{"id":6670,"date":"2023-05-09T13:21:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-09T12:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.familyfund.org.uk\/?p=6670"},"modified":"2024-02-22T09:54:39","modified_gmt":"2024-02-22T09:54:39","slug":"spending-quality-time-together-through-take-a-break-scotland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.familyfund.org.uk\/news\/spending-quality-time-together-through-take-a-break-scotland\/","title":{"rendered":"Spending quality time together through the Take a Break scheme"},"content":{"rendered":"<html><body><p>Laura lives in Edinburgh with her partner Jason and two children. Her son Oscar is eleven years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&ldquo;Oscar was diagnosed with autism at the age of four. He also has a recent diagnosis of Developmental co-ordination disorder (DCD), previously known as dyspraxia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"family-life-with-oscar\">Family life with Oscar<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>&ldquo;As a result of Oscar&rsquo;s conditions, he can feel stressed and overwhelmed at times. Oscar has hyperacusis which means he&rsquo;s sensitive to loud noises. A sensory overload is often the cause for a lot of his meltdowns, so he uses ear defenders when we&rsquo;re out and about, to help him cope with loud sounds. With Oscar&rsquo;s DCD diagnosis, we also have to physically support him with brushing teeth, washing hair, and getting changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&ldquo;Our home is quite calm and relaxed since that&rsquo;s what Oscar needs after being at school. In order to manage meltdowns, we ensure we stick to a routine. A lot of preparation goes into getting Oscar ready to go somewhere. We have to tell him exactly what we&rsquo;re doing and sometimes show him YouTube videos of where we&rsquo;re going.&rdquo;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>&ldquo;Jason and I don&rsquo;t get much respite. If we&rsquo;re lucky we get one night a year to ourselves.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>&ldquo;With that being said, being a parent to a child with a disability has made us more patient and flexible. I&rsquo;m someone who likes their own routine but since I&rsquo;ve had to care for Oscar, a lot of that has gone out of the window as I have to look after his needs first. I&rsquo;ve learnt to go with the flow. In recent years, I have been diagnosed with autism, and Jason with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). I think that helps with looking after Oscar, as it feels more natural to us.&rdquo;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Take a Break scheme<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Laura&rsquo;s family has received support from the Take a Break scheme: &ldquo;We were granted a break away. Oscar and I used the grant to visit York. We did consider going on a family trip somewhere, all four of us, but decided against it as we thought that Oscar could do with a break away from his little brother for a while. It was lovely to spend some time with Oscar one on one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.familyfund.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/20221014_133016-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"Mum and son take a selfie from the top of an open top bus next to the York city walls. \" class=\"wp-image-6672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.familyfund.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/20221014_133016-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.familyfund.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/20221014_133016-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.familyfund.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/20221014_133016-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/www.familyfund.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/20221014_133016-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.familyfund.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/20221014_133016-scaled.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>&ldquo;We got the train down to York and stayed in a hotel, which Oscar and I absolutely loved! Oscar really likes history, so we took a tour of the city and had a pizza in the evening. It was a fun break away and nice that we could do it without saving up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&ldquo;Although Oscar was still with me, it did feel like a treat for myself and a break away from day-to-day life. It was a nice way to spend time together in a relaxed environment. Oscar is not normally a chatty person, so it was great to have lots of opportunities to engage with him. It felt like a treat that we don&rsquo;t often get. The whole experience was really good!&rdquo;<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mum Laura tells us about her trip to York with her 11 year old Oscar, and how the time away helped them as a family. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":6671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"2normal","_mixd_wp_review_post_reminders":[],"_mixd_wp_review_date":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"class_list":["post-6670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family-stories"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Spending quality time together through the Take a Break scheme - Family Fund<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mum Laura tells us about her trip to York with her 11 year old Oscar, and how the time away helped them as a family.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.familyfund.org.uk\/news\/spending-quality-time-together-through-take-a-break-scotland\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Spending quality time together through the Take a Break scheme - 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