Let's get this straight

OK I have had a bad time, a really bad time, thanks to the messing about from www.jelibean.com and my good friend Debi Evans. This blog therefore has to take a different turn.

So let me tell you the story. Objectively and truthfully.

We'll start with Debi Evans, and then move on.

So let's start from when I met Debi, or when she made contact with me. It's all a matter of record.

School 5 - Rules of Schools, for Parents

School hasn't always been easy for my five jellybeans. Some days I've been called by distraught staff several times and asked to please remove them, for one offence after another. Just as I've got one home, the phone rings again, and we're off to collect another red jellybean who totally forgot that Policeman In His Head and left it to someone else to tell him that singing in a French exam is a punishable offence, especially if you do it at the top of your voice!

To be fair, it's not always their fault, or mine, even though I have been known to whizz through the school gates on a Tsunami Mission to Destroy some hapless teacher,because I've HAD ENOUGH. In the past, I was furious when they couldn't understand, especially when one school decided they didn't like the taste of my littlest and sweetest jellybean who was untidying their exam and League Tables results. He lost a whole year of school through lack of support and care from the Head. As my jellybeans point out to me, some of the worst and least understanding teachers are jellybeans, too. It stands to reason, I suppose!

So how DO you survive as the parent of a red and sometimes green and mostly multi-coloured jellybean in school, especially in Secondary school, where jellybeans are often overwhelmed by size, noises, movements around school, and a generous helping of pinacolada or purple jellybean teachers?

First Rules of School should include Rules for Parents, don't you think?

So here are my Top Four:


1. Identify one teacher who doesn't think you're a mad person (or 'overinvolved' or 'overprotective' or 'flagging up issues' which all mean the same as 'mad', basically!) I have identified the wonderful pink marshmallow, Mrs T at my children's school as my very own special lifeguard, who understands that I, too, am swimming in shark-infested waters alongside my kids and I need her armbands!

2.Once you've identified your chosen chief lifeguard the next step is to set up a SYSTEM ( we like those!) whereby everyone feels safe. Jellybeans love systems and marshmallows are happy to work with them if it makes their lives easier! I'll tell you more about that in a minute

3.Make friends with your lifeguard, they are on your side, your jellybean's side, but you can't expect them to know your child like you do. Slowly, slowly, use bite size chunks of information to start with. Gain their trust and show them you are a responsible parent who cares deeply and will happily co-operate with school to give your child the best possible chance to learn.

4. TALK. Why is that word so very difficult especially for jellybean mums and dads? Why does one of two things happen when we try to speak? Speak at ten to the dozen making no sense OR somehow the words are just gone and an embarrassing silence is all that you hear?



Our system with Mrs T has fallen into place naturally. Of course jellybeans are special, each and every one of them unique and different, so frequent communication is vital to keep everyone in the picture. I email our lifeguard on Monday mornings to give a weekend report and again on Friday evenings. We usually speak at least once a week on the phone. Yes, this level of communication may sound a lot but actually it avoids many situations that could potentially blow up into a much more serious event if left!

Your lifeguard is a pruner as well ( see Topiary article), they need as much information as possible to ensure that pruning is carried out with continuity and informed decisions.

Sometimes events at home prove hugely upsetting or exciting. I've seen jellybeans literally make themselves poorly waiting for a special occasion, equally I've seen the collapse of jellybeans as they just become overwhelmed with anxieties and problems. If school don’t know that the first date with Britney Crackles was a disaster, or that grandad won a playstation portable in the village raffle and kept it for himself, how can they see that your jellybean's shell is all brittle this morning? Maybe the loyal family pet has died, or even worse someone in the family is hurting emotionally or physically. What is your lifeguard meant to do, mind read? The role of a lifeguard is also one of an advisor, listen to them because they have your child’s best interests at heart.

And here's Rule 5 (because I kind of got diverted and forgot there were 5 and not 4):

5. Lifeguards must NEVER be taken for granted. They must be respected and listened to at all times. Learn to love your lifeguards like they learn to love your jellybean - and you, if you follow the Rules!

GIVE AND TAKE! That's Rule 6. Another! Sorry, I forgot about that one. But it's the most important of all, because if you take, you should give something back, and if you give a lot of hassle to someone who doesn't know how to take, it'll bounce right back at you, and they'll think you're a mad person! But if you give information, and they take it on board, you can all go diving off the platform together, into that shark-infested water, and not have one moment of fear.

Debi

School 4 - Ticker Ticker Timing (Neural Pruning)

Although we said that there are no clocks on Jacobs Ladder, there's something important that you should bear in mind. Neural connections in the brains of babies extend hugely in the first few months of life, to enable a baby and toddler to perceive all aspects of its new environment and interact with it. The older the child becomes, the more some of those connections are strengthened, and the weaker others become, because they're no longer needed. By the time the child is four or five all the important branches of these connections, which have proven most useful, have grown thick and strong, and those that are hardly,if ever used are just cluttering up the space. So the brain 'prunes' itself, allowing the stonger ones to grow even stronger, and the weaker ones to be removed. This is called neural pruning. We don't need those weak branches.

A second neural pruning happens from adolescence, and this is the BIG one. It can take years. Interestingly this second neural pruning coincides with the change to secondary education, just as the first coincides with starting school.

It's the second one that really matters for jellybeans in particular. Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger both noted that many children on the autistic spectrum begin to come into their own in their mid teens. It's a rapid catch-up process for many intelligent autistics when they find how they can fit in to the social circles of those around them. Adolescence is the age of the specialist - the avid fan, the clever loner, the clique member, the break-away groupie, and it's at this age that the geek or nerd, the girl who can collect every detail of the pop star's life history, the boy who can build a website, the kids who excel at Fantasy games, and chess, who share a love of Anime and Manga, begin to gain some recognition from their classmates who in adolescence start to be more concerned with their special interests, something the spectrum kid has always been.

So that's the first reason why some autistic spectrum children begin to play catch-up, as they gain the social recognition they never had and never thought they valued. They start to see that having 'friends' can be a good and useful thing. Other kids want to share Pokemon cards, suddenly.

But autistic spectrum children do their neural pruning later than most, and usually this second one lasts a lot longer than in the typical child. That's why if we can help a child on the spectrum to 'get' social relationships, in some way, during this critical (10-16 years old) period, we can do more for them than in any other time in their lives. With gentle help, they blossom. And funnily enough, it's by cutting out the weaker branches in their brains, that they'll blossom so much better.

So everything we teach them about social relationships and communication in adolescence is vital. This is a time when they're learnt some systems, all by themselves, and now need to learn how social systems work, too. They're hungry for more rules. The better those explanations of unwritten rules are, at this stage, the better the second and more important neural pruning.

They will need explanations, too. By the age of 12, most of them have developed some Theory of Mind. That can be very scary, as they realise the implications of the reality of other people. It can also be a time of huge and inappropriate friend-making, sometimes with sexual overtones. Many of them launch themselves far too impulsively into offers of friendship, and can be badly misled or duped, as they're very new to all this socialising stuff. But their grasp of the reality of others is a chance we shouldn't let slip. Once they know this, they can fire on ahead, with the help of all those who love and care for and teach them.

This second neural pruning is often very effective for strengthening the connections to the pre-frontal cortex, too, helping it do its job better and enabling the autistic child to think about the consequences of actions, and stop the dangerous actions in time.

Here's Debi's explanation.......

Barbara


Every child is born with a brain frame! Imagine a wire topiary stand and imagine having to nurture it into something of beauty and skill! Refer to the picture and you will soon get the picture. Remember we are talking in pictures TIP’s.

Marshmallows have a far stronger frame, jellybeans are bendy and brittle, they need reinforcing, strengthening and intensive nurturing whereas the marshmallows are more hardy and resistant in general.

A child’s brain grows like a bush, it needs nourishing, dead heading and pruning. Marshmallows have inbuilt specialised automatic shears that do all the vital work unconsciously! But hey folks with jellybeans it is a manual job I am afraid, they are not able to prune their brains with any kind of accuracy! In fact they are more likely to chop the branches they need OFF and end up keeping the rubbish! The story of my life....

Incorrect pruning will result in damaged branches pointing in the wrong direction. Diseased growth combined with over density of branches will result in chaos.

Finding a jellybean a trustworthy master pruner is essential, who can cut with the speed and rhythm and touch of a dexterous barber. Who can you trust to do the same job as that of a brain surgeon working with sharp accuracy and precision yet sometimes with the might and power of Hercules?

Without a master pruner, there is the danger of RATS! Yes you heard correctly RATS! Those big furry creatures, the climbing ones, that carry disease and danger. They love scurrying up trees and bushes, especially those with a huge number of weak but dense twig-like branches which hide them from view. How many rats do you or your jellybeans have hiding in there? Do you know if you have rats hiding in your topiary even?

Rats and vermin are the ‘friends’ that your jellybeans genuinely thinks are their friends, the ones who get them to do their bidding, the ‘friends’ who are also in trouble but have enough time and energy to drag your jellybean into their mess.

To identify rats requires regular inspection and treatment. If you had rats in your house you would be calling pest control and watching very carefully wouldn’t you? So communication between parent and child, school and child, and school and home is VITAL. Rats can be detected early on, they leave visible signs of their presence so no excuses for missing the clues.

Once a rat is spotted, it must be determined where it has come from. Is it an isolated incident or maybe there is a nest hiding away somewhere with more? Rats hide in bushy topiary so if you are finding rats it may mean that a major prune needs to be done. The earlier this can happen the better. Don’t be afraid to cut back hard, winter pruning is fine provided the gardener knows what they are doing!

Ask your jellybean to draw what they would like their brain to look like, maybe a star or a motorbike? Get your shears out and start gently pruning that brain into the masterpiece that it is, underneath.

WARNING. THIS MAJOR PRUNE IS A VITAL WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY TO TEACH YOUR CHILD. PLEASE DON’T MISS IT, IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN.

Debi

School 3 - Making the Move Up

So they’ve made it! The shallow end is a thing of the past, there’s no going back now. Your precious little jellytots are now jellyjuniors and jellyteens. First School seems so far away. The world looks very different now. Gone are the familiar boundaries, some of their friends have gone and there’s a whole new system to learn.

Big School seems so big to an 11-year-old. They’ve spent the last year being the big fish in the little pond and now they’re the little fish in the BIG, big pond. Is your jellybean swimming now? Do they still need armbands but they want to struggle on to scared to ask?

Hopefully there will have been an opportunity for you to have liaised with school, and also your jellybean has spent some time the previous term getting an idea of what life is going to be like.

Obviously no child, jellybean or marshmallow is 100% aware of how they are going to cope. It’s just that marshmallows appear to be more adaptable whereas a jellybean feels unequipped to cope and is in much more dangerous water. Have you prepared your jellybean?

Take time to talk to your jellybean. Explain that the SYSTEM they’re used to is going to change. Be honest with them. Within elementary school the classes are much smaller. Dependant on their age they will usually be allocated one teacher and one classroom. The routine is highly structured and quite personal.

High school, however, is much bigger and less personal. There are very many more teachers and so very many more classrooms, and you have to change classrooms to go to different lessons. Explain that in High School it’s the teachers that are allocated classrooms and not the pupils. It’s very hard to understand when all they may have been used to is one classroom and one teacher. Jellybeans are happiest when they know the routine and what is expected of them. How are they going to cope with the ever changing schedule? Finding their way around and remembering to have the right books with them is a mission in itself.

Don’t frighten your jellybeans by telling them horror stories of what could happen. Encourage and reassure them, if necessary, talk to someone in Parent Partnership or a support system, or someone that you can trust to give you sound advice. Let’s make a start with some practical advice.

1.Label everything! It's heartbreaking for a jellybean to go to school and lose everything on the first day. And they will. They'll leave it somewhere, give it away, or just dump it.

2.Find out how your jellybean wants to come home. Do you live near or are they going to be expected to catch the bus? The school bus is very often a danger area where big red jellybeans choose to scare the little red jellybeans and the one driver just can't cope with the flying debris. What‘s happening between your front door and the school gate? A warning to all of you - this can be a very traumatic time. Please use your powers of observation carefully, and if you've got any concerns, please tell someone, without sounding as if you're just whining. Yes it's hard to do. But if you're the parent of jellybeans, and maybe one yourself, you'll know all about hard work.

3.School lunches - what’s the procedure? Do arrangements have to be made to accommodate your child? Unlike in Primary school a canteen system could be used, queuing, standing in line, and remaining patient probably not being one of your jellybean's greatest positive traits! Then having to make decisions and choices, all things that jellybeans have to do but find more difficult can add to the scary feelings. Does your jellybean, perhaps, feel comfortable eating with lots of other people? Has your jellybean got a special diet but doesn't want to reveal it and will eat the wrong things just to fit in? Will the worry and anxiety develop into a Tsunami? Check. The school may be able to put in 'reasonable steps' to help your anxious jellybean get to the front of the line.

There are going to be a busy few years ahead for your jellybean, lots of changes within themselves as well. We all know how difficult the teenage years can be.


Change is the most difficult thing for jellybeans. But it's hard for parents, too.


I’m sure that there will be very many of you who like me thought that some situations couldn’t get any worse WRONG! If you think that a change of school is the miracle that you have been waiting for you are in for a long wait! Remember Mrs Ooojamaflip, the teacher you hated? Bet you miss her now, at least she knew your jellybean and all his little quirks (please don’t be offended by this word, it’s much kinder than a lot I've heard).

How many teachers are there now? I for one can't keep up with the continuing changes of staff. It’s very confusing for the parents so just imagine how your jellybean is dealing with it. How many Year Heads are there, how many teachers of English? For the adult jellybean, elementary school is far easier, you get to know the teacher, the building is far smaller and you can find your way around. I need a map to get to reception in high school, but on second thoughts I’ve never been good with maps either!

It’s the most gut-wrenching experience of all in my opinion as you watch, wonder and pray that they will survive the day never mind the next four to five years.

But to get back to the kids, which we (remember?) once were, and which is what this is all about.......

The jellybeans with a large serving of ADHD will find the buzz and excitement of a new school very stimulating but this amount of external stimulation will make them more prone to SENSORY OVERLOAD and therefore the weather warning could be very severe.

Please bear in mind that the children from your child’s junior school are amongst lots of others from other juniors, the friends that are familiar already to your jellybean may be moving on and forming groups with others. This is worrying for your jellybean, they feel abandoned in a very scary place.

Worrying and alone, it’s all too easy for a jellybean to do one of two things - keep themselves to themselves and ‘hide’ which is a jellybean tendency anyway, OR gravitate towards any kind of friendly face, even if it’s joining up with a shoal of Piranhas and a passing Shark or two. It’s very easy for a misunderstood Dolphin or Sea Horse to get swept away in the wrong current. If you can't really interpret body language, gesture or sarky comments, how on earth do you make any real friends?

Jellybeans are extremely sensitive and spend all, yes ALL our time worrying what others think about us. OK yes, of course there are the tough guys that really don’t give a damn but that’s a tiny proportion of everyone. The vast majority of jellybeans have the biggest shiniest golden hearts which have been bruised and beaten over the years. And we can be, sad to say, easy targets for bullies and nasties.

Jellybeans have very real, deep feelings, we care very much and we don’t mean to get it wrong. To those of you out there who think that Aspies are emotional cripples, and yes I can say it because I’ve been accused of being far worse and I get weird, perplexed looks whenever I reel off my diagnosis, but the one thing to put me into instant Tsunami 8 is constantly being told that I don’t have the ability to feel emotions! How dare anyone tell me how I am feeling or not feeling? Are you me? NO. For once you are so wrong. I have the ability to feel such strong feelings that sometimes they overwhelm me and others.

And I didn't like it when I was being bullied for being 'different' and naive. But what could I do about it? That's what some of us could never work out. But now I know how to deal with this. The answer is to strengthen the SELF, be SELF aware, SELF-monitor, aim for SELF-control, and finally, respecting the value of your very precious SELF - ASK for help from others. If you're bullied, you owe it to yourself and others to share this with parents and teachers. And because we love you, and may know exactly what you're experiencing, we'll help. But if we don't and can't, then we're not worth bothering with. Are we?


Debi

School 2 - Getting started

First days anywhere are both traumatic and exciting. If your jellybean is showing signs of stress, tuck something familiar into their school bag, it’s comforting to have something from home even if it’s a hankie.

Don’t forget to give your jellybeans a good breakfast before they leave home. They really need fueling well. Our junior school allows all children to bring water into class and this is such a great idea and necessary for over-heated jellybeans. The school also has fruit breaks as well when children are encouraged to eat fruit – so much better for the sugar-addicted jellybean than a huge chocolate bar.

It’s a good idea also arrange a reliable system of trying to get the School Newsletter home in time to find out that tomorrow is holiday! Half the rain-forest seems to need to be brought home, consent forms, dinner forms, coffee mornings, head lice checks, not to mention school doctor and the dentist, actually it’s a wonder the School Secretary isn’t buried! I haven’t seen her recently so maybe, bless her, she is!

Talking of the school secretary, she’s often likened to the doctor’s receptionist and gets the flak from the start. It’s nearly always her who has to cope with problems. Please remember that if when a problem does arise it may be a first for YOU, but they’ve seen it a hundred times before and are used to it!

If you’re constantly getting calls from school regarding your jellybean’s disruptive behaviour, check to see who they’re sharing their table with. My younger two sons shortly after starting school were always getting told off in class. On further investigation it was discovered that three big red jellybeans were sharing the same table. It was decided to separate them. It worked.

Obviously the class-rooom is not the place where most of the trouble occurs and so here’s a note to teachers. Break and lunch times are particularly stressful to jellybeans. ADHD-affected jellybeans will zoom out of the classroom as though they are turbo-charged, they spin and whizz and shout. Their arms are flinging and flanging and their legs seem to be on time delay as they desperately try to catch up with the rest of their body. But jellybeans with a helping of ADD or Asperger's Syndrome may become isolated and lonely. Please watch carefully. Thank you.

Many problems that arise in class are as a result of trouble in between class. A lost PE bag, or just being knocked on the way to assembly, is enough to cause havoc. It makes more sense for us to be preventing these often minor incidents from turning into a Tsunami.


OK, we now have a happy but somewhat nervous jellyswimmer complete with armbands, ring and float. Deep under the water comes swimming that Piranha that we spoke about and nibbles your jellybean's toes, then repeats it! No Lifeguard in sight. Keep a track of who your jellybean is mixing with both in and out of School. Are they being dragged down by a strong current and swept away from all you believe in? This will be a major problem in 11+ school so make the best time now and ensure your jellybean knows the difference between baby sharks and baby dolphins. Jellybeans do tend to become bullies or get bullied.

My kids desperately want to be liked and in doing so, think that everyone that is being nice to them is their friend. Whoops this is a difficult one. Jellybeans are so grateful to be afforded the privilege of a mate to hang about that they will buy their friendship, only for that trust to be abused. Is it any wonder jellybeans end up so many of the times taken in and trust is a word of the past. It's scary out there for us, we have no idea really of whom we are swimming with, it's too much. Instill this into your jellybeans brains:

NOT EVERYONE THAT IS NICE TO YOU IS YOUR FRIEND.

Debi

School - The Swimming Pool

Here’s another Mapping exercise that’s written in TIPS all through, and it just might help you and your jellybeans to understand some of the secrets of getting through the SYSTEM called School. Now that you understand what TIPS is, you can try this with your child, and the obligatory paper and pencils of course, if you decide to draw this one.
Time to gather up your cossies, towels and flip flops, we’re going swimming, and if you can’t swim, don’t worry there are plenty of lifeguards around to help you. No excuse.

School is like a Swimming Pool, a big proper one with diving board, but daunting, busy, noisy, smelly and BIG and dangerous. The idea is to LEARN to swim gently. Jellybeans do take longer to do some things but once its learnt, we get a bit cocky and think that we can swim the channel on our own. Whoops wrong, but its only when we’re sinking fast, waving our arms everywhere trying to alert help that we realise we've bitten off more than we chew. Sometimes the Lifeguards don’t notice.

'Its a big scary place,school. Jellybeans are very sensitive to new environments and it's so busy,so where do I start? There are new rules, new people, sound and noise. Help! I‘m starting to drown already and I haven’t taken my flip flops off yet. I need to learn a SYSTEM!’ shouts your little jellybean.

Don’t forget that the deeper the water the more crowded it becomes. There is far more help in shallow water, much more structure. Tell him or her to try to gain stability in the shallow end first. Don’t be tempted to take off the aids too soon, and be prepared to put them back on if required. Play it day by day and be flexible. They are LEARNING, they want to make you proud but they need your help.

You see even though a lot of jellybeans are quite noisy, they actually hate noise, they can't hear their own noise just other people’s. So it’s ‘SENSORY OVERLOAD’. Prepare for a Tsunami or, worse, still drowning.

There are a lot of fish in this pool, here are some and if you like you TIPs make up your own. There’s a lot of splashing, and freak waves as well.

SHARKS – Bad jellybeans and marshmallows UNSAFE
DOLPHINS – Good jellybeans and marshmallows SAFE
SEA HORSES – Wise, kind jellybeans and marshmallows SAFE
PIRANHAS – Dangerous jellybeans and marshmallows UNSAFE

I hope by now you’re seeing what a frightening but colourful place this can seem for a bouncy jellybean. It is so important that we try to achieve two things in this section.
1. You as a Parent can relax and feel confident in the SYSTEM
2. Your Jellybean feels safe

OK, read this bit carefully because I want you to go back and identify your child's docking stations - their peers first. These are Dolphins and Sea Horses. Name them together. Point out the Piranhas and the Sharks. Of course there are Lifeguards around as well, but they can't possibly watch everyone all of the time, there are too many.Lifeguards are the teachers.

Lifeguards are specially trained and have lots of buoyancy aids, rings, floats, arm bands, long narrow foamy things and of course they're very strong swimmers themselves.They are teaching everyone to stay safe. The trouble is that the Lifeguards don’t always see what goes on under the water. Sharks and Dolphins look similar, they're very difficult to spot. Its only the fin that makes a difference really, isn’t it?

Is it any wonder that us jellybean and marshmallow parents are anxious as to the fate of our little jellybeans. My eldest son at tender age of five was a mini Houdini and as artful as a bag full of monkeys, how on earth was he going to cope without me? Who would understand his outbursts, the way he asks for a drink? Who then is going to feel comfortable putting a new born baby into the deep end without any aids at all? No one is asking you to, but they're not telepathic and they haven’t lived in your house with your kids. They don't know you, but I am sure they soon will.

Check out YOUR own docking station/Lifeguard. Hand your child over temporarily to a Lifeguard or two whom you trust. There are some that have slightly more suitable lifesaving skills that may suit your child better. Find out and go and talk to someone that will understand.

Just because your jellybean is in Year 6 and technically should be swimming without buoyancy aids doesn’t mean they are. Jellybeans shouldn’t be compared with marshmallow swimmers. Here are some of the differences.

Marshmallows enjoy swimming and learning is fun. Steady progress. There is no splashing. Jellybeans enjoy swimming sometimes, but not when the water is cold. Jellybeans splash when they get scared or excited.

Marshmallows mainly swim above the water. Jellybeans like swimming under the water only coming to the surface to surprise someone or scare them. Or to grab air.

Marshmallows help each other and know when to ask for armbands. Jellybeans choose to stay on their own and forget to ask for armbands.

Marshmallows use goggles and can see whats around them. Jellybeans forget, lose or break their goggles and their little jellybean eyes are sore with the chlorine. They can't see much at all, let alone a shark.

So you see its easy for a jellybean Dolphin to swim with the wrong crowd, get themselves into mischief and not know which Lifeguard to turn to.

If your jellybean is at Secondary School and is drowning, because he actually thinks he can swim, because all the others are swimming, and he can't, act now. Its not too late, the lifelines are there. You just need to know where to find them. Find a Lifeguard. Point out your jellybean and ask for help.

Obviously the sooner you identify just what the situation is at school the better. It’s vital you have a good relationship. If you’re all snarling as you read this as there is nothing that you’d rather do than strangle Miss KnowIt-All, then FIND another Lifeguard. Go on, your child needs help, your help. Throw them a lifeline. Remember what it was like for you. But please don’t shout at the Lifeguards, even if you think they’re not doing their job properly. The Lifeguard may not know that your jellybean is in trouble, they may think that s/he just has an interesting swimming style, and hasn’t realised that this thrashing about is just his or her effort to stay afloat, and that his or her leg is being pulled into the depths of the water by a Big Red Shark.

A Dolphin or Sea Horse in trouble is genuinely in trouble, they may have had their toe nibbled by a Shark, but no one saw so when your jellybean screamed in agony and got told off, actually it wasn’t their fault. Be prepared to jump in with them if necessary. Just make sure you swim confidently and calmly towards them with the correct aid and without making waves. Remember the water gets deeper and deeper and eventually past the diving boards, the gates previously shut, suddenly swing open and your little jellybeans are swept out into the big Sea of Life. Then it really does get very scary indeed.

Ensure your jellybean has as much preparation as possible, Reassure them that they will be safe. You will feel safe too. When you collect them, have a lovely warm fluffy towel and a big hug.

TIPS helps us understand that we have some wonderful strengths and some scary (for us) weaknesses and that we can learn new skills to help us survive happily. Wow!

Language 15 - The Matchbox Game

To learn to stop arguments before they start, try this matchbox game using one matchbox between two or perhaps three of you. Agree on a topic, however political or sensitive it may be - homework may be a good place to start! Use an egg timer. The person holding the matchbox is given the floor and allowed to speak. When the egg timer needs turning, pass over the matchbox and zip your lips, Don’t forget to pop a couple of treats into the matchbox, promises are good as well, whatever takes your fancy.

Encourage your jellybeans to take the next turn and repeat what they’ve heard the other person say, as they understand it. You’ll be surprised at how jellybeans have degrees in misinterpretation and have seemingly lost the plot.

Using games like this will enable even the most argumentative kid the window of opportunity to listen to someone else’s opinion and to realise that they have feelings too. The essential ingredient to this one is humour, get ready to giggle.

A sure fire way to defuse an argument is learn to giggle. This is a skill that jellybeans do very well, in fact they vocal giggle and physical giggle and even internal giggle as well, throat and bottie coughs and burps. Giggling is good in the right circumstances. I don’t recommend in the middle of assembly or the prize-giving ceremony, though, but when you’re playing this game, it’s pretty inevitable.

I hope there’s been some giggle therapy in this Language section. I knew it was going to be hard going when I started it, so that why I’ve added a few hidden jokes to get your giggly bits jiggling around. Phew!

Debi

Language 14 - Listening

Are you ready to listen?
No not to just the bits that your wing mirrors pick up, the odd word here and there, but the whole transmission.

How many times have you been watching the national news on the TV and even though you appear to be deeply concentrating and doing all the right things to give the impression that you are glued, all of a sudden it's the review of the headlines and you’d completely missed the story about a disaster that wiped out a whole country.

Getting half the story and in the wrong order obviously lands us in a heap of trouble. Use the editor programme again, ask people to highlight the most important.

Another problem we have sometimes when we’re trying to listen is that we can’t really listen and write notes, and people don’t really understand that about us. Listen and listen good - jellybeans find it almost impossible to do two things at once, or to shift our attention between two things, rapidly. In fact, we sometimes find it easier to listen if we shut our eyes. And if we’ve got our eyes closed, we can’t take notes, can we – DOH! Teachers sometimes find it hard to get their head round this funny little habit of ours. When Barbara is telling me something I ask her if I should write it down (I have to write everything down because I forget so easily). But she says that I should listen first, and write it down afterwards. I find that much easier. It means I can concentrate on the listening.

Another little jellybean quirk that other people don’t understand is that some of us aren’t too keen on eye contact. I’m fine with it, and most jellyjennies aren’t too bad with this one, but boys can sometimes find it hard to look at someone and listen. So please remember if your little jellybean doesn’t look at you when you’re talking, it may be because he’s just trying to listen, and he can’t do that if he has to make eye contact, too.

Listening can be a real problem for us, but we really do want to learn how to do it.

This is where radio is really useful. If we sit our jellybeans down from when they’re quite young and turn on the radio, if there’s a talking programme that’s at their level, they can learn to listen. We can also read out loud to them, or play them audio books or rhymes. TV isn’t always he best way for a jellybean brain to learn. The moving pictures can distract us from listening. We can also learn to listen by playing Chinese whispering games, where you have to tell the next person to you something that someone else has just whispered in our ear. This is a great one for the giggle therapy, too!

Debi

Language 13 - Writing

How important it is to be able to write? No, clever clogs, not War and Peace, a letter is good. Today is the day of the text and email,’ ru cumin out l8er’? Pardon ? In text speak it means ‘ Are you coming out later’? What hope do these kids have, all of them, marshmallows and jellybeans alike? It’s a whole new language that seems to change as soon as I get used to it.

Jellybeans do have their fair share of problems with writing. Normally nothing at all or copious amounts of words on at least half the rain forest! Take a guess at which one I'm guilty of. Although both sexes can and do have varying degrees of problems,it's the boys who tend to come off worse. Boys have a tendency to get letters back to front and generally letters become mixed up and jumbled, making little sense.

Factual information is far easier to write about than fiction. Give us a period of time in history and we’ll research it and come up with a fantastic project. Fiction isn't so easy, it involves thinking and that’s what always lets us down. Dates, times and places fascinate us, we'll write forever if the subject grabs us, if not then you may as well forget any masterpieces, it just ain't gonna happen. Remember a lot of us get very hyper-focused and prefer to hone in on our chosen specialist subject. It's just about finding a good level for you.

Vocabulary and grammar play a big part in writing, I’m terrible for always adding capital letters needlessly, commas are lovely too, BUT the icing on the cake has to be !!!!!!!!!!! oh and??????????

There’s no shame in admitting that you may have difficulties in reading and writing. Spelling and punctuation are minefields. Ask for help, there really are some lovely marshmallow and jellybean friends out there who will help you. If your jellyjunior is struggling then drag them along too. Care and share means exactly that. Share your knowledge with other people, you have a voice, and your opinion is valuable. Writing gives you yet another choice, it gives you confidence and pride. You really aren't alone, the world is full of people who can’t write and barely read. Don’t be fooled, there are some very important people out there with minimal literacy skills. They keep it hidden but WHY?

Keep writing simple and easy, bullet points are a great aid, a bit like scaffolding on a building. Build a structure in your head, the simpler the better. Work out what you want to say and put it in order and then cut it down.

One thing that really helps jellybeans to write is a computer. Many jellybeans just love computers, and turn out to be real experts, churning out web-pages and all that complicated stuff that I haven’t got a clue about. My two youngest sons make me feel embarrassed when they waltz in and correct the red lines that somehow walked all over my page in the middle of some typing.

But apart from just using the computer for games and surfing, it’s useful to learn to type on it. Keyboards are so much easier to handle for dyspraxic jellybean fingers than old-style typewriters, and we love the wiggly lines that come under words when we spell them wrong and we have the spell-check working. It’s a miracle! Help your jellybeans to write by encouraging them on the keyboard. But please don’t hide the computer up in their bedroom or let them dominate the one you’ve put in the living room, because it’s so easy for us lot to get obsessed with the latest games or chat rooms, or anything we shouldn’t really be doing!

Another thing that will help with writing is to keep lists. We LOVE lists. So play list games with them – listing all the fruits you can think of beginning with the letter…..C or whatever, and watch them go for it! Lists are good because we can make them in single words – not a lot to confuse us in a list.

Debi

Language 12 - Reading

Language in word form. Understand it? Are you a bookworm by nature ?

We're all a bit hit and miss with reading. Sometimes the kids and I read the same page over and over again. Eyes are busy moving from side to side whilst the brain is in the cake shop, "I really fancy a muffin, now", I'm thinking as I'm reading an official letter. See what I mean? My brain wanders all over the place.

I instinctively pick out the bits that I fancy. Of course I get it wrong all the time and never seem to learn this lesson. Only today I got my eldest son’s appointment time wrong, I was only an hour out but still it led to mass panic and alterations, WHY? I hadn’t read the letter properly and therefore had guessed it.

There are books and books, some are jellybean-friendly and others are simply not. Do you check the print first? I know I do. Big print is good, tiny print and a lot of words all on one page is BAD and visually boring. Gaps and good old fashioned English is what’s needed. Headings and signposts are what we love. A book or written document is like a journey in itself, it has a beginning, a middle and an end and that is where the problem lies as I see it. SEQUENCING again, and it's oh so hard.

Words are intimidating especially for those of us who suffer dyslexia in whatever form, and I show signs of it myself although it has never interfered with my life until now. Poor Barbara, in true marshmallow style, has the ability to read every single full stop. Thank heavens for marshmallows.

Do you get scared to even start reading? It all looks so very complicated before you even open the book or the letter? How many have stuffed it into a drawer, under the sofa or even the bin? Hands up all of you. I thought so. There are an awful lot of hands up.

Words frament themselves like biscuit crumbs. Some of them stick to the page so you can’t ignore them but others just crumble away and even become invisible and you brush them to one side. I knew my son’s appointment was eleven am, so how did it change to ten am? When we can’t be bothered to read something, we’ll make it up, guesswork is a hell of a risky business, can you really trust yourself to get it right.

Do words jump out at you and dance all over the page like a performance of Grease? It’s much more interesting to watch Grease than read red tape or worse still the credit card bill. When you get the nasty letter, it only goes further to remind you that if you had watched less and concentrated more you wouldn’t be in this position.

Jellybeans are great at dancing with their eyes. Can you read in lines? I have real difficulty, I lose my way all over the page. I get to the end of the line and jump a couple even now. Horoscopes are a nightmare for me and I do want to read them. Don’t be ashamed to use a ruler to guide you or a finger is good as well.

Coloured lenses in spectacles can help with some forms of eye-dancing and dyslexia. Results can be instant and amazing to some sufferers. And you don’t even need to go to the expense of going to an optician. You can buy really cheap sunglasses, and try them all to see which colour lens makes the words stop whizzing all over the place. Try it!


When you and your jellybeans have a choice in reading, pick carefully.
Start with big cardboard and rag books, big letters and lovely bright colours. Get them into the habit of holding a book and wanting to look at the page. One apple on a page is boring all the time, choose some lovely pages that they will be eager to look at.

Some of us can be very slow readers, I didn’t read until I was 6, not at all. Suddenly, literally overnight, I just read. Just as if the skill had magically shot into my head. My kids have always been on the slower side and even now aren’t compulsive readers. It’s not that we don’t like reading, we just have trouble finding reading matter that interests us.

Factual stuff is great, we love to know about everyone else’s lives, ours are usually so complex, it’s often a relief to read so-called ‘celebrity’ autobiographies, encylopaedias, and as for the Guinness book of Records, that is a Christmas Must Have! Who has the longest fingernails yuk, who is the fattest yuk, yuk, but we have this fascination with it all the same. We adore books of lists.

But the secret of enjoyment in reading depends on what your child's special interest might be. Then, you won't be able to stop them reading up about it, or surfing the internet non-stop. Yes, don't forget, they're reading while they're on the computer, aren't they? My eldest son can tell you how many Siberian tigers there are left in the world, recount every mountain range and seas in the universe, yep I mean the moon as well! My younger kids feast themselves on technical bike and car books. How many cylinders, spoilers and alloys can there be? So you see it’s horses for courses, find your comfort zone and stick with it.

Magazines and comics are great for jellybeans, colourful and interesting allowing plenty of time for eye dances. Dip in dip out, that's what we like best. Of course that doesn’t exempt us from books, but it does show us we have to be selective in what we read. Choose wisely, get used to reading again. Hey come on you’re reading this aren’t you?

And don’t be scared to ASK if you need reading help. You hopefully have selected some sooper dooper docking stations by now, they’re there to help and if they’re stuck, they’ll find help for you both. Don’t panic, there’s so much to do and to think about that we don’t have time to panic.

Debi

Language 11 - The RULES of conversation

So what are the rules we have to observe in conversation? (I love doing this because I can turn the whole thing into a SYSTEM!) They are:


• Conversation is all about TAKING TURNS – someone says something, you listen, then you say something and they listen! Wow! It’s that simple and IT WORKS.


• Don’t interrupt (unless it’s to tell someone they’re on fire).


• Stay on the subject, don’t wander off on your own little track in your flip flops.


• You can’t transmit and receive at the same time so don’t even attempt this or you’ll blow yourself up.


• THINK first, or what you say will be thoughtless, and thoughlessness can hurt people. Don’t hit anyone with a blunt instrument, please.


• Have you got your shades on? This is really important. If you don’t understand shades of feelings, you may OVER-REACT (a jellybean habit) to something that wasn’t angry, it was just a bit cross.


• Are you taking something too literally? If in doubt, ASK.


• Don’t talk for too long about your favourite subject, or everyone will miss lunch, fall asleep, or walk away and leave you talking to a tree.


• If you argue just for the sake of arguing, everyone and everything in the room will turn aubergine at once and that’s the end of your world as you know it.


• If you mimic someone else’s voice accidentally, they may think you’re doing it deliberately to make fun of them – and they’ll hit you and you may lose few teeth and never be able to mimic again.


• Try not to squeal too much. Squeals sound like exclamation marks and everyone will point at you and call you a jellybean!!!! Not that I mind!!!!!!!!!

Debi

Language 10 - Butt out of Butting in

Why do I always get this burning urge to interrupt? It’s a real problem for again the tons of us who have ADHD, we race and our tongues just go into freefall and land plop right in the middle of someone else’s conversations. Was it a really important issue? Nah, don’t be ridicularse as my kids say! Was it earth shatteringly so petty that it need have been said at all? How about the conversation about your Dad’s hospital appointment, you know the one your mum is worrying herself to pieces about, she is pouring it all out and you interrupt with, Oh mum, before I forget, could you pick up the kids today, Billie's coming to do my hair!

That was a bit below the belt, eh? And you didn’t even notice. Do you hear the deathly silence on the other end of the phone or do you sense the worry? No, of course not, your brain’s too busy on permanent spin mode.

STOP, STOP, this is the only way to do it. Remember we spoke about motorways, well this conversation lark is like the M25 at 8.00am Monday morning. Watch out, be observant, there are one awful lot of cars around, huge articulated lorries and a very high wind, that’s just for starters. Use your wing mirrors (EARS) and listen to what you are being told. SWITCH ON the brain. Jellybeans do not always have their brains switched on to the correct mode. There are two directions just like a real motorway. Conversational motorways have two directions as well. TRANSMIT and RECEIVE.

These often get confused and jellybeans need reminding. Transmit means, yes please you are ready to speak. Receive means we are ready to listen. It’s really a great way to alert a jellybean that you have a voice as well and that it may interest them to listen to it. It’s also a great way to wind up the whole conversation, a real gentle way to say go away. My marshmallow friend, bless her, often says “ right, my sweetie, any more to transmit?”. What a lovely kind way to say I’ve had enough now, but thank you and goodnight. It's an unwritten rule that one. Actually as I type this in my nightshirt, I'm suddenly aware that I'm aware of an unwritten rule. Gosh I think that’s quite a leap, I’ll check in with my docking station and find out in the morning. No I’m not butting in and phoning her now, it’s nearly 1am. There, see, I’m learning, but it’s a good example nonetheless of how our language processes translate into physical actions. My uncle picked up the phone to a senior cardiac consultant at three in the morning because his throat was sore.I forgot to mention, Uncle was in Spain at the time, the cardiologist was in London. It is both unbelievably ridiculous and also butting in totally inappropriately! Oh and yes, it’s a true story, I promise.

Don’t forget the chirruping in at the end of someone else’s sentence! I often watch a well known tv husband and wife team, good staple diets in our daily intake of life’s current stories. You see her stopped dead in her tracks by the incessant butting in by her husband. Is it any wonder she looks nervous? Actually I wish she would do a bit of butting in, my guess is she is a marshmallow and they don’t do a lot of that!

Sitting next to a jellybean who’s guilty of this is sometimes like sitting on a time bomb, waiting for the next comment, tirade or stupid noise,like muffled giggles. Sorry forgot to say, we don’t just butt in with stories and words, heck no. We burp, giggle, twitch, fiddle or even jingle our keys, and oh, how about the urgent need to text someone, make a mobile call? We'll dance on tables, sneeze, faint or, even worse, walk away. It's because WE want to attention and just bring the conversation around to what we want to talk about.

Don’t be rude, please all you jellybeans out there, really there is no excuse for this, don’t give our tribe a bad name. Manners, yet again this short word keeps appearing. Apologise in advance, if you're in a rush then say so, don’t hop from one foot to another, or when you're driving slowly start to pull away from the kerb running over the talker's foot. Butting in to enter a conversation or simply change it, even ending it, is a serious crime with a severe punishment. People will learn to close their ears to butters in. They can’t be bothered to listen to a load of swoooooshy, swirly stuff, it makes them giddy and nauseous. Don’t ask the kids if they are ready to listen when clearly you’re not!

Debi

Language 9 - Staying on Track

Did I tell you that....................?
Oh and by the way......................
Did I remember to tell you.......................?
Um, er , um what was I talking about.............?
Now where was I ......................?

Senior moments? Um no I don’t think so, if they are then I really am going mad as my 10 year old jellybean is as guilty as I am. We both have far too much ADHD.

Who in your family is telling you a tale about work one minute and then is in full flow about how cheesed off they are with etc, etc? Do you dread it when you know that you need specific information and quite frankly, it's easier to pull teeth than to get to the information.

My son was giving directions to a driver the other day, a local who was unsure of the new road system, a never-ending maze of roundabouts, one way streets and low bridges. Technically it should have taken no more than a couple of minutes. A flask of tea later, and a shake of a hand, the poor driver could have been to Land's End and back - we're over an hour away from there, if you’re wondering. Still he’ll never forget us in a hurry.

How embarrassing is it to start off a real good yarn, get interrupted for a millisecond and totally lose track? Now we've not covered this before have we? I won’t dwell on this for long but it is a real problem. This ridiculous short-term memory lark. Seriously, I even interrupt my own train of thought! Apparently I am reliably informed that marshmallows only do this if they are tipsymallows or sleepymallows. That’s correct folks, we jellybeans don’t have to be either!

Actually this only came to light very recently when it was pointed out by a marshmallow friend that she had never witnessed anyone go further off track than me and my eldest son,ED also gifted with a huge wodge of ADHD. During a heated debate we each constantly interrupt our OWN chain of thought and can't get back on track. No one had bothered to point it out to us before.

Really, can’t you see it yet, how really irritating us jellybeans can be. Look at it in another light and actually it’s pathetically funny in a strange kind of way. You see we like to decorate everything, a bit like I’m doing now, coming up with regular new ideas that last a heartbeat before the next one knocks it out of line! Yes I know we like lines - conveying everything imaginable on our never-ending belt of thoughts and confusion.

This going-off-the-subject lark is another good reason to get yourself a top of the range EDIT program installed in your brain one under the guidance of an expert programmer: PREPARE, PAUSE and PARTICIPATE.

1. Think in your head about what you need to say, not what you want to say. Cut it down in your head, bullet points are good and if that helps you, great! Explain to those around you that it may be easier to talk in short sentences and ask them to bear with you. It’s a good way to learn and you’ll be both surprised and delighted by the reception. Cutting things down will give your memory a chance to store only the vital information, no point in fogging it up with rubbish that you should have chucked out with yesterday's takeaway.

2. Stop and think about the timing, is it appropriate to talk? We're about to explore this in a minute so for now take my advice and PAUSE.

3. PARTICIPATE, slowly and carefully, following the plan you had in your head. See? Easy peasy, and everyone understands you and you haven’t gone off the subject or added some pointless decoration – you haven’t put a cherry on top of the Christmas tree! Well done!

Again using pictures, we can teach our little jellybeans how to SEQUENCE.

Anyway getting back on track, oops, the early year picture and pop up books are very simple sequences. Spot the Dog, Spot goes to bed, Spot goes for a walk, Spot’s Birthday party. These books stay on track, and show us in very easy ways how to signpost ourselves to remind us where we are.

Create landmarks in your head, a beginning, a middle and end. Know where in the story you are, and it's easier to get back on track. How many of you forget which level of the multi storey you parked on, ending up getting very hot and bothered as you unravel the puzzle? If you had taken the trouble to CONSCIOUSLY remember landmarks you wouldn’t be er hmm um lost! These little incidents are just the same as conversation, think of it like a journey, navigate via bullet points, in other words THINK.

Lets face it, half of what I write, Barbara has to edit out because I’m losing the plot. Her message is IF IN DOUBT CUT IT OUT!!

So maybe I'd better go right back and read her article on How To Edit For Meaning....

Debi

Language 8 - It's Not Just Black and White

Jellybeans love colour we already know that, so why do we assume situations and feelings have to be only black and white?

Compromise is not a word that many of you may wish to explore, if that is the case then you had better skip this bit even though it may help you. It’s a long word for these things really, here goes:

1. Agreeing to something even if it isn’t quite what you wanted but its pretty close.
2. Reaching an agreement with both parties giving in on some points


So there you have it. Marshmallows are able to compromise far easier, because they take time, and see not only black and white but different shades of black, white, pink, green and blue, actually every colour of the rainbow. It’s their palette, their brain board that stores and blends all the colours into shades. Sounds lovely doesn’t it? I wish I had one, I am a glitter, pretty pink and purple chick. This idea is right up my street but unfortunately, as usual, I ain’t on that particular street.

OK, so how do we manage to purchase an artist’s palette and embroider it into our brains, oh and then empty a load of Dulux Match Pots all over it and jumble it up, uh? That’s not an option but believe it or not, we can TRAIN our brains to become artists in their own right. Here’s how -

Step 1 Grab one of those paint shade charts, the freebie ones in the DIY stores, stuff in a pocket and take home.

Step 2 For this bit we are going to use red to represent anger feelings using 5 shades of red. Start with a pale pink and graduate down to deeper shades until you find a deep maroon ( some jellybeans will prefer a scarlet as the deepest )

Step 3 Once you’ve chosen and you and your jellybean have agreed on colours, think of a way you can separate the colours to touch them. We used different shades of ribbon, but you could try using paper and sticky-back plastic or maybe even buttons. We’ve even used pom poms with wool, these are lovely and fantastic to make. Here's how:

Cereal box card, free!
Scissors
Wool

Draw and cut out 2 large polo mints with your cardboard, about the size of a saucer is best, the bigger the circle the bigger the pom pom. Make sure the hole in the middle is big enough to push your wool through ( big fluffly wool is great ).

Wind the wool around the circles that you have made, binding them together pushing the wool through the middle hole until the hole is no more and you can only feel a squishy soft pad of wool. Knot the wool and secure it. ( depending on how big your circle is, this could take a little while, so don’t try and to it at school pick up time )

Take the scissors, supervise your jellybean otherwise your pink wool may end up red! Snip around the outer edge, go right the way around. GENTLY, remove the cardboard circles and fluff up your pom pom. Fantastic aren’t they, really cosy and cuddly.

Continue making the pom poms in your chosen graduating shades. Hopefully you will end up with 5 in your chosen shades.

You can thread them onto a ribbon, or sew them together, whatever takes your fancy. I’ve used the red shade as an example of anger, start with the first rumbly tummy feeling, the one that you are aware of but doesn’t as yet cause too much trouble. This is how we did it.

Pale Pink = frustrated
Dusty Pink = upset
Soft red = cross
Scarlet = furious
Aubergine( nearly black )= tsunami/ rage

You can do it with other colours to represent other emotions. We chose shades of lemon through to neon yellow for happiness, this is a sunshiny type of colour. Green is for behaviour, the palest of green being FANTASTIC through to slimey sludgy green for not so fantastic. The choice is yours, what have you got to lose and what do the wool shops have to gain?

Notice the shades in other people, Mr Jones was really cross today, but what colour was he and why? Yes, other people feel, too, and hey, guess what? sometimes it’s different from how we feel.

Angry because the teacher has told me off and I did nothing wrong and then he got angry with me! So what happens when your anger is a red and the teacher’s is a pale pink frustration? Shut up would be my advice, pale pink in our family is just about OK. Trouble is the jellybean becomes a bit of a jellymean and reckons that teacher is a red or even worse burgundy! See how easy it is to get it wrong?

Understanding shades of feeling, naming them, and working on understanding compromise can lead to hyperventilation quickly. It’s hard for us jellybeans to see that someone who sounds or looks angry may just be a bit cross, and if you wait for a minute or two, the angry look and angry sound may go away. So the first rule when trying to work out how bad a situation is, is to count to three inside your head. Then try really hard to identify the shade that you see or hear. It may not be as bad as you think!

The important point is that not everything is Black Or White. There are shades of grey, millions of them, all shading into each other, because if there weren’t, you’d never see anything on a ‘black and white’ photograph! Pure black and pure white aren’t often part of the colour scale on black and white photographs. To see what’s in the picture, you have to be able to see all the different shades of grey. And we can, can’t we? So one day we might all be able to see all the colours, and all the shades, and give them all names. By that time we’ll have learnt how to install an artist’s palette in our heads. In the meantime, we’ll have to make do with pom poms – but it was fun, wasn’t it!

Debi

Language 7 - Take the SSSShhh out of SHOUT!

THE LAST WORD ! That one is in capitals because there is nothing more infuriating for a jellybean than to be deprived of the last word. Heavens, it’s a crime in our house to lose that precious last word. We’ll do anything to secure it like a jewel in a crown. Often it’s the case that two jellybeans will continue to lock horns and even if the distance is increasing the faded voices of protestation will continue until a door slams, closing that particular chapter.

The last word has even been known to be screamed out of the car window barely audible over the continual revs of the engine. What with the haze of the exhaust, smell of the rubber burning on the road and the combination of Silverstone and the Jerry Springer show, you can understand why these arguments become so volatile.

Noise plays a big part in misunderstandings. Have you ever wondered why you tend to shout at someone who speaks a foreign language? I often laugh as I do it myself, why shout in slow motion, they are neither deaf nor stupid? Unfortunately jellybeans think that everyone else is stupid, instinctively they raise the volume of their speech and SHOUT. It’s my experience that we jellybeans don’t actually like noise unless it’s selected. Problem is that we’re brilliant at putting noise out and on the loudest volume at that! Shouting matches achieve nothing and high volume buttons become distorted. If I shout for long enough I start to squeak and my voice becomes weaker and weaker and it’s soooooo frustrating when that happens. How many times have I lost my shout mid holler, just at the crucial moment of the argument, much to the relief of my kids. How my family make downward flappy hand movements to calm me down as the argument continues to heat up! Here is how to cool it down with the gentle swooshing of a Ssssssshhhhh.

This is a GREAT exercise to do for everyone and will if used correctly change your life.

Take the SSSSSSHHHHH out of SHOUT

Long drawn out Ssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, the ones that take your breath away. Go on take a great big deep breath in and gently exhale with a Sssssssssssssssssssssssh. Repeat it, over and over again, really this is so important, don’t be tempted to fill in the gaps with words or instructions as this breaks the fairy spell.

Practise your breathing and Ssssssssshhhhhhhh techniques, see who can make theirs last the longest. ( failing to take a breath is not recommended, blue lipped jellybeans are not what we are trying to achieve!)

This exercise is so important that I believe we should try to encourage at least five minutes every day to practice our Sssshhhhing. It provides us with a system, rules and repetition and most importantly the practice in deep breathing.

Although this shh technique may sound all too simple, try it, and discover how effective it is. It's actually recommended by psychologists to defuse feelings of anger and frustration, and to ease pain.

Debi

Language 6 - Argumentative

Arguing for the sake of it? Confrontational all the time?
Knowing you couldn’t possibly get it wrong?
Always having to have the last word?
Deliberately controversial any time, any place anywhere?
Yes I agree, everyone is guilty of that, but the majority of the time? For jellybeans it seems that plenty of time is spent moaning and arguing over the silliest stupidest little things.

Controversial is another good name for this as well, come on own up all you fledgling jellybeans, I’m as guilty as the next of deliberately arguing just for the sake of it. I’ve even been known to take a totally different stance, one that I would not normally take, just for the hell of it.

Kids will argue day is night and that the sky is purple with yellow dots, just to be a pain in the backside. They also have a habit of making you look really stupid especially just as you are sitting in front of the Educational Psychologist, calmly you recount the problems you're having and your dear little jellybean who is on the most perfect of behaviour is telling them that YOU are wrong! How irritating is that, it makes you look a fool and your jellybean look like the angel with the golden halo. WHY can’t anyone else see what is going on?

Did you know there were a number of types of argument though? How about the one that’s engineered and timed very conveniently to get your jellybean out of something that they don’t want to do, or simply decide at the last minute that they don’t want to do? Then lo and behold it’s you or someone innocent that gets the blame!
So what is going on?

ATTENTION-SEEKING, that’s what is going on, oh what will we do to get attention and in the process blame someone else for what is OUR bad behaviour! It’s only a jellybean that can get away with that one as often as we do.

Arguments tend to happen due innocent misunderstandings as well. We've already touched on a number of obvious reasons - literal speaking for instance leads to all sorts of jumbles and cross words. Jellybeans have many difficulties in understanding their own feelings let alone anyone else’s so when we get upset or excited we expect others to feel the same emotion. What emotion is it that we’re feeling? I have trouble separating the feelings. Anger, worry and panic seem to merge into a muddy brown blob in my tummy and I just know I am angry but why? Sometimes we carry rumblings in our tummy with us from one situation to another and by the time we are set to explode it's for the wrong reason.

My children often carry home troubles into school with them, it isn’t Mrs Wotnot’s fault that your jellybean is angry and grumpy because you forgot to buy the chocolate coated cereal that is essential to start your jellybean’s day. So you get my point, check first why the argument has occured, what was the first thing to trouble your jellybean, was it forgetting swimming kit? Was it the lost school shoes at 08.30am or did they just wake up late? Whatever the reason, it may not be the last thing that has happened, please try to bear that in mind. I am guilty as well, if I have had a nasty brown envelope plop through the door at 10am, it may brew till 1.00pm and it’s my mum who gets the raw deal. Sorry mum, she gets it from all of us and never ever gives it back.

Frustration, here it is again, and we all know where that gets us. Arguments are normally a very good indication that a very nasty icy chill is on the way, remember when the weather gets unpredictable there's always the danger of a tsunami. We refer to them as twisters that can last for quite a while and tend to follow us wherever we go. It can be quite noisy, thundery with flashes of lightening.

Another reason arguments start is that jellybeans just don’t pay attention to what someone else is saying. They’re often too busy saying something themselves, and if someone else is agreeing with them, they may not have taken the time to just hold back and listen for a moment. They’re perseverating with their side of the argument, even when there’s really NO argument in the first place!

For those of you who have more than one jellybean in your midst, arguments can become unnecessarily complex and magnified due to the intervention of others who quite frankly have no business poking their noses in in the first place, and who, like everyone else, just wasn’t paying attention right from the start!

Debi

Language 5 - Perseveration

Uh? Excuse me, what a huge huge word for what really means to go on and on and on, yawn yawn. Think about what persevere means and have another look and you may notice that it spells severe as well. OK so in a nutshell it means going on and on really annoyingly for other people. Lets look at some examples and by now you must surely know the catch phrase ‘ I do that!’. Yep afraid so, it’s the sludge brown colour on the artist’s palette. You got it - BORING.

Change the big title to boring and everyone knows what you mean.

I totally appreciate that 1940s crooners are wonderfully charismatic and enigmatic figures, adored by millions. Love the music, sometimes, toe tap to the tunes, but 24 hours, morning, noon and night, which is all my second son can talk about and listen to? Sorry it doesn’t float my boat, but he on the other hand can't focus on anyone or anything else. Bless him. I close my ears to most of it and end up saying yes and no in the wrong places.

How about going on and on about something that you know you have to do? I used to spend days sometimes dreading cleaning out the fish tank. I would constantly moan on about it to the kids, the cats or whoever has ears. Now moaning doesn’t get you anywhere!

Do you or your jellybean continually tell the same story that they find incredibly amusing, are you repeating the same story in the same way? I’m so badly guilty of this, the number of times my kids interject, ‘You’ve already told us this, pleeeze don’t tell it again ‘, the big doggy eyes and the pleading are usually enough to stop me.

Jokes, yes the ha ha funny ones - Uncle Jack only knows one joke and thinks he has only told one person. We’ve heard it a million times before and mouth it word for word, even the hand gestures are identical. Its almost as though they follow a script, er well actually we do! Am I the only one that will repeat a story thinking it's my own? That’s all well and good as long as you don’t find someone that's heard it all before, or maybe the person who told it to you in the first place - ooops.

Oopsa daisy again, how many oopsa daisies can we manage.

The good old DVD/video recorder in TIPs comes in so useful. Let people know your methods and ask them to help you and your jellybeans out by triggering you with PAUSE (take a breath ) and STOP (shut up ). They haven’t got to scream it to from the other side of the room, a nudge is as good as a wink or even both. Find a good system for you and go with what is comfortable.

And what about the children? ‘Mum can I have a biscuit?’ Not once, not twice but over and over again, it drones on in your ears like a scratched record until you either explode in true Tsunami style or you give in. If it’s not a biscuit then it’s a drink, a sweet or something equally as trivial and why does it happen when you’re on the phone? Experience has shown me that fobbing a jellyjunior off is just not an option. If you use phrases such as, ‘ wait a minute ‘ or ‘ I’ll think about it ‘, you’re asking for trouble, this is not a definite answer. Learn to say NO! It’s only a tiny word but it means a lot and after a while it will be accepted in your everyday language. Please try. I know it’s easier to give in sometimes for the sake of your sanity but in the longterm the nightmare just worsens. Teach them NO means NO.

Attention is what these jellybeans crave, any which way, we don’t mind. Set aside time for games which encourage your jellybean to learn to find the off switch. Pass the parcel is an old fashioned favourite and helps teach you when to STOP and START again. Little treats are all that are needed, not even objects, how about promises such as a family afternoon at the park, feeding the ducks, or maybe the latest film? Go on, they love nothing more than a special outing especially when it involves popcorn and ice cream.

The rules are simple - instead of music, have a speaker who has to STOP to allow others to remove the paper to find the treat. Teaching them to find their own OFF button is all you're doing and they'll always be reminded to by the others.

How about incessant apologies and thanks? What is the word sorry anyway? My youngest son has a real problem with this one. If you smile at him, he says, ‘ Thank you for that ‘. If he accidentally drops something, he apologises not once but repeatedly. But you know what? He doesn’t really mean it. These are just stimming words to him, and they’re almost involuntary. They just kind of pop out, all the time. It's perseveration.

One last final note on this endless (no pun intended) subject, perseveration can have its upsides too. I’m a bit like a terrier with a bone, never letting go. It’s like I go on missions and crusades and vow that I won’t stop until I achieve my aim. Without perseveration I doubt I would have managed to write all this down. There’s the proof - every cloud has a silver lining. I hope that you’ll agree, even though, yes I know, I’ve gone on a bit at times………

Debi

Language 4 - odd intonation

Intonation is an odd word. I liken it to a voice dance or a piece of music. An interesting voice, one that dances from sentence to sentence and plays tunes is what I love to listen to.

Monotone jellybean voices are quite common, the ones that draaaaag on with no break in exactly the same way no full stops no punctuation no explanation marks or anything in fact really really boring can you feel my fingers making slow steady boring moves on the keyboard do you know what i mean not even a capital letter to break the monotony. Sometimes the ploddy ploddy voices put you to sleep.

Indeedthewordsjustrunstraightintooneanotherwithoutabreak phew!One of my children, one who has Asperger's Syndrome, has this type of monotonous relentless intonation, and we're working hard to improve it by doing singing exercises, and speaking soft and loud, excited and informative, sad and happy.


Combine that odd intonation with poor fragmented information and you may as well close your ears. Even when my jellybean son gets excited, it's a job to detect it. Eeyore comes to mind. I remember that awful day 9/11, I told someone what had happened, an adult jellybean I hasten to add, their reply was a serious monotone, ‘ Does that mean Wall St has had to stop trading? ‘, no feeling or emotion in the voice at all.

On the other end of the scale, remember we always do extremes is SQUEALING. Apart from the monotone ones, I have yet to meet a jellybean who doesn’t squeal. Remember the happy flappy greeting of the jellybean? Well welcome to the thrills and shrills of the jellybean.

A squeal or a shriek need not be a warning of impending doom, it can be excitable as well and if accompanied by happy flappies then you can be sure you are on to a winner.

Grunts, chatting away to yourself and odd pronunciations go hand in hand as well. There are some jellybeans who put too many involuntary sounds like sniffing, tongue-clicking and childhood noises like psssshhht and mmmmm into their sentences when they speak. Some who repeat one word obsessively and at the wrong time may have Tourette’s Syndrome.

Stammers are common in jellybeans, more often than not these can be corrected with speech therapy. I know I am always going on about ADHD, but for those of us with that added bonus, I believe our brains are going far too fast for our mouths to keep up with. Its not a race at all, so why do we insist on trying? Stammers are tongue trippers, and we need to practice lots of tongue twisters so that we can clear the trip from our tongue. Try ‘red lorry, yellow lorry’, ‘round the rugged rocks the ragged rascal ran’ and ‘she sells sea shells on the sea shore’.

Again encourage your jellybean to read slowly aloud. Praise them as its not easy especially when you have an impairment. So tell them - CALM (yourself), CLEAR (your mind of its buzziness) and then COMMUNICATE. CCC. I tell this to my children all the time.

Debi

Language 3 - Mimicry

I have a natural ability to mimic most people, dialects, accents, styles and body language I have it all off to a tee. Not only that but I can flow from one straight into the other without even taking breath. It can get quite embarrassing as I don’t really have a strong accent naturally so its really obvious and I constantly have to apologise as people get quite offended as they think you're making fun of them. There is many a time when I’ve not only imitated them perfectly but I end up speaking FOR them, more whoopsies! I really can’t help it and I don’t even realise I’m doing it. If I’m talking to someone, I just start speaking to them in their own voice. It’s very spooky!

Mimickry extends to not just physical imitations, it’s catch phrases, too. Jellybeans love them and they slip off our tongues in a millisecond. You name it, every one of the current television comedy characters is represented in my house.

Its not just me - all my children have ‘echolalia’ ( the official term ) in varying degrees. My daughter is into catch phrases and a few selected accents and my eldest son would put you into hysterics in a second with his delightful innocent take offs. He is 18 and incredibly talented. My younger two sons both enjoy and are good at dialects and catch phrases.

So where does it go so wrong and how do we stop it?

It's obvious that there's a need for mimicry for it's the way the pre-schoolers learn. They watch their parents and imitate everything, it’s what they need to do in order to learn.

For many jellybeans, mimicry is the only way they know how to operate. Because they don’t have much of a clue how to behave socially, they find it helps just to imitate what they see as ‘good’ behaviour. Unfortunately for us, making people laugh is seen as good behaviour, and we don’t know that it has its limits.

Debi


What Debi describes here is, as she says, a stage in child development and language development. It's copying, or echoing, and is called echolalia. It's a conscious and effortful process for most people, but to jellybeans it comes naturally, and with many of them it lasts all their lives. An Asperger friend of mine quite often spoke in 'French', and could rattle off any amount of it. The accent and the intonation were perfect, and for those who don't understand French it must have sounded perfect. It was actually meaningless words, sometimes English words, run together and given a French accent.

Some parents of children on the autistic spectrum say that their children started to 'talk' or 'read out loud' very early indeed, except they didn't understand what they were saying. Some could memorise instantly huge chunks of written text, and after a parent had read to them, they could then repeat it word for word, and appear to be reading. Others constantly repeated what they heard on television, or would amuse themselves by repeating a catch phrase over and over again. Many retain this phenomenal memory

Many autistic children begin to talk by using echolalia as the first stage. Most of them progress to speaking single words, then phrases. Some of them seem to get stuck at the echolalia stage, and may not progress to full speech.

The ability to copy others is very pronounced in jellybean children. Tony Attwood says that they don't have natural social skills but can appear to have by adopting what he calls 'social echolalia', watching others and mimicking their social behaviour.

In marshmallow children there's an inbuilt ability to feel what others feel and do what others do. It's intuitive and takes no conscious effort at all, and instead of copying, marshmallows mirror other people's behaviour and emotions and speech, while remaining flexible to adapt for themselves the knowledge they gain by this intuitive connection with other people's minds.

The scientific reason for this is that marshmallow children have mirror neurons in their brain which are strongly wired to the decision-making centres of their brain. It's this wiring which enables them to tune in exactly to other minds and understand that other people have minds that are different from theirs but useful to them. In jellybean children the wiring isn't as strong and can short-circuit, and prove unreliable. So, instead of mirroring other minds, jellybeans consciously copy and mimic other people's behaviours and language. It's a very rapid process, and very skillful, but it's conscious.

You'll find many mentions of mirror neurons in our pages, because it's the wiring between these and other parts of the brain which is the fundamental difference between jellybeans and marshmallows. Please check them out in some of the scientific papers on the Links pages.

Barbara

Language 2 - Taking things literally

Saying and interpreting it, as it is! What’s wrong with that? We don’t go in for all this double meanings malarkey. We just listen to the words and think they mean what they say. Mostly this is because we can’t do all the subtle hints that someone gives to let us know that they’re only joking. And we sometimes don’t realise that there are words and expressions that don’t mean what they say. Here are some that confuse little junior jellies:

‘Pull your socks up!’ (but I’m wearing tights!)
‘What’s up?’ (my bedroom, my mum’s bedroom and the bathroom)
‘You’re wet behind the ears!’ (I can’t be, I haven’t had a wash)
‘He let the cat out of the bag!’ (was it still alive? It’s so good he did that!)
‘Joe from number 34 just kicked the bucket’ (was he cross with it?)

(OK, I know I’m exaggerating here a bit – but I always do! I’m a jellybean!)

As we get older we understand that some things are just expressions that don’t mean exactly what they say, but everyone knows what they mean. Except us. When we misinterpret them, they think we’re trying to be funny, because that’s what marshmallows do when they’re trying to be funny. They pretend not to know something we all know, and if it goes on and on, it’s a deliberate attempt to wind someone up (Oh look! I know what winding someone up means, even though I get the picture of a big old watch in my head when I say it!). And we get into real trouble because everyone thinks we’re doing it deliberately and taking the Mick (hey! I know what that means, too, but I haven’t got a clue why!) and we get into trouble.

But jellybeans still make a big silly fuss about words that don’t mean what they say. I make a big fuss about ‘wicked’. Why does that have to mean something’s good? It actually means that something’s bad. And why does ‘gay’ not mean happy? And why isn’t calling someone ‘brain-dead’ as offensive as calling someone a ‘retard’, and why do people say they were ‘literally’ anything at all that they don’t mean – like when people say, ‘I was literally hung out to dry!’ No you weren’t, because you’re not a sheet out of the washing machine! Grrrrrrr!

Get two completely literal speakers together and you have instant problems. Luckily for most of us, we do eventually understand that some things are meant as metaphors. It would be a pretty sorry state if everyone literally ran out into the street and jumped in front of a bus, so you see there are certain things that even the boingiest jellybean doesn’t do. Remember though if you do have a serving of ADHD as well we can take things a bit far.

My darling eldest son was playing up big time and I told him to get lost forever. OK I was starting a tsunami, I didn’t mean pack your bags and leave home! When things had calmed down, we both laughed as we unpacked his backpack which weighed a ton and revealed 3 encyclopaedias and a portable CD player without headphones! Oh yes and last week’s bus ticket - no money, toothbrush, pyjamas, toiletries in fact nothing of any use at all.Useless baggage. Story of our lives, as they say!

Then there’s my daughter, bless! jellybean mums and jellybean daughters with similarities in personality can often produce quite volatile situations. Only recently we had had a bit of a spat, I asked her to leave as the whole house was getting dragged in. She swept out of the door and went into hiding for days.

So what’s the solution? There are no magic solutions except for awareness. Explain calmly and slowly where the misunderstanding is happening and point out more appropriate solutions and actions. And if the language difficulty is becoming really serious, a Speech Therapist may be able to help.

Language 1 - a blunt instrument

Jellybeans manage to have an inbuilt honesty when it comes to what comes out of their mouths. Whatever happened to tact and diplomacy? Errrr, wazzzat?? Those words just aren’t in our dictionaries, and if they were, you’d have to explain them carefully because we’d be asking why all the time. I mean why, if we’re supposed to be honest, do we sometimes need to lie to other people? It doesn’t make sense, does it?

But think about this - how many times honestly have you been shocked, mortified or horrified at what’s coming flying out of your jellybean’s mouth like some armed missile. Honesty can sometimes be perceived as offensive or inappropriate and be met with glares and surprised expressions.

How do you deal with a jellybean who mistakes the nearest fat woman in Sainsbury's for someone pregnant ? My son has done this on a number of occasions and whilst I’ve been turning a deeper shade of crimson, hiding behind the baked beans, he’s become engrossed in a conversation with a complete stranger. ‘Are you a homosexual?’ he once asked a very flamboyant young man in a ticket queue at the station.

Situations like this occur daily and with alarming regularity. Sadly this form of communication is met with suspicion and surprise. What on earth do you do? Apologise profusely? Offer explanation or just smile sweetly, mouth some form of sorry and disappear behind the freezer wishing you were in it?

And then I have to think, well I do that, too! The doorbell rings unexpectedly and inconveniently (anytime in a jellybean’s life is inconvenient because if we’re busy with something we just can’t change our attention to something else) , you open the door in a very ‘get lost’ manner, maybe even say it, only to find the woman next door with your disgruntled and bedraggled jellybean whom she’s just saved from her garden pond? Whoops, blunt speaking gets us into trouble. Remember the incident I spoke about in chapter 3 involving my tsunami with a very kindly local bobby? Telling him to f... off is not my most brilliant of moves. I just didn’t THINK before I spoke.

‘Have I lost weight?’ my daughter asks. Reply: ‘No, you’ve put it on!’
‘Does my bum look big in this?’ I ask my eldest son. ‘Huge!’ he agrees. He thinks he’s being honest and hasn’t worked out that for once in his life I want him to tell a lie.The problem is that we find the idea of a ‘little white lie’ really hard to get our jellybean heads round. Grandma doesn’t want us to agree with her that her Yorkshires are too flat. She wants us to tell her we think they’re lovely, even if they’re not.

Here’s what I’ve learnt. There are two kinds of lies. The black ones are when you’re lying to cover up something you’ve done and you don’t want to get into trouble and they’re nasty and pointless cos I’ll find out anyway. The white ones are the ones you tell so that you don’t hurt someone’s feelings. But if you’re not quite sure what someone’s feelings might be, how do you know? That’s a toughie! You just have to think, ‘Would I like someone to say that to me?’, and if the answer’s no, then don’t say it. Sometimes, saying the wrong thing is worse than saying nothing at all.

So here’s some shorthand to teach your jellybeans. Teach them how to hold their tongue, LITERALLY, stick their clean little fingers into their mouths and do just that! Fantastic, they can’t talk. So train them that a sign such as index finger pointing to the tongue means, ‘Don’t you dare open your mouth’, something that takes a millisecond. Start early, remember repetition and rules are crucial, simple and easy.


Bluntness doesn’t always have to be rude and offensive, it can be charmingly humorous as well. Truthfulness may extend to telling Uncle George he smells! Phew, what a relief, something you’ve wanted to mention but didn’t like to! You look horrified but inside it’s difficult to conceal a huge jellybody giggle. And that’s something we’re often grateful to our little jellybeans for as they take the words right out of our mouths and they’re forgiven because they’re only kids. It’s a bit different when you’ve reached the age of 47 and you still sometimes say the first blunt thing that comes out of your mouth. ‘How was that for you, dear?’ he asks. ‘I’ve been lying here thinking we ought to repaint the ceiling to cover up that patch of damp, love,’ you reply. Whoops! There’s a frosty silence for the next week or so.

Dynamic Dominoes and Policemen

Many kids and adults on the spectrum don’t realise that every day they leave the comfort of their houses armed with dangerous weapons. Not weapons in the true sense of guns or knives but words. These too can be lethal and dangerous even life- threatening.

Go back to CAN for a minute and imagine you are on the motorway, would you allow your child to drive an unsafe car with the risk of killing themselves? Of course not, yet thousands of us allow our kids to take risks because we’ve simply not taught them DYNAMIC DOMINOES.

Words are like bullets, they harm, injure and destroy people, families and onlookers. Words are powerful but with some jellybeans they just slip off the tongue soooooo easily!

There is a way of HALTING those bullets though. Guns/mouths and bullets/words are best kept safe by someone trained! Oh yeah right, so how is that possible?

THE POLICEMAN IN THE HEAD!

Yeah we all have one, we do honestly! It’s sometimes called a conscience, and it’s a way we have of telling ourselves to stop doing what we’re doing because it’s just not safe or right. I tell my children that there’s a policeman in their heads, and remind them constantly that we don’t need adults to tell us what’s right and wrong, we can keep ourselves in check all the time with our built-in policeman.

The trouble is some jellybeans choose to ply him with wine and get him so drunk that he spends all day nodding off! So wake and shake the policeman, alert your jellybean that there really is one if they choose to use it!

My children often allow the policeman a little coffee break or lunch out! Every time he goes off duty there’s some kind of incident. So the trick is short cut to whatever word you find easiest to remind them that their policeman has to be on duty at all times. Over and over again reinforce it. Jellybeans are generally quick learners and will soon get into the habit.

An incident happened to us over Christmas. It involved my 18 year old son on Christmas Eve at 11.30pm.

Events started with a wayward comment (bullet) from my son to another lad pumped up with testosterone, the bullet landed and then immediately was followed up with the reaction of a bottle crashed down straight over my son’s head requiring 24 stitches as a matter of urgency, missing his eye by centimetres.

So how does this equate into dominoes, well this is how:

• Son fires bullet
• Lad responds with bottle,
• Son, bleeding, phones ambulance
• Paramedics phone my daughter
• Daughter phones me
• I panic
• I phone my mate
• My mate worries all Christmas Eve and can't go to her party
• My mother hears about it and panics and gets seriously confused
• Surgeon called out midnight Christmas morning - none too happy
• Daughter stays up all night waiting for plastic surgeons with her brother
• Christmas got delayed, you might say

Eventually my son arrives back home covered in blood, defiant it was not his fault and goes to bed, after having alerted two police cars, one ambulance, two doctors, one a specialist plastic surgery registrar, countless nurses and technicians and radiographers. But it was not his fault?

What my son didn’t realise was the chain of events (DOMINOES) in between. He also didn’t realise that my friend had sacrificed his Christmas Eve to set up a brand new PC for my youngest children. He came late so they wouldn't see the surprise, we had just half an hour to contact my internet provider to get a connection. The internet server was on the phone and when a call bleeped in. It was the paramedics. The internet connection was lost, the service provider closed and there was no fully-operational computer for Christmas Day after all! So Christmas Day was fraught with tension and anxiety, not to mention police time and statements, and my son's face looking like a Christmas pudding, and none of us talking to him.

But then it wasn’t my son’s fault was it? It was nothing to do with the initial bullet fired out of his mouth some hours earlier? It was just one bullet that cost the country how much in both time and money not to mention anxiety?

Combining dynamics and the dynamite of words can lead to a nasty DOMINO tumble - to be avoided at all costs.

Debi