So my evening blogging stints ground to a halt over the weekend. Family zoom and a meal with out bubble meant actually having plans in the evenings! We spent much the weekend looking after Noodle, she was still a bit upset with what took us to the doctor on Friday. We did get out and about a bit though and had some AAC time while we were out walking.

Now I’m a big fan of core vocabulary but I love that because we have a device with a robust and extensive vocabulary we can talk about whatever we see while we’re out and about. We had a walk to a local farm where we can buy eggs and watch the hens. We’d talked about hens and I’d found ‘egg’ on the breakfast page. We also had another funny moment when we were taking to the farmer about the eggs and Noodle said ‘croissant’ clearly she doesn’t fancy eggs for breakfast. On significant challenge with using the iPad when we’re out and about is keeping hands warm. Noodle can remove almost any gloves we try… in seconds. We’ve tried all sorts of pairs including those with conductive fingers so she can use the iPad with them on. She takes them off. We have found some wonderful gloves she doesn’t take off that easily and that keep her hands dry if she decides to chew on them (thank you seenin.co.uk). As you can see from this picture though, warm hands and chatting are not compatible.

All in all it was a chilled weekend with time outside and lockdown compliant family time. We did spend some of the time with a focus on AAC but other times we didn’t.

Over the whole week though writing this blog has been a useful experience. Keeping a record like this has helped me to focus on AAC through the week and to take time at the end of (most) days and think about how it’s gone. In doing this, recognising the successes and being kind to myself about times didn’t go perfectly. So back to the scale I used on day 1. If 10 being the best day we ever had with AAC and 1 is the opposite of that where are we now? Well i think I need a new question. What would be good enough? I think if we can be a 6 on more days than not that would be a win. There’s a lot to juggle supporting a child with complex communication needs. Inevitably the complex communication needs are alongside a raft of other needs that should be balanced across any day and week. Good enough will always be good enough.