It's been a long time since I've managed to update Raffy's site. He's doing really well. Today we were doing jigsaw puzzles (9 pieces) together and I'm amazed at how his confidence and fine motor skills are developing. He has a problem with attention span but we did 6 puzzles one after another and he really tried hard. Mind you Eden then shoved all the pieces under the wardrobe while I was putting pyjamas on Raffy... 3 still missing!
Dad was away for 8 days and nights last week... night times were rather challenging with two small humans to put to bed. Raffy did a fair amount of hurling things (books, laundry, wooden toys, trucks, bedding... anything) down the stairs while I was sorting little sis out. Shouting 'Oops a daisy!' and 'It fell over!' and 'A train fell down the stairs!'. Cue lots of very excited giggling and jumping up and down. Needless to say bedtime started at 6pm and generally finished at 10pm or later. It did stretch my sense of humour, but the boy is funny.
We've been publicly criticised for doing a Son-Rise Program with Raffy from the Special Needs Ed 'team' who used to come over to our house and they have withdrawn their support for Raffy with varying excuses. The main criticism was directed at this blog and Raffy's Facebook page which somebody 'anonymously' tipped the team off about. We are 99% sure it was his ex Speech and Language Therapist as she was so negative about the Son-Rise approach. This was back in July. I had two very distressing and intense meetings with her afterwards and was naive enough to think it was all finally sorted out. When she managed to pass our case over to another organisation then the complaint happened. 'Someone' must have been doing Google searches on their own time to find the pages as all on-line content about Raffy only mentions his first name and does not identify his Mum and Dad or location. I have no idea why anyone was offended at the 'posts' as I was so blunt and said far more inflammatory things to peoples faces than anything published on-line!
We've decided to see this as a natural way to get rid of the people in Raphael's life who merely wanted him to conform to a series of standardised tasks. They wanted him to be able to sit still in a classroom setting, we want him to enjoy being with other people and make friends! Quite different targets.
This family has never been very good at conforming... thank God.
