Speaking in Guernsey
Written on 17th Apr 2014 by Sylvia Lowery
Alex and Jo from NAS Guernsey.
Alex was interviewed by BBC radio Guernsey.
Alex speaking to families and young people.
Alex has spent the last few days in Guernsey. He was invited by NAS Guernsey. Alex has done four talks. The first session was on anxiety. Alex spoke about his personal experience of anxiety, how it affects him and how he copes. This talk was very well received and Alex answered a lot of questions.
The second talk was aimed at families and young people. A number of young people with autism attended. Alex found the young people in the audience were really engaged and seemed to identify with what Alex was saying.
The third talk was mainly attended by professionals. Alex shared his experience of feeling different as a child and finding out he had autism when he was eleven. He spoke about feeling ashamed of having autism as a teenager and how he came to see autism in a positive light. This session was described as insightful and inspiring by some of the attendees.
In the final session Alex spoke about his life with autism. This session was attended by parents, professionals, children and adults who have autism themselves. There was a lovely atmosphere with attendees asking a lot of questions about Alex’s childhood and how he finds self employment.
Alex final engagement was to be interviewed with Jo Horsepool and me for Radio Guernsey. It was a really good session with Jenny Kenny – Tobias the radio presenter. Jenny asked a lot of insightful questions about autism that enabled us to all give a positive but realistic account of the condition.
After this interview we had a very pleasant lunch in a French restuarant and visited the Guernsey occupation museum. This was a fascinating place which gave us a much clearer understanding of the way in which Guernsey was affected by the war. A lot of women and children were moved to the UK mainland just before the occupation. Those who remained on the Island were treated well but lived with an awful lot of restrictions. During the final winter they were starving and were only saved by the Red Cross. Alex enjoyed the museum and with the phone on my camera too a lot of photographs.
The last few days have been an exciting opportunity for Alex. He has flown on a plane for the first time and has had to cope with a lot more speeches than usual. He did get very tired and would need to rest and to withdraw between the sessions but overall he has been welcomed and accepted by the people of Guernsey and is looking forward to more opportunities like this.
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I attended the talk on the transition into adulthood and finding out Alex had autism in Guernsey. I found the talk extremely good and it was good to hear about autism from someone who is autistic. Alex done amazingly well. I wish him all the luck in the work with future talks.
Sound like it went well. Well do to you Alex.
Thank you for including information on how he did with so many sessions and between sessions. It is helpful guidance for me as a parent of a child with Autism for when he has to do similarly stressful activities.
Hi Elizabeth
Thank you for your comment I’m glad my report has helped. I just want to say that even today Alex is still recovering and has spent a lot of time on his own since we arrived back from Guernsey. He needs a lot of rest time after something like this. But this is the great part of Alex being self employed.