How are our kidlets all settling into school? I think E is still feeling the effects of the transition, esp the changes to the little friends in her class etc. Also we are hanging out for the parent info night - E keeps saying she thinks she's got homework (words to practice in the green book) but the book never comes home and no other info either? I'm sure all will be revealed but I never understand why they wait until week 3 for the big reveal.

Cass -LOL at the milk bottle igloos (yeah, that is cool). How is M liking kindy? So sad to hear about your neighbour, it's tough knowing where to start to explain things like that to the kids.

Arte -
Yes the alexithymia stuff is v. interesting, bearing in mind that it is often thought to be an aspect of ASD (or comorbid with ASD). Other really interesting aspects are the lack of imagination/dream ideation, and tendency towards thinking in concrete, externally oriented ways. I'm running a theory about a family member, and I only stumbled across the alexithymia concept when I was searching for info about poor recognition of emotion/facial expressions. On an associated theme, I'm also sussing out 5-point scales for dealing with some of the OTT emotional outbursts that go on here. It's a "check yo self before you wreck yo self" thing where you use a 5 colour scale (red, orange, yellow, green, dark green/blue) to remind kids visually to check in on themselves and tone down their reactivity/behaviour - can be used for voice (shouting, etc) or stress or argumentativeness/aggression or hissy fits.