Paris Ankara Express: Overcoming my hatred of Teletubbies through crafts and autism

07/04/2011

Overcoming my hatred of Teletubbies through crafts and autism

Well, not quite. But it is a first step.
Before I tell the story and show you the pictures, you need to understand the depth of my hatred. I understand that all parents who have been subjected to them hate the teletubbies. Also aunts, uncles, godparents, babysitters, friends who drop by when it's on, etc. I know. Bear with me. Most babies who can will insist on watching the teletubbies as often as possible. They will make it clear early on that unless you put them in front of those post-apocalyptic creatures who take orders from a shower head, on a regular basis they will be unmanageable. You will not be able to have a shower, look at your email, or go to the toilet. Your life will be over. For a couple of years.

Now what you need to understand is that not only do I have two children, thus doubling the enforced teletubbies watching period, but the second one is autistic and has decided, not only that the teletubbies were his favourite show, but that he would use them as a learning spring board. Basically, the little bastard has made impossible for me even to consider weaning him off the Tubs. He's eight years old.

I have suffered for ten years now. I have watched them in English, Turkish, French, German, Russian, Czech, even. I know all the stories by heart. We have re-created all the sequences involving wind-mills, scary lions, trees with birds on them, flying sheep, etc, with drawings, cut out figures, plastic toys, legos, etc. We recite them on a daily basis. We have learnt much from them in terms of language, science, culture and social interactions. It's been painful, but fruitful.

Last week, we moved on to something new. Max decided that he was going to recreate a craft activity that he'd seen on the teletubbies. He said he would need some paints, green, yellow and red, some washing up liquid, paper, and a straw.
We asked him to make a list.

So I went and got all that from the kitchen drawer that contains everything we're ever likely to need for crafts. I realised that we're all out of finger paints but for green, blue and orange. So we used that. And here's what we did with it.