My brother Brendan bought the van in Lancashire . It was Red and had a drivers door that flew open going around bends . We put two reconditioned tyres on it The clutch was dodgy . Laden down with all our worldlies , it just about made it up the steep ramp onto the Liverpool-Dublin Ferry . I had a cabin but couldn't sleep . Out on deck Big Red hung on to our valuables despite the worst crossing I've ever experienced . The name on the van was a truly Lancashire 'Greenhalgh' . Down in Kerry nobody could pronounce it. Grrrhaleghh ..gerrhlg....His job - salvaging two people from an unsustainable life-style -being complete Big Red was sold on for much the same as was paid for him .

So it was city to country . England to Ireland . Manchester to Kerry . We have a bigger support network in Kerry than in England ; both his Grandfathers were Kerrymen. Even with the Celtic Tiger there is more of a community to be included in . And half the county is more eccentric than Sean anyway .

Sean had managed two fairly tearful years in a very good mainstream secondary school before the demands on his neurological endowment proved too much . He was showing signs of 'meltdown' . With a mad SATs year on the horizon the white flag was raised . The prospect of his developing Depression made the final decision relatively easy . I resigned my job - teaching in a Year 9 inclusion unit - and sold the house to finance an unknown future . And so we ended up in July 2002 in a mobile Home adjacent a beach in Tralee Bay , Co. Kerry . This was the starting point for four years of home-education . When our Mobile Home got too nippy we headed inland a bit to rent . The 3 months in the Mobile were magical and cathartic - given what we had left behind . It just made total sense from the beach looking back .

As I write Sean is over the road running his genealogy stall at the organic market . His interest in history having resulted in an investigation into our family history and now - for a few euros - other people's . He has his own website www.irishroots-census.com (under development ) . Aged 18 , he has plans for more conventional work too . But this genealogy work - arising out of a passion and a strength - has acted as an effective antidote for a self-esteem battered by years of getting things wrong. . He travels to Dublin on his own - makes his way to the records office - does the research . And feeds himself and goes shopping .The amount of sequencing , interaction , motivation , etc involved is testimony to the value of these last four years . Had he remained in a conventional educational environment he might well have gone under . To keep him afloat would have meant a level of support tantamount to a straightjacket . And what happens when that rigid support disappears . It's a bit like taking the scaffolding down having merely glossed over the walls of a house without foundations .
Instead of playing other people's games and chasing academic paper qualifications ( he does has 2 - in History) we have concentrated on exercises to build up his life and social skills . My son is more of a Personal Navigator than I could have ever envisaged 10 or even 4 years ago .

He may go on to Higher Education one day . When it is right for him and he is right for it . He will be of an age where those paper qualifications aren't needed. Too many of our academically able autistic children are in straightjackets being marched briskly down the road to University at the age of 18 . Because that's our conventional measure of success - and they can hack it academically . If they don't actually make it they are failures , However , even If they do make it , the drop-out rate in the first year of University is huge - because in the blinkered rush to prepare for the exam room, somebody forgot to address their immature social , executive , and emotional skills .

We have to personalise our children's education with long-term objectives in mind .
This isn't currently the case .
They call it 'Inclusion' . In reality it's more like ' Intrusion ' .
As a teacher the last thing I wanted in a class of 30 was 5/6 children with 'behavioural problems' .
There are very many good people in schools but few 'saints and heroes' (T.Blair) .
72% of teachers want children with 'special needs' to be educated in special schools
This is unsurprising ; 1 in 3 UK teachers will themselves suffer job-related mental health problems sometime in their career.

Our children have huge potential .
If we manage to keep their self-esteem and mental health intact .
This is easier if we avoid autism-hostile environments .