Am I too old to play with toys?

It's been an eventful week over here obviously as those of you who have seen the news since Tuesday afternoon will have seen as we're all affected by it in differing ways.
Today though I'm going to be talking about something that you might be going through or maybe it happened to you in your childhood that I think matters.
Most of us grew up with our parent(s) or a very close relative rather than say being with foster parents, in care or adopted and generally they oversaw how we grew up including the things we did or played with.
Every so often there was this talk about  the toys we had like if we still wanted them, could a sibling or cousin have them and sometimes they might of said something like "You no longer need Millie, Jo. You're a big grown up girl now and you don't play with dolls."
If you were really unlucky, you'd come home from school and just find your toys decimated and probing why would produce the answer "You're too big for them now so I took them away"   which tended to be what happened with mine. That sucks!
Actually they could well be wrong especially as it applies to younger teens and a few months back a girl wrote in to the American Girl dolls magazine with the following question to which they wrote this reply: 

This is actually pretty interesting and I have little doubt influenced by children's welfare 'experts' who see so much pressure on acting more sophisticated, in many ways trying too hard at being grown up, being too serious for our own good.
Writing this as someone who is legally an adult I like what they have to say about maturity a  lot which is really what we mean by  being grown up which is more about how we treat others and how we  run our lives. In a word, being responsible which we can struggle with and I won't lie to my younger readers that I haven't had this  too but that is all it is.
Growing up and even being Grown Up doesn't mean we should not enjoy play or doing something creative, indeed only this week gone, someone who isn't an age regressor like me just came out and said they were going to make a Lego model and did, showing pictures to our circle of plain adult  friends. I said life's too short not to do the things we enjoy and they agreed.
If you feel like it, then don't be afraid to especially if you are feeling stressed.

I posted this in part as a response to the young people, mainly French around this age group who were injured in Wednesday's tragic terrorist  incident in London, Great Britain who are in need of our love and support right now.

Thoughts from my desk

It's the weekend so I'm sat here working on today's entry after thinking over some of the weeks experiences.
I think the first thing is last weekend's written work showed I am capable of doing something I have  agreed to to a very good standard, being prepared to work with my conditions and the emotions that build up in me.
Another thing showed how not respecting how certain of my conditions are creates a situation where I feel very much out of things, unable to use those same abilities in what was on the face of it a less demanding task.
I have as some of you know from being with me severe problems with short-term memory, concentration and find noises very distressing and I was in the process of writing a Thank You card to a relative where I have people dashing all around me looking for things, shouting to each other without making it plain who it is they are speaking to, then trying to ask for information that isn't relevant at that point.
I can't hear myself think, I am struggling to remember what the sentence is even I'm trying to write, having to cross out one word as I got muddled up and what I did write wasn't what I wanted to convey even. I felt embarrassed to hand it over to the person who was going out to mail it even.
This was so unneeded and that kind of thing when I'm out at the check outs in stores paying for things and so on just gets to a point I just 'freeze over' and 'shut down'.
On the other hand where on Friday I found a micro sd card that contained sixty odd music albums that gone awl, where I the past I'd of been getting super anxious and stroppy I just calmly checked my back ups for the artists I had recordings by on the card, identified  them and got on with the job of ordering a replacement to put them all back on again maybe taking advantage of its bigger capacity to combine it with another.
In that way I'm getting at handling my conditions and how they affect me but you do to a greater extent than a good many others need to bear them in mind even if that other example is one that perhaps isn't fair to expect anyone to work around never mid  someone like me.

Bigger girl talk - The value of work

I deliberated over where to write this but decided as there were other things I may wish to talk about elsewhere I'd do that here this Friday.
A few years back a Government Minister here in Great Britain, raised several eyebrows when he appeared to suggest a major measure designed to set a basic level of pay - the National Minimum Wage - ought not to apply to learning disabled employees and the resultant storm left people thinking the idea was discarded.
Recently a noted personality and champion of disabled people and indeed parent of a 'grown up' child with Downs Syndrome, Mrs Rose Monckton decided to raise this topic again as the person who runs a training program for learning disabled adults.
The essence of her argument run that the output might not justify the National Living Wage for those over Twenty-four years plus the National Minimum Wage of Sixteen through Twenty-four year olds and many lived with their parents and so didn't 'need'  more than say Two pounds per hour as their parents provided for them. Hate the expression, but in essence this two pounds would be more like 'pocket money' for them being used for snacks, trips out and clothes rather than say food or housing costs.
By doing this, she argued learning disabled people would be more included in the work force and more importantly would feel they had a place in society that would be valued.
I suppose the first thing is to I say I share the same objective not least for having learning and developmental disabilities on top of physical ones, believe strongly in a more inclusive society and that even people  with learning disabilities should have employment opportunities.
That's where it stops with me because while some may be content with living with parents or some shared home with assistance -which absolutely is their right- the problem with this is it means they could not look for an flat where they would need to find money even if they claimed back some housing costs though other welfare programs.
The second area of concern is we are purposely exempting people on the basis purely of diagnosis and labelling from the everyday wage expectation whereas in the past 'top up' schemes would of helped companies employ people by paying them so they offered the same wages to a disabled employee.
The third area is if the argument is that some work may be therapeutic in terms of teaching life skills, the 'value' of work, retention of abilities which as someone who is disabled I'd agree with, then there was no reason they could not be  permitted to work in a voluntary capacity, assisted with any necessary travel costs and perhaps allowed to keep a small amount of any money they were given by way say of tips without having to declare everything.
That would provide  for much of this, be more flexible and not compromise the notion of everybody regardless of disability being literally of equal value reflected in their wages.

Wrapped Paw

First off thanks Tracy and Sam R for your birthday greetings and no nothing Sanrio came this year although I can always raid the kitty for something or other!
This weekend was a kind of study weekend spend working on a collaborative project which was fun cos blank paper or areas on a word processor page usually make things harder for me to get started  so I put up some subjected headings and I found one bit to get started on and as if by magic, the rest in time came and was appreciated by the person I sent it to.
Expect the unexpected as in with the birthday presents  was something different

Yes, we had white and grey school socks, harlequin and pastel fashion ones and even cute fashion ankle socks before now.
Introducing now black long soft school socks as bought by my folks!
Maybe apart from me being a bit more grown up they're getting more to grips with what I feel okay in or like to play with which is a good thing imho.

Another 12 months around the sun

Say everybody, isn't just possible that someone has completed an twelve month arc and might still be twelve today? Stranger things have happened around these parts I can assure you!

Hmm, no better a way for this birthday girl to mark hers with something featuring her all time favourite girl bring forth a cake.
I went out to lunch with Mom and my older brother locally.

Given how old I am, I do get music as presents and this special  two cd version  of an album I liked whose original copy suffered from so-called cd rot making it unplayable is something I'll treasure with its bonus tracks.

This came out last year having a couple of hard to find albums in it and two I only had on download with card replica sleeves so is much appreciated both from Mom.

 Coming soon is this, a new colouring book as I've completed my Frozen one now and some Milk Tray chocolates from my Aunt.

I got three new books in the Nancy and St Brides series  by Dorita Fairlie Bruce to add to my collection which will be read, a W H Smiths voucher from a member of the extended family that can be used to buy a book with and reviewed plus money from my brother.

Sports

Miss Kitty and I go back quite a long time actually not that I was much good at tennis or badminton on few times I did play it at high school preferring ball games or swimming which is an equalizer when you're disabled which was why I went for a period to a disabled swimming club apart from understanding company.
The instructors were super good at understanding you, your needs encouraging you to try swimming different ways to your fullest abilities and unlike regular pools our water was warmer.
When I hurt my upper right arm in my mid teens, physical therapy in the water was part of how I was helped to regain strength and confidence in using it.