Free Not Stupid by Anna Kennedy

things, he would stroke the other children’s faces to get their attention, until one of them thumped him.
    Then he would tell us he didn’t like school because ‘the eyes’ were looking at him.
    ‘What eyes, Patrick?’
    ‘There’s eyes there, they’re looking at me. I can see them in the classroom.’
    Patrick was assigned a one-to-one support worker but she was able to spend only a very limited amount of time with him because she was needed for other children within the school as well.
    Realising Patrick needed even more support, I also spent a lot of time at the school. Lunchtimes were particularly difficult for him because these were unstructured times. He continued to refer to ‘the eyes’, which obviously worried him. I eventually realised what he was talking about – his classroom door had the word classroom written on it and the two o’s on the sign were, in Patrick’s mind, a pair of eyes.
    Furthermore, he was troubled by a ‘mouth’, which swallowed him at school. This was the pair of swing doors that led into the main hall. He didn’t like the sounds in school – ‘they hurt my ears’. It turned out he was referring to the sounds of metal chair legs scraping along the floor.
    There were other instances that made Patrick stand out. For instance, when his teacher told the class, ‘OK, then, everybody, stand up and get on with your work,’ they would all do so, except Patrick, who would remain sitting on the carpet. ‘Go on, then,’ she’d say to Patrick, but he would just sit there. It was only later that she realised that, because she hadn’t said his name aloud, he didn’t think she was talking to him. ‘Patrick, stand up,’ she’d say, and he would do as he was told.
    He would constantly draw angry pictures. Some would feature the school being blown up; others were pictures ofhimself in his school uniform with his eyes bulging and smoke coming out of his ears. He was even making furious tape recordings in which he expressed his hatred of the school. It was at this point that I realised some of the other children had been saying things to him and this was confirmed beyond doubt when, one day, he asked me, ‘Mummy, what does “cuckoo brain” mean?’ then, on another day, asking, ‘What’s a “bird brain”?’
     
    The pressure on Sean and me was mounting up as we struggled to come to terms with Angelo’s autism and Patrick’s distress and consequent behaviour. I remember being at the hospital one day when Patrick decided to have one of his major blowouts. A woman standing nearby stared across at us and asked, ‘Can’t you control your child?’ to which I angrily retaliated, ‘Here you are, then, let’s see if you can do any better!’
    The woman’s face paled and she looked down at the floor, uttering an apology and excusing herself by blaming her dislike of hospitals, which had been making her feel very tense and irritable.
    Having both the boys at home and looking after them full-time meant I’d had to abandon my plans of being a working mum. My life now revolved around our sons. I felt trapped and, in many respects, my life was a nightmare – especially when shopping.
    One day, while shopping in a supermarket, we passed a basket containing pink balls. Unfortunately, Patrick had become obsessed with the colour pink. I agreed to buy him a ball but he wanted them all. ‘No, darling, one’s enough,’ I said, at which point he wentballistic. Patrick screamed and screamed and struggled against my efforts to calm him down. Other shoppers looked on in amazement and it was only with the help of one of the store’s security officers that I was able to drag him back to our car.
    Of course, undertaking any long-distance car journey with young children can be a nightmare, as most parents will readily testify. Again, I found this out to my cost when, in 1996, I decided to take the boys on the 266-mile journey from Hillingdon to Middlesbrough to spend part of the Christmas