Category: in the woods

autism · general stuff · in the woods

wood walks

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)42 Comments

It’s school half term break here – it hardly feels like enough time has passed since the Easter break and I’m not at all prepared.

Luckily both Toby and I share a love of quiet, woodland places and since he’s so hard to entertain at the best of times, we’ll be having a daily jaunt to the woods to help keep him occupied. We walk along in silence, enjoying the sounds of the birds and the wind in the leaves and sometimes we get rewarded for our quiet strolling by a glimpse of a deer or a fox. Toby has a favourite wood walk with ancient contorted trees (a legacy of coppicing) and a brook running through the centre.

It also has Ermine Street, an ancient Roman road running through it and I like to think of all of the people who have passed this way through the ages, apparently including William the Conqueror and Oliver Cromwell and now Master Toby…

Toby usually loves paddling in the brook (and occasionally peeing in it!) but at the moment it’s completely dry thanks to the lack of spring rain. Despite that everything is verdant and cool and so very peaceful. I hope that peace will keep us company the rest of this week as we’re still waiting to hear about dates for respite care and Toby has been particularly unmanageable over the last few weeks. Hopefully the woods will work their magic on him and help to keep him calm, he usually is when we’re there.

I love this picture of him strolling along ahead of me, he looks for all the world like any other nine year old boy. Seeing him like this does me the power of good!

I won’t be back this week but hope to be back with some knitting updates next week. Hope you have a peaceful week where you are and thanks for dropping in to visit.

general stuff · in the woods

Bluebells

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)34 Comments

One of the nicest things about having children in different schools is that the inset days are usually different. This was the case yesterday with Toby going back to school a day earlier than Amy, giving us the chance to spend some extra time together. After breakfast we headed off to the woods where the bluebells were out. Sadly they were a little past their best but still scented the air and made the woods more magical than ever.

And then we came home to make (and eat) a cake together. A peacefully perfect day to finish off the Easter break.

autism · autumn · countryside · general stuff · in the woods

Wood walks

Julie (little Cotton Rabbits)21 Comments

Going out to the woods has become a definite highlight in Toby’s weekend. A few months ago he would cling on to me when we were out but now he’s more confident and likes to skip off and explore a little. It’s lovely to see him enjoying the different textures of the path under his boots as it travels through crunchy leaves, squelchy puddles and over echoy wooden walkways. It’s a special and gentle time together.

In keeping with our drive to build on his communication I’m going to be using these walks to add to his vocabulary by using a comment board. I’ll be trying to teach him to name what he notices so that when he comes home for instance he can tell Amy and Daddy that we saw a dog in the woods.

Hopefully we can add to this and in time help build him a functional language.

Thanks so much for all of the kind comments on the last post. It’s always really helpful to hear from anyone else with experience and great to read some different ideas that we may be able to adapt for Toby, it’s also a very nice feeling to know that there are people out there just wishing us well – many thanks x