For years… in fact, for over a decade, even before my fae was born, my husband and I have had a long running joke that “life will have to settle down soon right?”. It started with us moving in together, and then both finding gainful employment on the same side of the Atlantic. We then bought a bigger house, and as is the way of these things got engaged and married. At that point we were pretty sure things would settle down. Oh, how we laugh. Because, just before it could, we decided to have a child. For anyone wanting to have a calm life: don’t have a child! Whatever you think will happen won’t, and whatever you think you are prepared for, you aren’t.
We knew the odds were that our child would be neurospicy. I mean, come on, look at the poor thing’s parents: neither of us fit into the bracket of “typical” on that spectrum, so, realistically, she never stood a chance. Despite knowing this going in, I don’t think either of us were really prepared for how profound some of her needs would be. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t change her for the world, but a child that doesn’t speak until they are four and a half, and isn’t toilet trained until well after 5, is a trail. She still has what is classed as a limited food palette, and sometimes she lives off porridge and mashed potato for days at a time (that’s a significant improvement that started this year – up until then she lived solely off porridge).
She has more energy than a hyperactive mountain goat that’s had a jalapeño shoved up its bottom. She tends to view gravity as an option (that is frequently not selected) and seems to think that the laws of physics should not apply to her. I have spent the last 6 and half years preventing her increasingly-more-extravagant ploys to come to harm (always preceded by the words WATCH THIS!) in an effort to burn off some of this excess energy. It seems that we have stumbled upon the solution. It’s so simple! All you have to do is: make sure she is actively engaged in some sort of activity from the moment she wakes up (around 5:30am) until dinner time (6pm ish). I mean, how hard can it be?
All I can say is, the magic formula seems to be school, scheduled play dates at least twice a week, scheduled grandparent visits twice a week, after-school clubs, 3 sports clubs in the evening and 2 swimming sessions a week – and one more at the weekend. If this sounds like a lot: it is. Believe me, it is. But she is now running around, stimming out the happy, and is not melting down at the drop of a hat. She enjoys everything, and more importantly, the clubs and visits mean I don’t have to do it all myself – because before, I was, and frankly it wasn’t sustainable. Now, she is having fun, and I get some time to rest. This is sustainable for us and things are finally falling into a pattern, at least during the term times.
It really does take a village
Raising the Modern Fae 