Liz - Interview 2  

Liz - Interview 2

Age at Interview: 45
Sex: Female
Background: Liz, 45, lives with her husband, a chicken farmer, and two of her three sons. Ethnic background/nationality: White British.

Brief outline:Liz’s son, Jonas, aged 11, has been diagnosed with epilepsy, ADHD and Asperger syndrome and Raphe, the youngest son, has Downs Syndrome. Jonas attends the local mainstream primary school but Liz is worried about the move to secondary school.

More about me...

To watch or read an interview clip, click on the heading that interests you. Either a video,audio recording or text will open, depending on the clip
To close transcript boxes, click here
To print the interview’s text, click here
Liz’s son has had his first sex education lesson at school and she has explained to him that these are not the sort of things you talk about in public.

 



Have you got concerns about your son reaching puberty?
 
Oh yes. He has just had, last week he had his first sexual lesson at school so he has taken it on board and I have tried to explain to him that they are not the sort of things that you talk in public, at the wrong time, so so far we don’t know how he has taken that on board, but yes, I mean because of the communications again. Because it was the school that did the sexual communication thing, he might have taken it on board a little bit better but if I tried to approach him here it would be like no, he wouldn’t want to talk about things like that. Or he will be very silly and he was being silly in the car, but I just kept saying, “You know Jonas you can’t go up to a person and just talk about these things at the wrong time.” I said, “You can talk about them at home, you can talk about them to a person if they are specifically talking to you about it, but not, you know blurt it out in the middle of the playground,” which he would do and things like that.
 
So I am just beginning to enter that stage so I can’t really tell you too much about it, because I haven’t really experienced it yet, but I am dreading it in a way, especially because these kids are very vulnerable. And other children pick up on this and they kind of get them to do the being silly thing and my son is always the first in the list, they all say to him oh do that ADHD thing you do, or you know, go and do this and he will go and do it, because he wants to be part of the group and be accepted. So they are very vulnerable in that respect. All children are vulnerable but children with these sort of issues are ten times more so.

Autism parents
The need for support
   Support our work

Mail to a friend

Send