5 Mar 2010 Yesterday a lovely family came in to show me how well their son was doing. It was his birthday, he was 11. Mum and Dad don’t live together any more but get on very well and boy is clear that he is much loved. He had been quite depressed at school and threatening to harm himself. By encouraging the parents to take control of his life, to make rules that would be consistent, by taking away the pressure he felt, I hoped that things would get better for him. And they did - he is one of two boys who don’t like football, but so what. Now he has made a robot bug [with the help of an adult who did the soldering] and the whole school is impressed. He also did the wonderful coca cola and mentos experiment, which makes a glorious fountain and is now interested in Pivot films.
I had never heard of pivot films. These feature almost stick figures but with bodies more like liquorice torpedoes, and the film maker moves the shape or redraws it to tell a story. Boy said could he show us the Best Pivot Film in the World on You Tube. Of course. So he took over the computer and found it. And suddenly there were quite a lot of not-terribly-nice words. [more]
I had never heard of pivot films. These feature almost stick figures but with bodies more like liquorice torpedoes, and the film maker moves the shape or redraws it to tell a story. Boy said could he show us the Best Pivot Film in the World on You Tube. Of course. So he took over the computer and found it. And suddenly there were quite a lot of not-terribly-nice words. [more]
2 Mar 2010 A new boy – today. There seems to be a run of boys at the moment. Or maybe it’s because Mothers usually do the fretting and chasing to the doctors, and because Mothers worry perhaps more about their sons, that boys come our way. [ I have a theory that parents are more confused by the child of the opposite sex e.g. I was a girl once and therefore understand girls better, and have a bit less sympathy for girly problems, and vice versa.]
Anyway, Tom is lovely. He’s got charm and a super smile, is reasonably bright – and worries about everything! He is sensitive with a large capital S and spends far too much of his life caring about the feelings of others. His Mum is delightful and, not unreasonably, wants him to toughen up and occasionally put himself first.
A For Instance: Sammy is a girl in his class who has decided that he is her friend. She decides where he should sit, who he should play with and when. Tom doesn’t want to upset her and so goes along with this even though he enjoys refereeing for the football and is missing his friends who are boys. [more]
Anyway, Tom is lovely. He’s got charm and a super smile, is reasonably bright – and worries about everything! He is sensitive with a large capital S and spends far too much of his life caring about the feelings of others. His Mum is delightful and, not unreasonably, wants him to toughen up and occasionally put himself first.
A For Instance: Sammy is a girl in his class who has decided that he is her friend. She decides where he should sit, who he should play with and when. Tom doesn’t want to upset her and so goes along with this even though he enjoys refereeing for the football and is missing his friends who are boys. [more]
25 Feb 2010 Martin is also highly articulate and thinking – but perhaps more articulate than thinking. He is small for his age but looks all-of-a-piece: just generally young for his age. This is often a problem for teenage boys. They grow at such different rates, some spurt while some have steady growth; some grow at eleven, others not till fifteen. Martin is small, but his father didn’t grow till he was 18 and at 14, he seems to be fine with it.
Martin has a big problem with eating. It all started when he was a baby and vomited a lot. He then had a very bad bout of gastro-enteritis which confirmed for both the toddler Martin and his Mum that he couldn’t eat a wide range of foods. She thought, not unreasonably, that it was better for him to eat something than nothing and increasingly allowed to him to restrict his diet. Unfortunately, this coincided with his age. The dietician was telling us last week that babies will try everything but from the age of one, for about eighteen months, become incredibly picky. [more]
Martin has a big problem with eating. It all started when he was a baby and vomited a lot. He then had a very bad bout of gastro-enteritis which confirmed for both the toddler Martin and his Mum that he couldn’t eat a wide range of foods. She thought, not unreasonably, that it was better for him to eat something than nothing and increasingly allowed to him to restrict his diet. Unfortunately, this coincided with his age. The dietician was telling us last week that babies will try everything but from the age of one, for about eighteen months, become incredibly picky. [more]
23 Feb 2010 I have known George for six years, I was horrified to find out, and today we said Goodbye. George was referred a long time ago by the specialist neurologist in the Big Town; although we have paediatricians of all sorts, complex cases are sent to the Teaching Hospital in the next town. Anyway George was referred because he has Tourettes and ADHD and was struggling in school.
He was a very quiet boy. His father always brought him and he and I got on well. I had no idea what George was thinking because he didn’t talk much. I tended to talk to or at George about what Tourettes was and how to manage his ‘shakes’. These tended to be worse when he was stressed and when he was cold. This was another boy who felt he was the only boy in the world with this problem, but at that time, there was another boy in his school Tourettes. After a while I wondered about his understanding and referred him on to the Speech and Language Department of the local University. It turned out that he had an obscure but considerable problem with comprehension and he was given exercises to do on a daily basis – [more]
He was a very quiet boy. His father always brought him and he and I got on well. I had no idea what George was thinking because he didn’t talk much. I tended to talk to or at George about what Tourettes was and how to manage his ‘shakes’. These tended to be worse when he was stressed and when he was cold. This was another boy who felt he was the only boy in the world with this problem, but at that time, there was another boy in his school Tourettes. After a while I wondered about his understanding and referred him on to the Speech and Language Department of the local University. It turned out that he had an obscure but considerable problem with comprehension and he was given exercises to do on a daily basis – [more]
18 Feb 2010 Adam is a highly articulate and thinking adolescent. He and his parents worry about a number of minor issues – he talks too much, is lively and almost fidgety, and is not very like a number of other young people. Why?
His parents took him from the local state school and sent him to an independent school nearby. This was a reasonable thing to do – he can talk for Britain but not about the topics that normally interest young boys. At this school he is happy and successful. He sings in the choir and goes to various clubs – Adam describes himself as happy. But he has reached the stage where he thinks about himself a lot, how he looks, how he behaves, how others consider him, and whether he should change.
His mum had two concerns – how to enable him to focus? [teachers say he is so clever but writes little down] and how to help him to be quiet? Hyperactivity or liveliness or lack of concentration might be due to all sorts of things, [more]
His parents took him from the local state school and sent him to an independent school nearby. This was a reasonable thing to do – he can talk for Britain but not about the topics that normally interest young boys. At this school he is happy and successful. He sings in the choir and goes to various clubs – Adam describes himself as happy. But he has reached the stage where he thinks about himself a lot, how he looks, how he behaves, how others consider him, and whether he should change.
His mum had two concerns – how to enable him to focus? [teachers say he is so clever but writes little down] and how to help him to be quiet? Hyperactivity or liveliness or lack of concentration might be due to all sorts of things, [more]