Hero the greyhound (Simon's Hero)

Hero the Greyhound (Chapter 10)

"So, how's it going?" asked Nell, Simone's best friend.

"Oh, OK y'know, not bad at all."

"Come on, I know you of old, tell me the truth."

"Well, it's better than it was but it's still very difficult..." and with that, Simone burst into tears. Nell put the kettle on, made them both a nice cup of hot tea, making sure Simone's Earl Grey was nice and weak and then, she sat down to listen to friend tell her what it was really like to have a son on the autism spectrum and a husband who rarely made an appearance these days.

Things had actually been going quite well. Not brilliantly but quite well. Simone had decided to take her rather silent, introverted son out of nursery school each morning and in order to try and improve his communication skills, she had attended a couple of courses to help him with his speech and language and also his physical movements. She hadn't known a great deal about autism before Simon's diagnosis but she was learning quickly and with the aid of the SLT (Speech and Language Therapist) and OT (Occupational Therapist) sent in to nursery to help support Simon, she was able to put things in place at home to help him too. Unfortunately, she was doing it all on her own, Neil still hadn't come home and sometimes, after Simon had gone to bed, she would collapse on the sofa, watch telly for a few minutes and fall asleep. Supporting a child with autism was tiring, supporting a child with autism on your own was exhausting.

"We're using visual timetables now" she told Nell, sipping from her teacup and preparing herself to explain all the new support systems in place to help her son.

"Visual timetables? What on earth are they when they're at home?" asked Nell, who had four year old twin boys and had never experienced anything other than the mayhem, noise and chaos of a normal pre-school household.

"Well, the Speech and Language Therapist told me that, because of his autism, he might respond better to pictures rather than speech, for now, y'know, it may not always be the case, he might be chattering nineteen to the dozen by the time he's five..." she tailed off, not really believing what she was saying "Basically...oh NO, I said it, that flippin' word, it's catching isn't it? She said that, for the time being, instead of bombarding him with questions or instructions, it might be best to show him what you want him to do in pictures and let him work it out for himself. Actually, it makes him feel very important, as though he's running the show but what he's really doing is following a set of instructions and turning over each picture as and when we've completed what it tells him to do"

"Right" said Nell "I'm really confused now. Are you saying you just show Simon a picture of something and he just does it?"

"Sort of" laughed Simone, "although the pictures have to be nice and clear and he has to do everything in the same order every day, for now."

"That sounds rather like heaven" smiled Nell, "Silent children who do as you ask when you show them pictures."

Simone tried not to get upset; she loved Nell to bits, they had been pals for many years but if someone had offered her two noisy, untidy, boisterous children, she would have jumped at the chance. Watching her silent son play with his toy trains, never knowing what he was thinking, whether or not he was happy or unhappy, tore her apart and she would have given anything to see him join in with the mad games her friend's children played every day.

"And Neil?" There was a brief silence as Simone tried to decide what to tell her friend about her absent husband.

"Oh, he comes and goes, does what he can. You know how busy he is."

"Simone, sweetheart, you know as well as I do, he doesn't help you at all. He's always down The Lamb, boozing and playing pool and someone told me recently that he's..." she quickly broke off, horrified that she had almost blurted out that Neil was seeing someone else.