We've survived another school holiday and, remarkably enough, are all still in one piece and relatively unscathed. Life slowly returned to ‘normal' today and the luxury of ambling around Somerfield and actually being able to choose what I wanted to buy was much appreciated, rather than randomly grabbing anything within reach whilst juggling two children!

Received a report yesterday from the clinical psychologist who was assessing our son for ASD. His conclusion was that it was not ASD after all, so now we are more confused than ever. To date we have had one doctor who felt our son has Asperger's, another who thought it may be high functioning autism and another who thought it was language disorder then ASD and now does not know! Honestly, if they can't agree where are we! We are going to see the consultant at the end of this month so I dread to imagine what he will come up with!

The report that we received was really interesting to read however although I could not believe how different our son is at school compared to home. The "bubbly and happy" little boy who "adapts well to change, plays appropriately and mixes well with peers and adults" freaks out at home if things are not quite right, if he does not know what we are going to do next or gets a little bit dirty. I was happy that he was doing so well at school but I can't understand why he behaves so differently at home. Probably irrationally, I feel that our parenting skills are being put into question and that we are being tarred with the 'ineffectual, not able to cope' brush; after all, the problem only lies at home. Because I am a full time mum, if I think that I am not doing this mothering lark properly it really knocks my confidence in everything that I do. I don't have the distraction of paid work where my worth can be judged in an alternative arena. When we thought that our son had ASD I felt that we had direction and knew better and more confidently how to handle him as we knew more where he was coming from. Now, we are not sure and I suppose that leads me to question my tactics yet again. Oh well, I am sure we will get an alternative diagnosis soon so I can add another category to my burgeoning collection of special needs books!