell us on the 27th that they think he has Attention Deficit Disorder too.

But the interesting thing was that they seem to think his verbal skills are coming on pretty well now and that he’ll continue to develop in that area. Where he seems to be really behind is in social skills, especially paying attention to other people, responding to his name, playing collective games and so on.

This sort of took T and me aback a bit. We’d been going along thinking he was really improving because we just see him and E as examples, and by his standards he is improving. When I see the difference between him and other kids at school, I clock it, but somehow I filter out just how different he is from them after 20 minutes.

One other interesting thing was that we mentioned that we were curious about the Lovaas technique, and intensive interaction therapy that requires an autistic kid to be coached for around 40 hours a week one-to-one. I’d read about it before, and wondered if it might help him although it sounds like an extreme solution. FAE is dead against it, and says it really just works by behavioural reinforcement and turns autistic kids into robots who say please and thank you on cue, but have no idea why they need to say it.

T’s sister C has a friend (R) who has a friend (P) who has an autistic child and R was telling C that Lovaas worked wonders for them. I told C that I’d heard it was very full-on and required 40 hours of practice a week and she got a bit huffy like I was poo-poo’ing it out of hand. This was all very typical of C who, since she’s training to be a therapist, thinks she knows everything about psychology and I’d clearly got her on the back foot by knowing fractionally more about this particular subject. Just out of curtesy, I’m going to call P and ask her about how it’s worked for her and hear about “her journey” with her kid as she rather ickily put it in an email, but I don’t think it will be for us. Just to confirm my suspicion, Dr M said that she actually worked in a Lovaas centre years ago and although she didn’t exactly slag it off she was very keen to insist it doesn’t work for all kids and it might not be right for R. I presume that’s another thing we’ll all discuss on the 27th.

Show me the bunny

7 April 2010

There’s a lot to catch up with this morning, and I only have a little time to write. It’s 7:02 in the morning, and T’s turn on baby morning duty. Usually this would mean I get to lie in until the luxurious hour of, say, 8am, but instead I’ve slipped off downstairs to write. For some reason I feel guilty about it, like I’m pulling a sicky from work.

Anyway, before I get on to what happened yesterday at R’s assessment, it’s worth noting that last Sunday was Easter and we took the kids to our neighbours the N---s for their annual Easter Egg hunt party. The N---s are toffs like T’s family (the two families have known each other for years, and T's dad is WN's godfather), and they’re always having parties with dozens of louche, semi-bohemian posh folk and their children of many ages are milling around, drinking, and playing either ping-pong, snooker, football, rugby, cricket or all of the above at once. I used to find the whole scene kind of intimidating and too sporty and posh by half, but I’ve got to know them better now and rather enjoy the hugger-mugger muddle of it all.

As per tradition, on Sunday the grown-ups and the older kids all ran around the N---s’ several acres of garden hiding Easter eggs for the little kids, and when the signal was given, WN (our host, who’s like a golden retriever in human form) set off the children in batches according to the year they were born, which meant E was one of the first to get going having been born in 2008. Me and my very dear friend A, who I used to squat with back in the day and is now one of R’s godparents, herded E toward the Easter eggs while T wrangled R.

In brief, they did great. Even at 18 months (well, I guess it’s 19 now), E totally grasped the whole looking-for-chocolate concept, and so did R.

He’s been weirdly obsessed with eggs, as in chicken eggs, for a while. He can’t stand the taste of the real thing but of course loves chocolate ones. If he spots a box of chicken eggs in the kitchen during a meal he has to try to get to them, even though the result is usually so disappointing, much like life itself. But this time it was all win-win, and he found lots (with assistance) and stuffed as many as he could in his mouth as he went along. At one point he found a chocolate rabbit and I had to take a picture of him. “Show me the bunny!” I shouted, pace “Jerry Maguire.” (Tom Cruise movies have strangely evolved into a sub-theme on this blog.)

Later, E and R played exceedingly happily on the N---s’ trampoline with half a dozen other kids jumping all around them. (For some reason, my children just don’t get how to jump with both feet simultaneously.) E sat in the middle, still shovelling bits of chocolate in her mouth, grinning from to ear with joy at being bounced, while R ran around the outside, occasionally making a lunge to pull another child’s hair but, reassuringly, pulling back right in time if he said his name warningly.

From a distance he would have seemed totally normal, just another little boy tweeking on chocolate overload. At one point he wandered into the huge 50-man football match that was in progress, completely delighted to be chasing the ball and everyone negotiated around him. It reminded me of a time when I went to go see a rugby between Scotland and France (one of the dullest two-hour stretches of my life, since I have no idea how the game is supposed to be played). One of the France supporters released a chicken onto the pitch. It just flapped around contentedly the whole game, flying into the air whenever players or the ball came near. R is like that chicken.