Dan thought we had gone on our holidays to Platt Bridge

Zack's been on his holidays....to East Grinstead! It wouldn't be my first choice of exotic destinations but what can you do when the Pants wants to go to Sussex for a few days. We travelled down last Tuesday, not for a break but to start some therapy for Zack. I mentioned in my previous post we were going to do the Scotson Technique. 

So there we were on a Tuesday evening driving down to Sussex, the journey wasn't too bad. Zack was reasonably well behaved and so was his dad, I didn't hear too many "are we nearly there yets". Not until we got to our base camp for the next three nights. I thought I had been really smart and booked us into a very reasonably priced hotel. And it was lovely, very clean, great staff, absolutely stinking hot in our room, oh and did I mention it was at the back end of a council estate. Dan thought we had gone on our holidays to Platt Bridge. I reminded him that it wasn't a holiday and that if he can do any better on a small budget then next time he should book the accommodation. It wasn't as polite as that, there was some swearing involved, but we had been trapped in a car together for over four hours.

    The Barrington Lodge in all it's glory.

  The craphole where it lives....I feared for my life!

We went to the Advance Centre on Wednesday and began our training. The technique is very gentle, non-invasive and relaxing. It involves positioning your hands at different points on Zack's diaphragm then gently pressing down and releasing. We learnt eight exercises in total and the next time we go back (three months later) we will learn another 18 or is it 24, I can't quite remember but it's a bit more intense than this session. 

The therapists and the lady who developed the therapy Linda Scotson, are lovely, very friendly and extremely informal. Dan and I were even treated to a back massage off one of the therapists, yes, hard work all this therapy stuff.

  Zack is developing moobs and I need to update my QVC hands

 Therapy is such hard work

On Thursday we took a trip into Brighton, it was 34 degrees at 4.30pm, thank God for air conditioning in the car. We took Zack for a stroll round, he seemed to quite like Brighton, did lots of little smiles whilst being pushed about. I love it when he tries to smile, he still isn't smiling yet but I know it's coming, I can't wait for the day he does a huge smile. Although saying that, this morning I went into his room to get him up and tripped over his jungle gym, this made one of the little bells ring and I caught him giving a sly smile in response, obviously he found it amusing that I nearly broke my neck making my way into his room.

The journey back home was horrendous, the M25 should not be allowed to exist, it's just wrong I tell you. One hour and 50 minutes we were stuck on it, with me in the back saying how sick I felt and Zack saying how annoyed he was to be in his car seat. The whole journey took 7 hours with stops off at service stations, I think it was just a bad day to travel there seemed to be lots of accidents and hold ups.

We have continued with the programme we learnt and are trying to fit it in with day to day life. It isn't too bad at the moment. We don't know what results we will see, and we are not expecting miracles or for him to suddenly jump up and do cartwheels. We just hope that in a few months time we can see some small developments. We spoke to another parent at the centre who couldn't praise it enough, her daughter is epileptic and she said it has really helped her daughter a lot. 

Before we went to the centre I wasn't sure that we were doing the right thing. Having been there and learnt some of the process I am more convinced and have a gut feeling that this will help Zack in some way. Well I hope it will anyway.