From the Field of Dreams to First Day at School

My guilty pleasure is watching mindless TV at the end of a long day, when the kids have gone to bed, the house is silent (well, mostly) apart from the dull whirring sound of the washing machine, that never seems to stop when you have two boys!

My picks of the week this week have been Freddie Flintoff's Field of Dreams - Series 2 and Celebrity Masterchef. Freddie Flintoff's Field of Dreams follows the story of all round England top cricketer Freddie who has plucked a group of nine boys out of Preston who for whatever reason have never played or lost interested and inspiring them to be cricket players. He has taken them on a tour of Kolkata, India to play gully, street, park, and match cricket. I appreciate that doesn’t sound like the most exciting watch if you don’t like cricket, but there are several characters in the programme who are autistic and have ADHD and it’s become compelling view for me.

Firstly its actually incredible to see Freddie, who after his car accident on Top Gear return to the BBC, but the trauma and anxiety he experienced over the last few months has been evident and as such you can see the relationship he is building with his budding cricket team who he seems to need as much as they need him. ?

The two lads on their who are open about their autism diagnosis are Josh and Finn. Finn has been the lynch pin on of the team – the person that the team goes to keep everyone together but his autism causes such significant challenges with anxiety when faced with a formal event. You can see him struggling with wearing a suit and formal attire – the concept of which builds his anxiety. Walking into a room stifles him, he can’t catch his breath, he struggles to talk to people. Impacted by new places, new people, new food, new smells he leaves to sit outside away from the hubbub of High Commissioner’s shindig. Freddie goes to find him and offers him encouragement, support, empathy, and time to allow him comfortable enough to come back into the room.

Then there is Josh, he has slowly been withdrawing over the past couple of weeks struggling with the food, the change of routine, the lack of routine, new places, new people, new expectations. Walking through a street market you could see him struggling more and more. The overall sense is that this is really hard and you can see that he is over-stimulated with everything that’s going, a fact that Finn observes when trying to support him. Slowly with Freddie’s empathy and understanding of the anxiety and the whole team coming together to support him and showing compassion and care.

Freddie taking the paternal role, checking in on the team, encouraging the team to think about every player, provides comfort and consistency for those struggling and you can see slowly that they are able to feel more comfortable and part of the team and that between Freddie who has been fighting his own demons and his young cricket prodigies there is very much a bond building that is helping them to pace things to their own ability.

The other TV show I happened to watch last night, was Celebrity MasterChef with Christine McGuiness. Christine has been open about her journey with autism with her children and more recently herself who has been diagnosed with autism. It struck me somewhat of the parallels between Christine and Josh and Finn. Christine and her family struggle with food and has sensory issues with that from the taste, the smell and texture. She wanted to show her children that if her mum could step out of comfort zone to try new food, to face her anxiety and fears to be in a new place, with new people, new smells and the sensory overload that comes with that, that she could help support her own children more.? However, she has also shared more publicly that she was glad to be off the show, as it was too much of a stretch for her as the energy it takes to shut that off the sensory issues and trying not to get overwhelmed with it.

This week marks the start of back to school or new school for many children all over the country. They will be facing the same walking into an environment that is unknown, with a sensory experience from the noise, the smells, people being too close, expectations on them and social cues they may not be aware of that may make their experience more challenging than that of others. They will often mask, attempt to fit in and for it to all unravel for them when they reach their safe space.

For many next week will be incredibly challenging and stressful for pupils and parents, be patient, be kind and provide safe space for support and empathy.

?

Both of these are on iplayer:

·?????? Freddie Flintoffs Field of Dreams - BBC iPlayer?

·?????? Celebrity MasterChef - BBC iPlayer

Resources to help parents/carers and children:

Going-back-to-school-after-the-summer-holidays.pdf (adhdfoundation.org.uk)