How much time do I spend chasing up the various health professionals and appointments that are involved in my children's lives? I know that professionals are busy but then I do not exactly spend my days sitting down having cups of tea. I asked one of my daughter's therapists about getting a key worker last week; apparently she can't do it as she already has a family she is dealing with. After waiting a week, I find out that she had completely forgotten! If I had not seen her I would be still waiting for nothing? It is hard acknowledging that you need help so it would be quite encouraging to think that when you do make that move and ask, then something might actually be done about it!

I also spoke to my son's school last week and they think that his behaviour may be linked to his language disorder. His speech therapist is designing a PECS sheet for him to point to and express his emotions when he is angry. Fingers crossed that this will work! The psychologist who saw him briefly for ten minutes agreed and said that he also thought that his issues were language disorder related as he was far too sociable to be on the autistic spectrum.

We then spoke to our GP who completely disagreed and said that he felt it may be Asperger's Syndrome. Significantly he said that we must be very careful not to confuse this issue with the other problems that our son has and that yes he could have language disorder and Asperger's! Lastly, I had a really interesting conversation with an advisor with the Wessex Autistic Society and he said that he felt that no way was our son's problems language related but in fact he felt that he is likely to have high functioning autism!

There you go then, lots of help yet we are more confused than ever now. According to the advisor it is really common for autistic children to be good at school and then awful at home as they contain themselves when out and let it all rip in the safety of home. That made us quite a bit better as we do often think that it is us doing something wrong causing the bad behaviour but now we know a bit more about it seems that it is just one of those things. Is that good or bad? I don't know but any information we can learn to make all our lives a bit easier must be good - however contradictory!