When doing his vehicle puzzle gave me all of the pieces to hold
Sat very calmly in the Kings Head and ate his crisps and drank his drink only needing to run when he was finished
Walked home with less touching of walls including the wooden fence
Hector put his hands together and said ‘bo’ clearly requesting a song, possibly Wind the bobbin up
October 2nd
Hector
Showed interest in new dinosaur puzzles and watched me put it together
Put together new farm peg puzzle with no help
Appeared to react to Dad being happy by giggling
Made an elaborate lego setup
Played with the Mario hot wheels by pushing his cars and a long ‘wand’ of lego on it
Watched when I sang Heads, shoulders, knees and toes
Showed me his wand of lego and earlier in the day his garage
Noticed when I offered him the right kind of lego bricks to finish his construction
Waited patiently for a car to come out of a drive
October 3rd
Hector
No floppiness on trip to town and very calm while in Costa
Helped to push Max
Saw his train pants and tried to put them on instead of his dinosaur pants
Concentrated on magnets for at least half an hour
Copied me drawing a line with bath crayons
When I sang the ABC song looked up each time I paused
October 4th
Hector
Lots of scribbling in the bath and appeared to copy me writing number 1
Appeared to respond to Max crying
October 5th
Max
Followed an object with his eyes
Gurgled
Hector
Noticed Max sitting next to him
Followed instructions to sit when bribed!
Enjoyed water play with Isobel
Brought me back to sit down in living room when I tried to leave the room but accepted when I did leave
October 6th
Hector
Hector let me help him thread a bead after watching me
Appeared to say ‘blue’ and ‘shoes’
Noticed and paused when people said bye to him
Found lots of things funny, including his reflection/peekaboo in the mirror, baby shark and my over the top reaction to his shoes
Listened and watched me for duration of singing Baby shark
Put my hands together when I sang ‘If you’re happy and you know it’
Placed a domino after watching me
Helped Isobel stamp
Built a more elaborate train after I showed him mine and asked me to help him fix it
Got back in the bath when I talked to him encouragingly (currently has a bath phobia)
Wanted to put on his own trousers without help and very nearly succeeded
October 7th
Max
Stayed awake for a long stretch in the morning
Hector
Clearly said 4 while holding the number 4
After watching me put mini frogs on scales he copied and played for at least 5 minutes, counting the frogs as well as putting them on the scales. Appeared to understand concept of heavy/light.
Went to door when I said out
Finished the farm puzzle
Watched cars sat on the bench for 5 minutes
Coffee after the library at Blue DragonflyClimbing at Bradley woods with Granny and Grandad
A record of the boys’ achievements this month (only started at the end of the month!)
September 26th
Max
Slept through 3 nights in a row
Held his head up for 15 seconds
Hector
Went upstairs and requested a bath and was then in his bed trying to sleep less than an hour later, showing he knew he was tired and wanted to sleep
Took me by the hand and got me to sit down with him several times, either to show me lego or for unknown reasons. Seemed to want me on his level.
Completed his vehicle jigsaw 5 times in a row
Stepped back from the oven at the word ‘hot’
When I said ‘You’ve cheated and left your fire engine there’ he took it out of the jigsaw
Appeared to sing parts of Old Mcdonald and Heads, shoulders, knees and toes
Went down the slide the correct way appearing to respond to commands
Didn’t chew his new bedding
Transferred his toys into the bath when it was suggested
Laughed at the action of ‘bye’
September 27th
Hector
Went to downstairs bathroom without being reminded
Max
Held head up while in carrier
September 28th
Hector
Watched Isobel throwing rings into paddling pool for a few seconds. After school, copied me throwing rings in/out of paddling pool.
Said ‘ba bye’ while walking away from me in garden.
Led me to step and to sit on grass with him pointing to path where Isobel had drawn in chalk
Got one sock halfway on on his own without being asked to (when I said it was time to get ready for school)
Put a piece onto his 3D puzzle when directed to
September 29th
Max
Spent at least 10 minutes on baby gym, including half of this on his tummy
Was happy to be in his bouncer (with dummy in)
Hector
Led all three of us outside and sat us down to watch him play, coming back to fetch us again if we left
Led me into the living room and led me around it and then in speech pattern was trying to tell me something
When Max was picked up by Isobel requested to be picked up
September 30th
Hector
Touched less things on the walk home including not touching the wooden fence
Able to be redirected when he needed to run at the library
Walked rather than ran away when he got bored taking out books
Max
Settled himself when put down and was crying (after being up for 5 hours)
Max isn’t as keen on the bouncer as Hector
Already holding his head up
Hector chose this number
This took Hector 6 minutes
Hector loves this book!
He’s chosen this one twice
Max is already starting to hold his head up. Hector still loves books with pictures. His favourite number is 4 and he has done lots more colouring this month.
It’s that time of year when Facebook is covered with cute pictures of children in uniform. But for me the first day of school was a very hard day. I am unbelievably proud of Hector. He has had so much to deal with over the past few months. Moving to the UK, Tom going back to China, a new baby brother. Before that he’s been to three different school which had a really negative impact on his education. Through all this he has remained our happy, if wild, boy.
I can’t describe how difficult it is to see every other child talking to their parents about their day while your own has a tantrum every morning. Not to mention the fact that you know a lot of parents are just assuming that your child is ‘naughty’ or ‘badly behaved’.
After 2 days, it happened again. We were told Hector could only come to school part time. At first we were pretty angry about this. After all, we came here so he could get an education. However, after a second meeting I (I’m not sure I want to speak for Tom here) have come to accept it, even if the situation is far from perfect. I feel that I need to trust the school are doing what they think is best for Hector. It’s frustrating because the situation is partly financial and to do with Hector not having the 1:1 he needs. But at the same time it did take about a week for his attachment issues to resolve. And if he really cannot focus on anything for more than a minute then it would be difficult for him to get more out of morning school. It’s particularly frustrating because he can do a lot more at home than he can at school. He concentrates for longer, willingly goes to the toilet (his tactic at school is just to hold it) and listens to our instructions at least 50% of the time. We just have to hope that at some point he will decide to engage with it. It really does seem like he is choosing to not engage to some degree at the moment.
Having said all this, he really is starting to make huge progress at home including:
Obeying instructions like stop/down (admittedly not all of the time)
Understanding his routine to the extent of leading us upstairs when it is bath time
Copying our actions
Enjoying scribbling
Taking turns with a ball
Requesting songs or games like Peekaboo and Ring around the roses
Enjoying books
Needing fewer reminders to use a spoon
Having very few toilet accidents
Starting to appreciate his own safety on the road
All we can really do is hope that, as happened at BASIS, he will become more comfortable and therefore start to engage. I am reminded of the ’emotional backpack’ and it seems Tom leaving has had more of an impact than we anticipated. In the meantime, we are trying to make the best of the situation and have hired a nanny 3 mornings a week as well as trying to do nice things the other 2 mornings, like going to the library or to parks that are too busy on the weekend. He’s doing really well with his nanny already. So at least he has 20 hours of 1:1 a week plus the other 2 mornings with us.
Hector loves cars and the number 4 – good job he left China!
At least our initial attempts to find jobs have revealed that most schools adopt an inclusive attitude. So if we can get an EHC then the likelihood is that the future will get easier. I can never decide if this is something he is just going to grow out of, compounded by the disruption to his education last year, or if this is how it would always have been. His climbing reveals that it is not a global delay as his gross motor and fine motor skills have no issues. It all seems to come down to his concentration levels or even just to his willingness to engage. So I hope school can manage to reach him and that everyone’s talk of the Leas being a great school is true!
Months have passed since I last made a post here and so in an effort to be more proactive, I have here not just one trip summary, but two! Both featuring the Chinese word Jing in it. Which basically stands for Capital City, probably because both Nanjing and Beijing have at different times in Chinese history been the capital of China, well one currently is. Although the title of capital of the Chinese Empire has shifted a few times across the roughly 2,000 years of Dynastic China, these two are the most recent.
Both trips were made with very little time as we are now in the part of the school year wherein there are no significant breaks. All we have to survive on between this long 4 month stretch that is March – June are a few long weekends here and there. We used this longest of long weekends (Thursday + Friday off) to travel to Beijing. I had originally envisioned travelling to Beijing in the summer of 2019. However that was deemed one trip too many + the logistics of how far Beijing was from the more linear route we plowed over the summer. That trip had benefitted from being basically a straight line from Nanjing, to Luoyang and from Luoyang to Xi’an before taking a flight all the way back to Shanghai, effectively driving from the middle east coast of China to roughly the center to the West. Beijing is considerably further north and would have required an extra day of travel by train or plane each way. So we put it off until the following Summer break. Then Covid happened, so we stuck to just going to cities where the pandemic was not having sporadic outbreaks. Then we meant to go in October and Hector required more attention. Third time is the charm then as we finally made it to Beijing in late March.
Leaving Wednesday night was perhaps a bit too adventurous as I had booked a flight the same day we work. Unfortunately, the flight was delayed for 2 and a half hours, making it a very-very late flight. Making matters worse, we stopped inexplicably in a tiny airport for a 30-minute break. Hector also had a toilet accident right after the suitcase with all of his other changes of pants was checked in. So I had to buy him a night set of silky-blue pajamas. At least he was able to relax in comfort.
After checking into our hotel. At about…3:00am, we proceeded to pass out and wake the next morning to tackle the Forbidden City!
I took a few photos here, but not much beyond Hector running around like a maniac as he is want to do in such settings. This is largely because I prefer to buy glossy souvenir books which feature much more professional and nicer looking photos than anything I could take on my phone. That said here are some images of Hector frolicking.
After checking into our hotel. At about…3:00am, we proceeded to pass out and wake the next morning to tackle the Forbidden City!
I took a few photos here, but not much beyond Hector running around like a maniac as he is want to do in such settings. This is largely because I prefer to buy glossy souvenir books which feature much more professional and nicer looking photos than anything I could take on my phone. That said here are some images of Hector frolicking.
The Forbidden City was from the 15th to early 20th century the seat of Chinese Imperial Power, being the enormous living quarters for the Emperor, the Empress their children and the Emperors many many many Concubines. Although just one of the several royal complexes constructed by and for the Ming and later Qing Emperors, this one is perhaps the most famous. It is also in the best condition. The great big court yards have proven useful for the various regimes to occupy it, the orange/yellow tiled roofs of the many halls and palaces provide an epic backdrop if you are say an Invading British army, or French Army, or Japanese Army, or Nationalist Army, or a War Lord or the Communist Party. So yeah it has remained largely unharmed whereas many major Chinese constructions have been torched, bombed, or damaged. That said most of the halls cannot be entered and/or are very poorly lit. This is a bit of a downer as it means you mostly just get to walk around looking at impressive exteriors and missing out on what may be behind the closed doors, or at best squinting into a dark hall, just barely able to make out the glinting of gilded thrones. A few halls have been converted into impressive galleries and museums however, and in a sense the entire complex is one giant museum. After wandering around the grounds we made our way up to the top of what was once the Emperors back garden. Today a highway severs it from direct connection to the rest of the palace grounds. However the views from atop of the hill are great, you can really get a good sense of the ‘heavenly geometry’ of the Forbidden City from up there.
Or just catch your breath.
Later that evening we went to one of Beijings more famous Roast Duck restaurants, or as it is known in the United Kingdom Peking Duck (That is to say Beijing duck). The restaurant was a towering thing, 6 floors of duck carving dining rooms, and this was just one of 5 locations throughout the city. The service was quick and an effort was made to be a bit showy about it all. The chef came out with a mobile carving station and sliced up an entire roast duck before the three of us, well…two really. Hector had swiftly passed out.
Mind you Hector passing out has become something of an ongoing joke with these trips we take. The following day he would do the same at another time honored Chinese Tourism destination. The Great Wall of China.
Pictured here Hector planking next to a communication cannon along the Great Wall.
We visited the Mutianyu section of the Great wall for two primary reasons. 1: It’s about an hour from Beijing city center. 2: It’s just about the walliest wall part of the wall. That is to say, one of the better maintained ones that looks a lot like what you think of when you think of the Great Wall.
The Mutianyu portion of the wall has crenulations on either side and a guard tower every 100 meters. On top of that it’s straddling a mountain range. So it really captures what a lot of foreigners think of when they think of the Great Wall of China. Other sections of the wall may be on flatter terrain or in different states of decay/over growth. The reality is that the thousands of miles of wall which make up the main stretch of the Great Wall of China are largely nothing like the post cards. Those more run down parts of the wall may be more authentic, but I figured if we were only going to see one part of the wall it might as well be one of the wallier-wall parts.
It should also be noted that this part of the Great Wall of China is particularly popular with and mostly visited by foreigners as it has in the last 20 years become the mandatory place all packaged tours bring non-Chinese to. It certainly shows with the Burger King at the base of the wall. However since there are nearly no outsiders visiting now, we got to enjoy a rare sight, a mostly empty wall!
Now the downside of all this travelling around Beijing had to be the traffic. We had heard how infamous Beijing traffic was and it certainly did not disappoint! We ended up getting back from the Mutianyu Wall section in the afternoon and proceeded to visit a very large and impressive foreign language book store.
Admittedly they were not very creative when naming this store.
We spent about an hour here picking up books for Hector, something he’s really gotten into recently, and I was able to pick up 8 or so books on Chinese History and culture. I am always on the hunt for more English language texts on Chinese History. In China you often find Chinese books which have been translated into English and then only sold in China alongside the original Chinese variant. This results in the strange situation wherein you can find more books on Chinese history in English, in China. Every reputable museum/tourist attraction likes to have sitting next to their souvenir book, an English variant, which seems to most of the time just collect dust. This does however mean that I am beginning to develop quite the library of Chinese books in English! That evening we visited the Cheesecake Factory. An American franchise dedicated to making very large portion sizes, there are not many locations in China at all, only 3 as far as I’m aware.
The third day is not worth speaking of…things went poorly logistically. I got lost in the National Museum of China (It’s actually a fusion of three pre-existing buildings and has 78 different exhibitions. We then got lost trying to get to the Summer Palace of the Qing Emperors. Upon arrival we learnt that I really should have reserved entry earlier. So we just walked around Tianamen Square for a bit and then went home in defeat to eat disgusting Dominoes pizza (Seafood pizza from Domino’s is apparently a bad idea).
The next day we were having to head back to Hangzhou, but before doing so managed to visit the Temple of Heaven!
This great big temple directly south of the Forbidden City was constructed as a place of ritual sacrifice and offering to the heavens. Today it feels quite far removed from the Forbidden City, largely due to traffic and the fact that Beijing in its heyday wasn’t really a city for people to live in. Beijing like all Chinese Capital cities was more of a giant ritualistic enterprise. The Confucian scholars who made up the majority of the government loathed merchants and the whole industry of trade and their grip on China became absolute half way through the Ming Dynasty (Around the 15th century). So Beijing never really functioned as a ‘city’ in the way we think of them in the West. Sure people lived in it, many people lived in it, and there was a merchant quarter, but the cities design and drive was not around making money, it was all about administering the Empire and performing ritual. Thus this big pretty temple was built about 2 miles south of the Emperors home, and a few times per year he would leave the Forbidden City ( A rare event for most Emperors) and make offerings here on behalf of the Empire. Today it is a very lovely park, which we unfortunately really had to rush through as we had to ensure we made it to the Airport in time for our flight back to Hangzhou.
I must say I do need to take a train to Beijing soon just to try it out. I really do believe that it may be quicker or take just as long as flying when you think about the logistics of it. Hangzhou to Beijing is a four and a half hour train ride, so like going from Oshawa to Montreal. This becomes quite impressive when you consider that it’s 1300 kms between Hangzhou and Beijing by car. A flight takes about 2 and a half hours if you go direct. Now factor in the fact that you’ll want to get to the airport 2 hours early and that airports tend to be about an hour outside of the city proper compared to train stations which tend to be in the city and only require you to get to about 30-60 minutes before departure…and it starts to even up. Also the airport is about an hour from our apartment whereas the train station is 15 minutes…In addition, trains are almost never cancelled or delayed. What messes all of this up is the price and Hector. Weirdly train tickets are the same price or more expensive than a plane. In addition Hector tends to behave better on planes than buses because you can physically restrain him.
Pretty much an entire month later we had our second long weekend. Just a Friday off this time, but I figured it was enough time to go back and check the things we missed out on the last time we visited Nanjing. In 2019 we missed two major attractions. 1: The Nanjing Massacre Memorial. Or as it’s more commonly known in China: Memorial Dedicated to the Victims of Aggression of Japanese Invaders….I prefer the three word variant.
As you can see, it is a cheerful place. The other place we had actually visited before, well almost visited. Nanjing was the first major Chinese city we visited in the summer of 2019, back before we had many of the apps which make life easy in China. I had wanted to visited the Mausoleum of Sun Yat-Sen, the father of modern China. However after a struggle to actually get to the entrance of the place. (It is on top of a mountain with no taxi’s allowed to scale all the way up) We discovered that we actually needed to book tickets ahead of time. So we had to walk back down the mountain in abject defeat. Not this time however!
On the first day we visited the Nanjing Massacre Memorial. For those of you unaware, this memorial is dedicated to the 300,000 Chinese people (Mostly civilians) who were executed by the invading Japanese in 1937. For most of us in the West WW2 doesn’t really kick off until Hitler invades Poland. For the Chinese it most certainly kicked off a few years earlier when Japan invaded Shanghai and then moved onto what was then the Capital of China, Nanjing. This death toll is a bit controversial. Some people in Japan declare that it is grossly inflated and that most of the deaths were a result of surrendering Chinese soldiers being executed…because that is somehow better.
The reality is that we’ll probably never know the exact number of deaths or the number of rapes. But both are surely in the hundreds of thousands. Many corpses were simply dumped into the Yangtze river and would have drifted off into the Pacific Ocean. Many of said corpses had been violently raped before hand. What we do know is that Nanjing lost most of it’s population and that 140,000 complete skeletons in mass graves have been uncovered…so far. Unlike their German counterparts the Japanese were not as meticulous or good at record keeping when it came to their crimes, so we’ll probably never get an entirely accurate picture. The Red Cross was there at the time and kept a record of the bodies they were burying and with them we hit a number around 260,000. Once again these are the bodies they could get their hands on and hadn’t been dumped or burnt to ashes already.
Whilst big news in the late 1930s and into the 1940s in the West. By the 1950s to the mid 1990s the event was seemingly completely forgotten by the western world. That was until a Chinese American woman from New Jersey wrote a book about it. Iris Chang as photographed with me here spent much of her adult life researching the event, interviewing victims in China and eventually in 1997 published a book The Rape of Nanking which has become one of the best Western made books on the subject.
On a less depressing note, that night we visited Mai Pizza, a Canadian owned Pizza restaurant and bar near the memorial. They had very very very good Chicken wings
The next day we got up early and headed to Sun Yat-Sens’ mausoleum. Hector loved it.
The fact that this Mausoleum exists at all is itself hilarious. You see the man interred in it, in his last moments of life begged his followers to build him no grand monument, to instead use that money to rebuild a then very broken China…3 years later his giant tomb was built. Sun Yat-Sen was a Chinese doctor who spent most of his life living in the West. He spent much of his youth in Hawaii, 12 years in total. Converted to Christianity. Got kicked out of China when he tried to start a revolution and spent 16 more years in the States and Europe, planning and leading 9 more revolutions from exile. Went back to China to become president of a modern government he had helped set up, got kicked out again and spent 4 more years in the west. Came back and 5 years later died of liver cancer. Technically speaking much of his life was defined by failure. Still he managed to lead a movement (In exile no less) which ended 2100 years of Dynastic Rule and his vision for a modernized China has since been adopted by the Chinese government. This guy envisioned in 1920 the building of 10,000 miles of rail (Check), building hydro-electric dams along the Yangtze River (Check), implementing a democratic and multi-party system of government in China. (Redacted). The fact that he was not a military man, but rather a doctor/philosopher I think gets him a lot of credence. I could blather on about this guy for thousands of words, but in short, I quite like him and really wanted to visit his tomb.
It is an interesting complex if just because it mimics a lot of aspects of traditional Chinese tomb building and then dials them up to eleven. The tomb, has also become hilariously commercialized. The image above is from the late 1990s. Today the big flat ground you see in the image is filled with KFC and VR headsets. We made our way up the steps, Hector mostly running in the right direction.
Upon reaching the tomb itself I was a bit disappointed to learn that I could not actually enter the tomb room itself. Instead you get to circle around a beautiful sculpt of Sun Yat-Sen seated atop a throne of marble.
The view from atop of the mausoleum is also quite impressive
At least Hector thought so.
So we clambered back down the mountain, got on a bus and a subway and next brought ourselves to Xuanwu Lake. Given that we live in the most famous ‘Lake’ city, you would expect us to not be all that impressed by a lake which is about 1/3rd the size in Nanjing. In actuality we were quite impressed. Whilst not as vast as West Lake, Xuanwu Lake has a lot going for it.
Xuanwu like many city lakes in China is a largely man made construction. The fact that they were making islands and causeways 1,500 years ago does add a certain level of impressiveness to it. The lake is largely defined by the island chain spearing through the middle of it connected by long bridges. One island even has a little theme park on it! I was struck by just how many families I saw out having picnics in the green spaces of these islands, flying kites or just sunbathing. It was a bit like Central Park or Kings Park. In Hangzhou the park is so famous and so inundated with tourists that there really isn’t space to have a picnic, here in Xuanwu there was plenty of that coveted green space.
In the end we decided to rent a electric boat to have a floating picnic on. I gathered up a picnic lunch from a nearby convenience store and we took to the incredibly flaccid seas.
We certainly were not the only ones. I wish I could have taken a better aerial shot of the hundreds of little electric boats puttering around the lake. Some of them were amusingly designed to look a lot like the tourboats you often see floating around West Lake as pictured above. Ours was shaped like a swan. Hector we have learned, quite recently, seems to quite enjoy boats. Until we ran out of food he seemed quite content…even if he wouldn’t wear his life preserver properly, to be fair neither would his mother.
Afterwards we clambered up the Ming era (same guys who built much of the Great Wall) walls which enclose the old city of Nanjing.
At this point, the temperature was quite high and Hector was quite happy to express his displeasure with it.
He demanded that he be able to carry the water. The old city walls of Nanjing were built around the same time as the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall of China. Today they have been partially reconstructed having been heavily damaged during the Japanese invasion and even half-marathons take place atop of the wall!
So those are the brief notes (If you can call over 3000 words brief) on what we have been up to over the last month. This is completely ignoring the two or three times we’ve been to Disneyland, we just seem to find it difficult to stay in one place during the weekend!
Our next major break (Another 3 day weekend) is coming in June, hopefully I will be able to find the time to blog about wherever we go for that. Right now I am leaning towards Moganshan!
Recently Hector has gone back to DIC which is the original nursery/school he was going to before he was old enough to go to BASIS. Unfortunately, it turned out that the ‘Montessori’ school that we sent him to didn’t know how to deal with additional needs and so Hector was not being looked after there. We tried to get him back into BASIS but he wasn’t able to return.
One of the things that parents with a child with additional needs will be told in China is that China doesn’t know what additional needs is or how to help. I’m not going to say that the provision here is what it is in the UK or Canada as undoubtedly every school is required by law to support every child in these countries which is not the case here. However, I do want to point out that there is support available but it is variable. Some schools are aware of the issues and will go the extra mile to find additional help. Because we had to remove Hector from BASIS we actually found Hector’s first therapist based on a recommendation from his new school. This did seem to have some impact but the travel was horrendous and they were not very good at communicating with us. Now he has gone back to DIC he is getting one to one sessions from a different therapist (an additional but very worthwhile cost) who is fantastic. The person there does exactly what our pediatrician recommended. The communication is amazing as well with us normally getting a full written report and videos after each session.
We have experienced a lot of snobbery when it comes to therapy and medicine in China. There is an assumption that if the person does not speak English they are incapable of helping a child. We have not found this to be the case. In fact, we felt like we were throwing money down the drain when Hector was getting therapy from someone who spoke English from the clinic that was recommended by everyone. Perhaps this was as we were not able to get him to therapy regularly enough but certainly having someone who speaks English does not seem to be the be all and end all. He has made more progress with someone who doesn’t. There is definitely an assumption among some in the Expat community that speaking English equals better just because the person speaks English. It is strange that in one of the biggest countries in the world they apparently don’t know what ASD is (they definitely do). Another assumption is that medical care is substandard which again is not the case and the price of private healthcare here is tiny compared to what it is in the UK. This is not because the care is worse; I have seen the same doctor all the way through my pregnancy and have access to her through Wechat 24/7! I don’t really fully understand why there is such a financial difference (just to use tests as an example an ultrasound in China is about 20% the cost of going private in the UK), other than that the cost of living in China overall is much lower and the population on the whole could not afford UK prices.
Really, I want to focus on how well Hector is doing at the moment. Medically, he was diagnosed with a development delay. The main area was language though there were minor delays in the other areas. Currently, his doctor does not suspect ASD. From our perspective as well, the delays found in the other areas all seemed to be knock on effects. For example, asking Hector to jump and then assuming he cannot do this because he didn’t follow the instructions! It remains a mystery how much Hector really understands and how much is just him being stubborn.
Recently Hector has started to calm down a lot more. He is really interested in reading books, particularly the ‘Ten little ..’ series. He has been dragging our hands to point at things that he is interested in. Mostly numbers but he has also started doing this with the colored fish in his Usborne color lift the flap book (thank you Aunty Lizzie!). Sometimes he will sit and ‘read’ for 10 minutes on his own now. Mostly this means he likes to sit and flip through the books but it certainly makes being out with him easier than it used to be. It was interesting to have a Chinese mother while we were at Disney pointing out that this little boy is reading to her child! We are not used to Hector being used as a positive example!
Hector reading 10 little monsters/superheroes at Starbucks and Disney
We were also advised to work on his motor skills. The two videos are both on the same day and show his progression. To be fair, this was not something we were majorly worried about as it seemed more a case of won’t than can’t but we were very pleased to see the levels of concentration! The pictures are from at least a few weeks before that at a soft play with fake sand. After getting back from Nanjing today he also spent a lot of time playing with his (or Tom’s) Mario hot wheel track, again showing his ability to concentrate. We keep battling over using a spoon for dinner and are getting there but if he can use his fingers he still prefers this!
Worms first attempt
Worms second attempt
Hector masters the use of the scoop; it always helps when it is vehicle shaped!
His eye contact is also starting to get a lot better, which his school has noticed. He might not respond when strangers speak to him but he does at least look at them and sometimes make conversational noises. Instructions continue to be a bit hit and miss but again he will follow them much more than he was. He will also look back and check where we are when he runs away instead of continuing to run!
Eye contact!
Being outside with him continues to be the biggest battle. He has amazing stamina and walked all the way to Sun Yat-Sen’s mausoleum yesterday which was a lot of steps. But the problem is in directing him. He still loves to run and doesn’t always run in the right direction so we continue to have to hold his hand, particularly when near roads or big crowds. We have tried the baby reigns thing but he just gets really angry! It’s particularly hard at the moment as I find it difficult to chase after him! So we have to hold his hand a lot more than we would like to so we will keep working on this one. At least he can walk when holding someone’s hand now and the ‘floppiness’ seems to be reserved for when he is tired or just being uncooperative!
To sum up, we are really proud of how well he is doing. He’s only been having therapy with his new therapist for a few weeks but he has gone from ‘baby wouldn’t cooperate so we didn’t do this’ with his flashcards (and other activities) to looking at the cards and putting them to one side. It just goes to show what can be achieved when the people around him believe in him.
Today we got the message that I’d been expecting. Hector couldn’t go on the trip because of their staffing ratio. This wasn’t unexpected, we know how difficult he is when he’s out. So I was surprised at how much this hurt. Maybe because it felt like it was the first of many. Maybe because he’s so much easier than he used to be when he’s out. And it feels like this is not acknowledged. Unfortunately, there is very little support here at school. Though it should be said that his old nursery used to take him across the road to the aquarium.
After some wrangling, they agreed to get an extra member of staff to take him. But it does feel like everything is a battle. I think parents of neurotypical children do not appreciate the small everyday battles. It is a success for us when Hector listens for a moment when we give him an instruction. And that he now usually comes down when we ask him to. That he can wait for a car without going into floppy mode. That he can sit on a train for 10 minutes without being distracted. People think life for every parent of a toddler is hard. I don’t think they can appreciate what life is like when you can’t have a conversation with your child. How draining it is to deal with a child who really doesn’t follow instructions, not just one who has to be told 3 times, particularly when you don’t have family support. People want to tell you that this is normal when it isn’t.
We watch our friends with children the same age and it is so hard not to compare or to feel jealous of their interactions with their children. No matter how proud we feel of his progress it still feels like we are missing out.
The Hopkins of Hangzhou 