#937 Saturday 8 June

As I was fending off the morning onslaught of Kaylia in "routine mode" it occurred to me that I often talk of "anxiety" and the effect on her.... yet many of you may not be able to visualise what it means.  That may be because we tend to think anxiety = worry.  For her the effect is probably at a lower level than worry ..... she has a very good brain that is able to think very well .... yet it doesn't work in some narrow areas.  It's as though she has a powerful motor under the bonnet .... and the motor is running nicely .... yet she can't put it into gear ... the car won't work and it all feels wrong.

So she is trying all the knobs .... but nothing works.  .... but she has to keep trying to find something that will make the car move.   Usually in a child, it's the learned social skills that "make the car move" ..... asking the right question ..... asking in the right way ..... but the A means that she doesn't have the social skills .... and so "the car won't go".

Kaylia in the train carriage in the museum at Whiteman Park.  What a marvellous facility this is!  Yet it makes me feel very old .... many of the exhibits are things I'm familiar with from my own life!


 There's a Bedford truck .... the same as Dad used to move our household from Wundowie to Rockingham when I was 9.

There's an EJ Holden .... these were new cars at a time when I was working during school holidays at a garage in Beverley .... pumping petrol .... .  literally  pumping the petrol too .... it was the sort of bowser where you had to pump the petrol using a hand lever.