The good thing about my friend's house was that my son was familiar with it. He'd stayed there before on previous visits, and he also knew my friend well. At that time in his life he had very little language; even less in the first few days of our arrival in our new home. But it was obvious that for all his difficulty in communicating he knew exactly what was going on.

I felt the best thing would be to sleep in the same room as him while he adjusted to his new life; inevitably he ended up getting in to bed with me. His sleep had always been disruptive, with very erratic sleep patterns. The move had only exasperated that, and if getting a good nights sleep for both us meant sleeping in the same bed then so be it. I've never had a problem with him sleeping with me. I don't really know or understand what the child psychologists who are against it are going on about. It was not that long ago when whole families slept in the same room. I am at a loss to understand what it is they are trying to advocate. What kind of world are they envisaging with their credo? It seems to me that child psychology is a relatively new science (I mean teenagers were only invented in the 1950s) and everything that has gone before did in fact matter - and has great relevance today. Why do we have this popular notion that the childcare book has to be rewritten every few years? Any child, but especially an autistic child, needs all the love, comfort and security their parents can muster.

Having, to the best of my abilities, established us in our new home I set about contacting the authorities. I needed to get my son on their radar as soon as. If I was going to get the best care for him. My first phone call was to the head child psychologist, a prudent call as it turned out because she was able to put me in touch with all the other professional city run bodies pertaining to care for autistic children. She advised that a second diagnosis would be advisable, because coming from a local doctor it would get the attention of the school I wanted to enroll him in. Also the doctor could then refer my son on to speech, language and occupational therapy. I was also told about the mainstream schools that had language classes; a relatively new initiative designed to get special needs children more quickly into mainstream education. Not surprisingly the selection process for these schools was a long one (about 6 months), so first enrolling him at the local school was the best idea .What I didn't take into account was that in July all the Scottish primary schools are closed ...