Difficult Seasons

I haven’t been writing in a while. I haven’t been in the head space and also Penny keeps stealing all of my electronics. We are putting in a rough few weeks. Penny has been pretty disregulated and we can’t figure out the cause or a solution.

She is running away at school, home, and stores; climbing like nobody’s business – and not safely like she usually does; not listening – and she usually is a pretty good listener; not using her words; taking down tiles in the basement like some sort of ninja because she never makes a noise while she does it; having a lot of meltdowns and there is a lot of yelling and screaming from her; she’s gotten aggressive with me a few times which is very unlike her. Last night she literally flipped her bed over – like, why?! And not just the mattress which I have tied down for similar reasons. The actual bed with the tied on mattress and all. She’s stimming 10x more than she usually does which isn’t an issue but it is an indication that there’s something happening with her.

When the kids start exhibiting new behaviours, I always fall down the rabbit hole of “what if they do this forever?” Because Autism, for all the beautiful characteristics that there are, there can be some unfavourable ones too.

What happens if at 15 Penny gets violent with me? I can barely fend her off at 7 years old. She’s so much stronger than me.

What if my sweet little girl just screams at me all the time now?

What if we can never go for a walk outside or to a store because I can’t seem to keep her with me? I can barely catch her now. The running into the street never stops being terrifying.

It doesn’t help anyone to have these thoughts, I know that, but tell that to my brain. My brain also decides that when I’m stressed that I should just fall asleep. It doesn’t bode very well to get anything done which makes everything else stressful too.

I don’t know what set her off. It could be the weather, the PD days from school earlier this month, leftover issues from the time change, a substitute teacher, a regression, a slight change in a routine at home. I don’t even know. We’re always detectives for the kids especially when they can’t tell us themselves what is bothering them. In fairness to them, they might not even know themselves. That’s happened to me more than once – where I’m just not myself and I have no idea what set me off.

Whatever it is, I hope she settles soon. Not just for my sanity but also for her safety and well being.

Onto some good stories though because for all the chaos there’s always good and funny too.

The other night, we tried to casually put pizza on the table and see if Penny would eat it. She sat down at the table, looked at the pizza, screwed up her face and said, “that’s absurd!” before walking to the fridge for her regular macaroni and cheese.

In good news, Rory got a haircut at a salon last week. I started cutting his hair myself last year after a lot of really bad incidents in public. We went to the sensory haircut at the Hair Factory. First visit he met the stylist and got to look around while Shamus took some pictures for a social story. Second visit, Shamus took him and apparently it wasn’t great but she managed to cut his unfortunate mullet off from my final attempt to cut it. Third visit, I took him and he tolerated a scissor hair cut with some songs sung by the hair stylist while sitting on my lap and eating chocolate. He was so proud all evening!

In cute news, Rory has started saying “Thank you” without prompting and it is the most adorable thing of all time. For example, the other morning Penny was on my side of the bed (he usually takes my side, Penny takes Shamus’ side). He sang out to me and when I went up indicated he wanted her to move. When she did and I helped tuck him in to “his side” he looked me straight in the eye and said “fank you” in his sweet little voice. Be still my heart!

Yesterday when I was upset about the bed incident, I told Penny that sometimes she is too smart and too strong and I don’t know what to do, but I’m always glad she’s my daughter. I said, “are you glad I’m your mommy?” and she said, “Yes!” very enthusiastically so I take that as a win.

We’re in a hard season of life right now. Not our worst and not our best but definitely near the middle. Here’s to hoping this season passes soon and the next one isn’t worse. The joys of Autism parenting!