The exciting adventures of Super-Rainbow

This winter we experienced some of the coldest we have seen, with the lowest we saw being -8C. It seems that this was finally enough to make our fae concede that there is a place in the world for jumpers. Up to this point in her life she point blank refused to wear more than one layer, and no thicker than a T-Shirt. 

This winter she has finally accepted that being cold is not fun, and whilst wrapping up in a blanket does work, it makes playing rather cumbersome. So, she accepted wearing sweaters under certain conditions 1. It must be cotton and 2. It must have a rainbow on the front. This presented us with a couple of problems: 1. She only had jumpers with paw patrol on them and 2. They were mostly a polycotton blend. 

With the assistance of her grandparents (for which I will be eternally grateful) acceptable apparel was acquired, and she happily took to wearing them. Constantly. Including to sleep in. Causing me to despair as she is – as I believe all small children are – a dirt magnet. She has two “acceptable” jumpers. Each lasts (if we’re lucky) a day before needing to be washed to prevent spontaneous evolution.

Out of desperation, I turned to an online retailer (originally a book supplier but now a repository of anything, and named after a long South American river) and found a unicorn onesie, 100% polyester and looked like a leprechaun vomited skittles over it. It met none of her stringent criteria. Needless to say, she loved it and with a cry of “SuperRainbow!” a hero* was born.

She won’t voluntarily take the sodding thing off, and will merrily wear it to social gatherings: admittedly this has the benefit of always being able to find her in a crowd; and the cooing from her admirers is really something to hear. The moment she comes home from school, she insists on putting it on over her clothing. She would wear it to bed given half a chance, but as she wears it to dinner, it is always well fed by that point and I refuse to let her. It gets smuggled away whilst she is distracted by her bath toys.

The fae father has found her a 100% cotton, equally lurid, onesie that also looks like it’s had an unfortunate accident in a paint factory, which she can wear to bed and does meet her criteria for clothing, so undoubtedly will be rejected out of hand. 

So the moral of the story – when you find something your child will wear, buy at least two before they go out of stock – your washing machine will thank you. And be prepared, if you allow your Fae to wear a onesie, they will transform into a superhero (whether they know what one is or not)

*I have been informed that SuperRainbow can run very fast, spin in circles and give big hugs – I am unsure how these superpowers vary from the behaviour of our standard fae. But the hugs are very warm.

Tis the season of meltdowns and poor sleep

I’m not a Grinch: I don’t hate Christmas – normally. This year, however, it made me want to cry. Our fae thrives on routine and has settled into her new school so well that you’d think she’d been there years rather than weeks. Another six months and she’ll probably be running it.

The downside of this is that, when everything stopped for the winter break, all her carefully crafted and maintained schedules just.. stopped. As far as I can tell (because let’s face it, she can’t tell me even if she wanted to) this sudden and (from her perspective) unexpected cessation of normal services left her feeling utterly adrift. Indeed, even the weeklong planner we use to map out her week in advance just.. stopped working: All the usual markers for her school, childminder etc. just suddenly went away for the holiday.

Being 4 years old and neurotic-divergent, she dealt with this the only way she could – with repeated defiance, meltdowns, and disrupted sleep. It was hell. She loved her presents, and played with them all religiously, but they couldn’t make up for the disruption – after all, they were part of it! She also spent the first week on an apparent hunger strike: even on Christmas Day itself, she ate a grand total of a few mouthfuls of porridge and half a slice of toast.

So all the hours I spent making cookies, the roast dinner, and chocolate cake all felt a bit of a waste of time, seeing as she didn’t eat it and her father doesn’t really enjoy it. The looming return of our routine and, frankly, our lives – which felt for the entire holiday season like they were on hold, leaving us in some sort of purgatory – was met with a relief I haven’t felt since Lockdown lifted.

And it was a relief for her, too – she was so overjoyed to be taken back to school she had to jump up and down for a while before she could calm down enough to go in; and she’s not only resumed eating, but has been eating multiple large, nutritious meals every day! Such a contrast!

With her recent return to school, I had time to reflect on the past year and roll my eyes at the optimistic resolutions I made in the previous years (sadly they have always been the same, and never achieved). So, I have thought hard and decided this year I will break with the tradition of wishing to be thinner and healthier. Nor will I take up drinking heavily just so I can give it up next year – no matter how tempting it may be. 

So it is with great trepidation that I will share with you some of my new year’s resolutions; 

  1. I am not going to have anxiety attacks over what my fae is eating so long as she IS eating. 
  2. I will spend some time on things that I want to do. 
  3. I will make the fae father do the same. 
  4. I will stop holding myself to an impossible standard. 
  5. I will find some way of achieving 1-4… no, I will, stop laughing. 

Interpreting reports – what your fae’s teacher really means

We got the first ever written school report for our daughter this week. It reminded me of (mainly because it was full of) all the diplomatic phrases that teachers use to disguise what they really mean. It also made my husband and I laugh as we went through and translated it. So to help you do the same here is a glossary of some of the common phrases you might encounter – and what they really mean.

Follows their own agenda – won’t do as they are told. 

Knows their own mind – won’t do what they’re told; will actively do the opposite.

Is happy to point out errors or inconsistencies – thinks the teacher is an idiot. 

Wants to help peers and will ‘mother hen’ them – thinks other children are incapable and teachers are unable to care for them. 

Is happy to help organise and lead peer activities – will play with others providing they do as they’re told. 

Is keen to participate- won’t let others have a turn.

Has excellent attendance – do you have to send them every day?! Seriously?!

Loves to be outdoors –  Stop feeding them sugar.

Can often be found on the trikes/ climbing frame / outdoor equipment – We mean it about the sugar.

Won’t eat the school lunch – your child has sensory issues or a well developed sense of self-preservation. 

Is happy to arrive and wants to come in – thinks the place would fall down without them.

Is working on listening skills – see ‘follows on agenda’.

Has a keen sense of exploration – has no sense of danger and finds increasingly novel ways to place themselves in harm’s way.

Shows strong leadership abilities – Finds increasingly novel ways to place others in harms way.

Is developing a strong sense of independence – does not want to be watched placing themselves or others in harm’s way.

Has a keen scientific approach – on discovering an action may place them in harm’s way, instead of ceasing said action they will try it again to make sure it happens every time. They will then invite others to try the action. 

Enjoys sensory play – likes making a mess and/or noise.

Can be distressed if unable to clean up immediately – doesn’t like others making a mess and / or noise.

Take ownership of belongings such as bag coat etc – don’t touch their stuff.

It’s like s/he has been here forever – thinks they own the place.

Has excellent gross motor skills – can’t keep still and runs off at the slightest provocation.

Slowly developing patience with turn taking – sees others as NPCs designed to get in their way.

If anyone has any other feel free to add to the comment section

Continuous progress

Sometimes, it’s not easy to see progress day-to-day.

This weekend, our Fae’s grandparents came to visit:a relatively infrequent occurrence due to distance. As such, it really brought home just how much our daughter had actually improved since their last visit (a few months ago, before she began school). Back then, she was just beginning to speak, but had few words, and those she did utter were often only really understandable to myself and her father. (Although I think the excited yell of “granma!” as they arrived made the whole trip worthwhile on its own!)

On this visit, however, she was understandable to them, and would even respond to questions (especially “would you like some of the cake grandma made you?”, would you believe?) She would give instructions, address them both by name, and partake in conversations – some of which admittedly only made sense to herself – in a way that was deeply reassuring after all the worries we had at one point when it wasn’t clear she would ever actually speak.

And although we knew her speech had come on, and she was much more interactive, it only really hit us just how much progress she’d made when we saw her with her grandparents. Because the progress was so gradual, we hadn’t really registered it as it happened. It’s like watching a child grow: you don’t notice from one moment to the other, but then one day you will notice your tiny baby has been replaced by the long-legged child that is climbing halfway up the stairs via the bannister, and wonder where the baby went. 

Today, we went to see our fae in her first school I play. I admit, I cooed when she tottered onto stage in her ballerina’s costume. Our coos of delight soon turned into howls of absolute, uncontrolled laughter: She was part of a “silent choir” using sign language to accompany the words of a song, and spent most of the first act busily trying to ‘encourage’ the child next to her to sign along with “Santa Claus is coming to town”. This she did by signing emphatically at him; and, when that failed, batting him with her hand. I felt for the poor boy, but I am assured they are friends and typically interact in this way. (I feel the teachers may have taken the view that, if they can’t ‘encourage’ the kids this way directly, then using her as a proxy is as good a method as any.) For her second act, they played to her strengths: they told her to stay in the ballerina’s outfit and twirl on the spot. That was it: honestly, she can, and will, spin around all day,.

It struck me just how grown-up my daughter looks: she seems more like “almost 11” than “4 going on 5”. She wore the ballerina costume like she was born to it. She tries to care for others, in her own way, and sees the best in her peers. Her smile lights up the room.

So, despite the stress and heartache that it causes us to keep her in good spirits, it’s worth it. It’s worth every therapist appointment and bill, and every antidepressant I have been prescribed and failed to remember to take (Seriously, who remembers to take meds every day? How do you do it? I tried the “give your cat a treat at the same time” thing, but I forgot the treats as well, and the ones I got my cat didn’t like. Then when I did remember and have treats she did like, she wouldn’t come down because there was a chance of running into my daughter….)

I was told today that my daughter was a credit to myself and my husband, and.. well, yes she IS, but more importantly: she is a credit to herself, and that’s all we can ask, really.

I will explain through the medium of dance

For the past month or so the school that my daughter attends have been attempting to toilet train her. This is something we have tried – and failed – to do on a number of occasions in the past. The problem is that all guidance starts with “explain to your child”… so as our fae is non-verbal and ascertaining understanding was virtually impossible, toileting also became impossible. I asked many professionals how to approach this and they shrugged. I escalated asking how (because frankly after 4 years of nappies I am more than ready for her to be done with them) until we were referred to the wonderfully, if slightly erroneously, named child continence clinic. The frustration we had with this is that our daughter is not, by the definition, incontinent. She has the muscle control and the ability to be toilet trained; she just doesn’t know that she’s supposed to be. The first nurse who talked to us merely explained in an overly loud and painfully long winded fashion that, until she talked, she couldn’t be out of nappies. I don’t agree with this. 

The second clinic sent me a survey to fill in, where they expected me to be able to ascertain on an hourly basis if her nappy was used, and estimate using the Bristol scale any matter in it (if you don’t know what the Bristol scale is, you’re very lucky and don’t google it).

The frustration of being told once again that no, she can’t be trained, but here’s a 6 months supply of nappies (providing you only use 4 in 24 hours) and they will talk to the school later.. My heart fell, this link between verbal communication and toileting was taking a toll on us. 

We taught our daughter to use a fork and spoon, to count, to colour, to buckle and unbuckle a seatbelt and operate an iPad through “monkey see, monkey do”. I couldn’t see why this would be any different (spoilers: it is).

We tried encouragement; we tried giving her books with pictures; and tried sitting her on the toilet. Nothing worked. So, it was with trepidation that I agreed to allow the school to try at the beginning of the week. It was not an auspicious start. The first day she returned home with several bags of wet clothes.

We are now several weeks in, and she is either not evacuating at all, or still bringing home bags of washing. When I had the audacity to suggest that maybe she wasn’t ready, I was told quite curtly that they had “been doing this for a number of years now”.

As a former teacher, I did have to fight the urge not to shudder, as this is a variation of the worst sentence to hear in education (or indeed any industry) which is “we’ve always done it this way”. I’m sure you have, but that doesn’t make it right. It’s not working, I can see it’s not working, and unless you can explain complex bodily functions through the medium of interpretive dance, you need to step back and think again. Creative thinking is the most vital commodity in finding techniques that work for teaching anything. Trust me on this, if doing the same thing over and over again isn’t working, then a new approach is needed. 

Or I could be completely wrong, I don’t know. I give up sometimes, as long as my daughter is still happy to go to school and isn’t coming to harm, I will continue to insult the washing machine with the endless loads – at least with the new solar panels the electricity isn’t bankrupting us any more.

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.

Best Laid Plans

Two weeks ago we thought we had planned a lovely Sunday activity complete with birds, water and puddle splashing… and it blew up in our face. Despite doing everything right, our fae hated everything. This Sunday, we decided to go to a garden centre. That was it, the whole plan! Go to a garden centre, maybe buy cake whilst there. Done. Full stop.

Well, as we approached the centre, we found that the car park was full to bursting (yay Xmas?) and so drove on. With no sense of what to do now, we ended up driving randomly onto the Yorkshire Moors, ending up at a place called Roseberry Topping. This was somewhere we’d wanted to visit because, for some unknown reason, both my husband and myself find the name entertaining.

Having parked and extracted our fae from the back, she took one look at this mini-mountain and I swear the words ‘challenge accepted’ appeared in a thought bubble above her head. She then proceeded to march inexorably straight up the path. As with most of the moors and natural inclines, there are multiple paths up, varying from incredibly steep to not so steep. Our fae, apparently, only does straight lines. And so off we went, being led on this mad climb by a deranged 4 year old who set a pace that left most adults in her dust (including me) as she bounced up a 1 in 3 incline staircase.

We tried repeatedly to convince her we didn’t need to go all the way to the top, with its sheer drops and slippery steep paths. We failed. We barely even managed to get her to pause occasionally for breath.

This walk was only 1.2km long, but it was all up this wet, steep slope, so I swear it felt like 5 miles. Out of the three of us, she was the only one even remotely appropriately attired – note for future reference, Doc Martens are brilliant for lots of things but NOT hiking, and my husband informs me that sandals aren’t brilliant either.

The view from the top was, it must be admitted, breathtaking. Once we got our breath back. And our fae was delighted with the entire walk up, and good as gold on the way down too. She even took it in stride when, after promising her chocolate cake to keep her strength up, the restaurant we stopped at for the purpose served food that all three of us found unacceptable. Not a murmur. We just came home and she had a hot chocolate instead. Followed by the inevitable bath.

So, what we have learnt from these two incidents is: planning seems pointless; and always carry hiking boots in the car as fae children seem incapable of leaving a challenge half completed.

Why Fight?

I have written a few posts on how to complete various forms, and why, in our humble opinion (my husband is my stalwart support in writing this blog, and my poor editor to make sure that there aren’t too many grammatical errors) it is important to chase information. This blog is why you should fight from the MOMENT you think your child may be a fae. 

Our daughter was recognised as possibly neuro-divergent at her 2 year old health check. We were already pretty sure that this was the case but we had been, to this point, dismissed by health care professionals with statements such as “She can’t be autistic – look at her, she’s as bright as a button!” And “No child that happy is autistic”. We were ignored when we pointed out that she didn’t sleep (well, she must are some point!), hadn’t said a word (well, children develop at different rates), that she was fearless (maybe she just fell off the climbing frame repeatedly) and had a fierce need for routine (all children like routine). So we emphasised that she was behaving normally for herself to the health care nurse when she watched in concern as our little toddler bumbled straight past her and her piles of colourful toys to investigate the door on the cupboard at the back of the room. She would not participate in any of the assessment activities because apparently the hinge was far more interesting. This, we were told was not normal. We still had to push, it was doubly hard as we working through COVID to get assessment done. We were on a waiting list for 6 months for a speech therapist to come and evaluate her. 

Our lowest point was when, finally, after all the fighting and stress and distress, a speech therapist turned up on a doorstep, with bags of equipment to help us finally communicate with our child who was becoming increasingly unmanageable due to frustration… only for us to have to send them away as we had the sodding virus. I won’t lie, we both cried. 

We did portage sessions through a stuttering internet connection, it didn’t work well but was enough for us to demonstrate we needed help. It allowed us to show that she needed support, that WE needed support with her. 

Waiting lists range from 6 months to 2 years. Diagnosis can take up to a year. Without that diagnosis, your child is likely to end up being thrown into the mill of the state education system. If anything will destroy a neuro-divergent child (actually, any child, but neuro-typical kids are more likely to find outlets for their distress) it’s the standard state education system. I say this as a former teacher with 12 years experience. 

A child that struggles with noise, bright light, multiple instructions, and sitting still will have literally been sent to hell in a normal school: being stuffed into a classroom with up to 35 other kids with one – possibly 2 – adults to supervise. Imagine being on the largest rollercoaster in a theme park, going around the bends and drops while everyone is screaming, and being told you are supposed to focus on someone at the front teaching maths or the alphabet. Then being disciplined for not concentrating, or being told you’re stupid because you can’t focus. That is what you are asking your fae to do.

They will then look around and see that everyone else can focus and feel that they must be stupid because they are the odd one out, so they must be stupid. They won’t realise that no one else is on the roller coaster, no one else is getting bombarded by this consistent overwhelming influx of information. No wonder they meltdown when they get home. They will learn to hate school, it’s a place that causes headaches and stress. 

They need sanctuary. If your child needs a special school environment, where classes are limited to 10 and staff ratios are significantly higher (e.g. My daughter’s class has 1 teacher, 4 LSA’s and 10 kids) then they need you to fight for it. Unsurprisingly, fae in these environments don’t detest school: it’s not so overwhelming, it’s a sympathetic learning environment, and as such much more likely to allow your child to achieve. 

So, where am I going with this wandering post? Start fighting as soon as you have an inkling your child will need extra support. Don’t expect the system to just sort things out for you. It’s natural to expect that a country with a welfare system will assign children what they need simply because they need it. Sadly, it doesn’t work like that in this country at the moment. There are wonderful, helpful people working in these places. Treat them like gold dust, because there are also people whose entire life goal seems to be denying you access to anything.

How bad are we talking? We had a paediatrician put in writing that our fae needed one-to-one support, only for it to be refused by a.. person.. at the council who’d never met her, simply because they didn’t want to release the funds. When we fed this back to the doctor in question, she was absolutely spitting nails with fury that she’d been over-ridden. We in the meantime were still just trying to find a childcare option that could take a child who simultaneously had paperwork insisting she needed extra support, and no allocation for it to be provided.

Don’t rely on things Just Happening, or things happening because somebody says they should. Track things, and be prepared to start making yourself a nuisance; if you’re told you will receive a call back from SALT or the health visitor etc in 14 days then on day 15 call them and ask what is going on. Write down the name of everyone you talk to, note what they said. I called ours the ‘shit list’. You need to keep multiple threads working and talking to each other, and you have limited time: the faster you get it going, the better it is for your child.

Unfortunately, the game is rigged: the parents being the most annoying to the services will be seen first. Don’t be angry or abusive, just persistent, it’s your child’s future so you can’t give up. I have written a few posts on how to complete various forms, and why in our humble opinion it is important to chase information. This post is why you should fight from the MOMENT you think your child may be a fae.

We spent over two years battling on multiple fronts, clinging on to the few genuinely helpful people and swearing to ourselves at the rest, and it was hard. But the payoff has been huge: Our fae wakes up and immediately wants to know if it’s a school day because she loves going to school. She’s being supported as she needs to be and her speech has come on in leaps and bounds. She comes home glowing with pride at the badges or certificates she’s earned.

She’s happy, and that’s what really matters.

Sunday was not a good day

For reasons that I still do not quite understand, my daughter had a bad day. I have no idea what the trigger was, but from the moment she got up, everything was wrong. She couldn’t settle to watch her shows; when my parents called to talk to us – a regular weekend occurrence – she did not behave, as she normally does: rather, decided that it was time to kick her legs on the couch until my arm was a mass of bruises and the call had to be ended prematurely. 

Presuming that she had an excess of energy, we decided that we needed an outing. So, we packed up the ridiculous amount of accessories that you seem to acquire when you have a child, crammed them into a bag, selected the mountain of outdoor clothing that we felt might be appropriate (but were unsure of the accuracy of the weather forecast so took apparel to deal with everything from a heatwave to a medium strength blizzard) and stuffed the pile into the boot of the car. After the obligatory debate over the yellow or blue socks, we then secured our fae into her car seat, and finally trundled off. 

We left optimistically, looking forward to a nice day – our fae usually loves outings. But from the moment we arrived, she was on the wrong track. She heard the word ‘shop’ and assumed the gift shop was a supermarket. She was therefore bitterly disappointed that there was very little on sale and no trolley she could ride in. This was compounded when the cafe was not only painfully slow to serve, but had no chocolate cake. This, in our Fae’s mind, made the whole place thoroughly unacceptable. It partially redeemed itself by having a wellie-splashing puddle, but with an empty tummy, and only crisps from the survival bag, she was not appeased for long. Suggestions that we leave to find more substantial fare were rejected. Suggestions that we moved from the welly puddle were met with the same. Suggestions that as she was the only one wearing wellies and hence should go in the puddle alone were met with loud protestations. 

Eventually she was convinced to leave the puddle. In the end, logic and reason having failed, she was extracted from the nature reserve visitor centre physically, as she had thrown herself on the floor and started screaming. To all those who stopped and stared at us judgementally for having a child of her age ‘tantruming’ in a public place I have only this to say to you: Fuck off. Try going on 3 hours of sleep and looking after a tired, disappointed neurodivergent child. This was supposed to be a fun trip for everybody and it turned into a disaster. 

So, screw it, we left, and went to a supermarket, where she got her trolley ride and a piece of chocolate cake. Which she had for lunch, and you can piss off on judging that as well: at least she ate. She was truculent for the rest of the day, and sadly this led to her bed time being delayed, as she wasn’t even settled by her bedtime routine. 

Some days it just isn’t worth getting out of bed.

You’re doing fine.

Don’t forget: you’re doing fine

It’s so easy to over-analyse every little thing you do, and focus on every tiny mistake you feel you make. At the end of a particularly hard day, you collapse on the couch – gin optional (only kidding, it’s not optional) – and go through every interaction, every word and tone you used, to find where you could have prevented the bad moments from happening. 

Stop it. You’re doing fine. The fact that you’ve trawled through the internet looking for help and discovered this paltry blog for your toolbox shows this. Look for the good things, the big moments that you’re getting right. Did your child, for instance, cope with the clock change? 

Honestly, we danced a jig this week, because, this time, our fae did! We took her out, let her run herself ragged looking for a Gruffalo at a park (everyone knows there’s no such thing) and then let her sleep on the way back. We then gave her a meal heavy on her favourite carbs, and she went to sleep only a little late, slept through, and was back onto “clock” time. It was a relief (despite our internal fuming about how stupid the whole clock change thing it). 

So: go team! My husband and myself needed to take a moment to celebrate that. Don’t get bogged down on the day to day drudgery. You are doing fine, you are making progress and your fae is doing fine. So, look back over the past weeks & months and celebrate the wins! They are there, look for them.