I'm always on the lookout for local, low-cost activities for SEN children for Noah to try. We are fairly lucky in the fact that he is usually okay around other children, and whilst he won't play with them, he's happy to be amongst them in most situations. Taking him to dedicated SEN sessions, however, means he can explore the activity in his own time and space without having to navigate anything else at the same time.
There isn't a vast amount of activities in our area for children under 5 with SEN, and there isn't anything provided by local council (don't get me started there...). We hire out a sensory room at a local school for 45 minutes at a time, and we have our weekly swimming sessions, there are a couple of autism clubs we can attend, but they're not age-appropriate for Noah at the moment.
A bugbear of mine is that a lot of the SEN-specific sessions I've found are advertised at times when the organisers usually have the least public footfall. Like a soft play centre that hosts SEN children only, once a month, on a Sunday, at 8 am. They tick an 'inclusion and diversity' box on a sheet for the company but they're not accessible to real people with real needs.
So when my mum told me that the local riding school were holding an open day to raise funds for their SEN sessions, I thought it sounded like a great idea to go along. I could get some information, Noah could stroke the horses and we could see if it might be worth a try.
Noah woke up and chose violence that day. It took me by surprise as my usually placid relaxed little boy was nowhere to be seen! I'm still not sure what the trigger was, but it was like a mosh pit at a heavy metal concert, arms flying everywhere, screaming, sweating, lashing out. When I think about it now all I hear is heavy metal screaming. His agenda that day was complete and utter freedom we were not in the right place for him to get that.
It started when I wouldn't let him climb up and over the fence into the paddock. Clearly, that was the first unreasonable action I took. I mean, who wouldn't let their child run full pelt into a team of performing horses?
Then, he spotted the inflatables. They had hired a helter-skelter and a giant slide and once he'd seen it, all bets were off. I tried to slow him down by starting to walk around the other stalls first. I wanted to show him the horses and let him watch them perform to gauge his reaction and interest. The harder I tried to stall him, the worse it got.
It took us 5 minutes to give in and buy him a handful of tokens for the inflatables, but Noah couldn't wait long enough for us to exchange coins with the person manning it and finish taking his shoes off. Within seconds he had broken free and scarpered across the field in his socks, desperately trying to regain his control. My dad went after him and got him back but the screaming didn't stop until he was inside the inflatable slide.
Every time I brought him down the slide to take him back around to the start or move on to the helter-skelter, the screaming began again. It was constant, and nothing I tried made it any better. I ended up taking him off-site away from the fundraiser to calm him down. We sat on the floor by the entrance as he desperately tried to wriggle free from me, doing breathing exercises, compressions on his legs, tickling him and anything else I could think of to wind him back down.
A spectacularly helpful old man decided to tell me that his screaming would spook the horses, to which I snarked back "Thanks, why do you think we're all the way out here?". I really do question what goes through some people's minds when they see a parent struggling. They must assume that the only way to help is to pass further judgement like a drive-by shit-stir. Problem solved!
Eventually, I got Noah back down to earth. He still wasn't happy, but he was willing to walk with me back into the fundraiser. He had a few more goes on the inflatables before I nipped back to the car and got his buggy so he could at least sit and chill out. I parked him in front of another horse display, and he spent the whole time asking grandad to undo his buckles so he could escape the buggy. Not exactly enthralled by the horses then.
A fruit shoot and a packet of crisps later, I managed to get him up close and personal with an actual horse. Granted, it was in the field next to the car park and completely separate from any of the fundraiser, but the little black pony was happy to pop his nose close enough to the fence for us to touch and stroke.
Noah however, cried and kicked in the buggy. It was definitely time to just go home. He wanted some space and freedom, and mummy needed a very large glass of wine!
I'm going to take the hint and assume that he really couldn't give a rat's wriggly backside about horses or the SEN session. It was worth a try!
