Invisible Stress

(A guest post from the fae dad)

Let me tell you about my morning.

After I was showered and dressed, I collected our fae and she trotted obediently downstairs with me. She helped me set the table, make her breakfast, and empty the dishwasher. She ate all her breakfast without any trouble, came back upstairs with me, got dressed, and stood playing Khan Academy games on her iPad whilst I brushed and braided her hair.

Once more down the stairs, and she put on her shoes and jacket happily, gave me a hug, then got into the car to be driven to school. I waved her off as usual, then closed the door and leaned back against it, taking a couple of deep breaths as I waited for the stress headache to fade.

It struck me, then, how utterly bizzare it would seem to an onlooker that I might be in any way stressed by barely an hour spent with such a helpful, sweet-natured child. She’d done everything asked of her and more besides, the whole morning ran like clockwork. Far from the screaming fits and battles that might come to mind when people imagine a stressful morning with a neurodivergent child. What on Earth was my problem, they might wonder.

And it’s not a bad question, because I wonder myself sometimes just why I feel stressed in situations that really don’t seem to merit it. Hence the idea of “invisible stress” – stress caused by factors that aren’t readily apparent.

The first, and most obvious, is the simple ever-present possibility that, however well things might be going, a meltdown might be mere moments away. This is the fae parent’s Sword of Damocles: Imminent catastrophe, hovering nearby at all times, held at bay by a single thread that may snap without warning at any moment.

I honestly can’t count the number of times our fae has been happily sat doing some calm activity – drawing, reading, playing with toys, etc. – only to suddenly be replaced by a grinning demon screaming around the room. What sparks the change? I wish I knew. It can be anything, or nothing. It just happens sometimes. It means that no matter how calm and peaceful things may be, one can never quite relax.

And then there are the preventable-in-hindsight meltdowns. The ones that do at least have a cause, even if it’s only one that can be identified after the fact. These are the ones responsible for most of the “walking on eggshells” moments that you eventually learn to live with when you have a fae child. The ones that can be set off by asking them to do one too many things when they’re insisting on helping you. Or not allowing them to do one specific thing that suddenly is the only thing in the world they want to do. Or doing something they didn’t want to do only for them to decide that they wanted to do it after all and now they want you to make it unhappen so they can do it.

These are the things that make having a fae child be less “a stroll in the park” and more “a tightrope walk over a pit of spikes” – broadly they’re both dealt with the same way, by putting one foot in front of the other, but the consequences of a single mis-step are rather more severe in one case than the other.

There is an ever-present balancing act with a fae child, you’re always having to focus on making the right call: Not too much, not too little. When she’s eating breakfast, for instance, she gets distracted and forgets to eat. So she needs reminders. But, too many reminders, and she feels pressured, and stops eating. So you have to make call after call as to whether one more “eat your breakfast” will be a welcome reminder to a hungry child that she does in fact have food, or an unwelcome demand to eat that causes her to refuse to take a single further bite.

And the clockwatching. Oh, the clock. The morning routine has to run on time. There’s a little leeway built in, of course. But too little and you risk having to rush, and a single delay can be a disaster. Too much, and you risk completing the routine too early on good days and then having to work out what the hell you do now: A neurotypical child might understand “we’re running early, so just this once watch cartoons for 10mins” but it’s not an option for a fae. If you watch cartoons on a good day, she’ll expect to watch them on a bad day. And then she’ll kick off if she’s not allowed to, because she’ll see it as an unfair punishment.

So the routine needs enough flexibility to not feel rushed and to handle the odd problem; but not so much that you can have too much time and no routine to fill it with. Mostly, this is dealt with by her hair: It’s one of the last things done in the morning. On a day when we’re running late, it’s brushed out quickly and put in a simple braid. On a day when we’re running early, it’s brushed more thoroughly and put into a more intricate and time-consuming French plait. But there’s only so much this can buffer things. So one watches the clock and tries to keep everything happening within a window only a few minutes wide, without ever making the fae one feel like she’s being rushed, or letting her mind wander so far that she’ll resent being brought back to what she should be doing.

The morning routine would appear, to an onlooker, like an easy, calm hour spent with a calm, sweet-natured child who helps with everything and happily does as she’s asked. But under the surface, it’s an hour-long ordeal of trying to get every single thing right; of keeping an eye on the clock; of making all the right calls; of keeping an eye on what she’s doing and what she might do next; of trying to foresee all stumbling blocks and remove them before reaching them; of balancing on a mental tightrope that might snap at any moment with no warning.

If you get everything right, it looks like the most simple, stress-free morning imaginable. The stress doesn’t come from all the bad things that happen. It comes from all the work that goes into preventing them from happening in the first place.