Or “As it happens, it’s not her first time on the Santa steam train express.” This was unfortunate for the lovely (and I mean that, because they’re always wonderful) volunteers on the train, as she has very fixed ideas about what is and is not supposed to happen. 

It’s that time of year again, and because it went so well last year, when our fae child asked to see Santa on the train again, we readily agreed. I mean, this is actually a great idea if you have a child like ours that will not queue, will not stay still and can not for the love of anything wait patiently. Once you have your little cherub contained on the train and it is in fact moving, there is very little for them to find that they shouldn’t do, to do. We’ve tested this, she tried and she did find some things (which is why I’m writing this) but she couldn’t run off (the carriages are manned and the doors locked), she doesn’t have to queue (Santa makes his way down the train to each child in turn) and she doesn’t have to sit still – there are activities and and things to do whilst we move, and songs to sing. I also bought the contents of a standard supermarket snack aisle in a bag, so if all else failed I could stuff her with food. 

Her grandparents also came with us, which was excellent, as they had never been before so it afforded her the chance to play tour guide. It doesn’t matter that we have never been to this particular station before, she’s been on a train, therefore she knows best, obviously. She dutifully had her letter to Santa with her, (I hope he’s fluent in hieroglyphics) and handed it to him. She wouldn’t put it in the post box with all the others, she has to hand it directly to the big man himself, despite him being right there talking to her. So he took it, and put it in the box himself. She told him what she wanted (a giraffe) to which he blinked and looked at us to make sure he heard correctly. When he questioned where she would put a giraffe, she clarified she meant a baby giraffe, with a bottle and a nappy. To which Santa seemed entirely confused and said he would see what he could do, while we tried not to break rib containing the laughter. Perhaps we should try to explain that she should specify when she means a plush toy rather than an actual animal.

As we started to near the station where the journey ended, it was announced that we were to sing the ‘12 days of Christmas’. Our daughter perked up, she knows all the words to the 12 days of Christmas – and she can sign it as well. Unfortunately, the train people in their infinite wisdom had their own set of words, and were hoping to get everyone to sing their version. That’s all very well, but our fae knows how it’s supposed to go and she isn’t shy. The volunteer leading our carriage didn’t stand a chance. It didn’t matter that she had a bag of props and a costume, everyone was following the 6 year old fae child who belted out the correct words at the top of her lungs whilst signing along. Of course, this is the sort of behaviour that we actively encourage, as do her grandparents, and between gasps of laughter so did the rest of the carriage. We were loud enough to drown out any singing from anywhere else. The costumed volunteers gave up and sat down and let her get on with it. 

I was crying. I’ve never seen that many disheartened elves and Victorian matrons. 

So, same time next year?

There are some games that all children can play (peek a boo springs to mind.) There are some games that most children cannot play (Chess, although my brother was a grand master.) And there are some games that most children at a young age can grasp. I-spy falls into this category: even if you start by looking for things of specific colours rather than beginning with letters, most children will understand the concept of looking for something you can see with a common theme. My daughter has some interesting takes on this game. Firstly, she will not spell. Well, I say ‘will not’ but it may be ‘cannot’, it is hard to tell as on any given day she will tell you the correct spelling of Ankylosaurus (which I can’t without spell check) but fail to spell “mummy”.

We tend to stick to colours if at all possible, although I have tried with first letters to encourage her literacy. The problem is, we can be driving along and she will tell you that she can see something beginning with ‘C’ and after many guesses she will then inform you that the answer was ‘unicorn’. Now there are many reasons why this was difficult to guess and you will understand our frustration in playing with her. Not the least that there was no unicorn visible. 

When it comes to your turn to suggest a letter or colour you better hope that someone (specifically her) gets it right first time, or an argument will ensue. There are two flavours of argument: the first will be when you tell her that her guess was incorrect and will promptly be informed that it wasn’t. It goes like this:
I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘o’

Her guess “Unicorn!”

Response “No. Also that doesn’t begin with ‘o’.”

Her response “Yes it was!” 

Wherein you either go down the pantomime ‘oh no it wasn’t/oh yes it was’ routine until you arrive at your destination, or she will have a tantrum. 

The other flavour of argument is where she will tantrum because someone else guessed it and got it right, and she wanted to, or no one got it in which case you are wrong for making it too hard. 

Our bathroom has a cephalopod motif, there is a link here I assure you. We sometimes play I-spy when getting her dry from the bath. This time she told us she could see something brown. The only brown things in the bathroom are the stickers of octopuses. I guessed octopus and was told no. Having gone through every other object in the bathroom regardless of colour I gave up, and was informed the answer was octopus. On protesting that I’d started with that, she informed me that I had had the ‘wrong’ octopus.

So apparently not only do you need the correct word, you also need to be able to identify the exact sticker from the 40 identical stickers that are littered around the room. Even then I doubt it will be right, as you didn’t guess ‘dragon’. Mainly because there wasn’t one but that doesn’t seem to matter. 

As I said, she doesn’t seem to grasp the basics of this game, and we’ve advised her grandparents not to play it with her anymore. 

My daughter is an escape artist. I was talking this through with a friend the other day and between bouts of hysterical laughter she informed me that she would have ‘nowt but grey ‘airs’ and ‘ave gone barmey’ by now if my daughter had been her child by now (yes, I live in the north of England, what gave it away by gum?). Although each instance was incredibly stressful at the time, I can look back and laugh, because what doesn’t kill you leaves you with unhealthy coping strategies and a lifelong dependence on anti-anxiety medication. As such, here are my fae’s top 5 greatest escapes in no particular order. 

1. When she was 18 months old I had her in a nursery for two mornings a week. This nursery was for all children and babies, and were under the impression that I was a typical hysterical first time mother. They therefore did not take me seriously when I told them they needed to watch her like a hawk or she would climb on everything and find interesting ways to get into trouble. Within the first month of being there, I had cause to issue written complaints when she came home ‘tired’ they said. Only she wasn’t tired, she was unresponsive, with a head injury that they hadn’t recorded and I had no idea when she had received. I emailed and got no response, I took her to be checked out and fortunately it wasn’t serious. The managers had to accept they had failed on that. A week later they told me that she had managed to escape outside. This was a more impressive feat than it first sounds: she had to build a ‘little’ step so she could reach the keyhole, get the “supervised at all times” keys to the back door, unlock it and get out. Where were the staff while she was doing this? They were on the other side of the nursery, dealing with the multiple chldren tantruming. Something my daughter had caused as a distraction so she could get out in the first place. I would love to say this was out of character for her, but it wasn’t. She didn’t speak until she was 5, but she was excellent at figuring out other kids’ buttons, and using it to her advantage. She also didn’t return to the nursery. 
2. When she was around 3 she was taken by her childminder to a soft play centre. She was still non-verbal but by this time had been diagnosed with ASD and had a sunflower lanyard – to wear in spaces where people may have been confused by a fae child that mutely appeared and seemed to think she owned the space. She didn’t do well with loud noise, so took herself off to find a quiet area. The area she found was the kitchen, which was supposedly out of bounds to customers and doubly out of bounds to kids. The chef tried growling at her to make her leave, but she just blinked at him. To the centre’s credit, he recognised her lanyard and, realising that he couldn’t shoo her out, and that she couldn’t verbalise the issue, he sat her on a safe table with a glass of milk (which she ignored) and a cookie (which she devoured). During this time, her best friend, who was also a little blonde thing of about 3, ran in and explained – in a stream of consciousness that only small children can manage – that this fae creature didn’t speak, they were best friends, he couldn’t be mad at them and she would like a cookie as well. So he sat them together with milk and cookies and went to find out who they belonged to. The Childminder at this point was frantic, having misplaced two of her charges.
3. While in a willow maze, she legged it from me and found her way out. By the time I got out, she was nowhere to be seen. It was maybe a 5 second gap and she had completely vanished. We were on a Leisure farm and I started calling for her, but she was at this point still non-verbal and didn’t normally respond to her name – but what else could I do? It turned out she had run off, up the stairs to the offices. One of the grumpy staff members brought her back down. It was at this point we got her the lanyard with my phone number and explanation of what to do if she was found alone clearly written on it.
4. My husband and I took her to a museum. It’s reasonably local and she loves it, so we go there a lot. This time, she walked out of an exhibit hall two steps ahead of us. That was all it took for her to pull a vanishing act. The building was three stories high, and we ran round it like roadrunners on speed for the next 10 minutes without finding her. The only reason we didn’t also man the entrance was, fortunately, one of her school teachers was also there that day, and graciously agreed to do that for us. I found her in a corridor looking for us on the ceiling (why the F**k we would be on the ceiling I have no idea). After realised she had lost us, nature had called, so she had dutifully taken herself off to relieve herself.
5. Finally: her school assured me when I went to their induction day that there was absolutely no way for her to escape. There were three security doors between any classroom and the exit, and you needed a card fob to open them, and only staff had them. Famous last words. In her second year there, when she was just about 6 years old she was given a staff key fob to ‘help’ a teacher with her friend. Said friend was wheelchair bound, so the idea was that she would fob the door open, so the teacher could open the heavy door and push the wheelchair through. The problem was another student appeared and needed immediate help, so the teacher stopped. My daughter fobbed the door, saw myself and her friend’s grandfather waiting for them, and decided that they could leave. So she heaved open the heavy security door and hauled the wheelchair through. Her friend is now giggling as they make their escape. The door swings shut, so now my daughter, her wheelchair bound friend and the key fob are on one side of the first security door. The teacher is on the other, without her pass – trapped. She banged on the door to try and get my daughter to open it, but the kids have decided they are off on an adventure. So, despite the fact that my 6 year old fae can not see over the top of the wheelchair, they are off down the corridor, her friend yelling commands when they are about to hit walls. It doesn’t stop them hitting, but does slow the impact. So, they make their way like a demented ball bearing down the corridor to door 2 and repeat the process: she fobs the door, hauls it open and drags the wheelchair through. By this time, the teacher has alerted a colleague to the great escape in progress, but much to her chagrin, instead of helping, said colleague has doubled over laughing. They make it through the second door. The third door and freedom is in sight, but there is a good 10 metres of straight line corridor between them and it. This may have taken hours at the rate they were making progress. Myself and the grandfather have been watching from outside the third door and taking bets on how far they will make it. Eventually, the teacher that nearly herniated themselves laughing crawls off the floor and fobs the door open, so the original staff member can retrieve her keys – and her students – before they make it out. My fae child looks somewhat disheartened that she didn’t make it all the way, but I have a feeling that she will try again another time. After all, if she had gone on her own she would have made it, but she will never leave a man behind. They opened the door and I couldn’t resist the ‘I told you she would try and escape’ when they get to me. 

So she can and will escape from anywhere, it’s not that she necessarily doesn’t like where she is (she loves school and cries when it’s a holiday) but more the challenge of getting where she shouldn’t be, I think. I hope this need to break out/into places will fade as she gets older or she will end up in prison.

Briefly.

Until she breaks out. 

We have spent the last 6 years teaching our daughter to talk. Actually, that’s an exaggeration: we spent 3 years wondering if our fae child would ever speak; 2 with various speech therapists, school teachers etc trying to get her to talk, encouraging her to talk and dealing with her frustration of not being able to talk; only for the penny to drop and her to start talking nonstop, and the world finally starting to become easier. 

Then, in late October, she went through some sort of cognitive shift as happens with all children, and she started stimming significantly more. She also started to make verbalisations known as echolalia. The fae father wants it to be known that he isn’t convinced that she isn’t trying to use echolocation. It would not surprise me to find that this is true, as she spends an inordinate amount of time with her eyes shut walking around bumping into things. If it is echolocation, then she isn’t very good at it. Then again, she isn’t very good at walking around with her eyes open, either, and is often covered in mysterious bruises. 

I digress. The point is, that since October she has used echolalia as one of her preferred ways of stimming, and since you can’t talk whilst sounding like an old school dial tone she has taken to using Makaton and sign language as her preferred communication method. 

This has a few significant drawbacks. Firstly, not everyone knows sign language. In fact her own father and I only know a few signs between us, and most of those boil down to ‘no’, ‘stop’ and ‘sit down’; in fact, all the signs that she will want to ignore. Her grandparents don’t know any. More importantly, if it’s not in a Christmas song (specifically “Santa Claus is coming to town” or “Rudolph the Red nosed reindeer”) she doesn’t know them either – and I’m not too convinced by some of those either. 

So, all in all, this genius idea of hers is leading to a lot of frustration on both sides, and she continually makes up signs and meanings (no, you can’t use the same sign for ‘daddy’ as you do for ‘fish’) and some interesting if completely wrong ideas. My suggestion that she went back to using her words and telling me what she wanted was met with a look of scorn normally reserved for when someone suggests we don’t watch the same TV show on repeat, that she has something other than porridge for breakfast, or something equally ridiculous. 

I guess I’m taking a course in sign language. 

I have long held a belief that there is an inverted correlation between academic intelligence and common sense. I haven’t done any study, I just have my own observations to justify it, and every time I mention my theory to people they tend to agree. I may have mentioned in the past that I have a brother and a sister-in-law that both hold doctorates in STEM subjects. Indeed, my brother I believe qualifies as an Oxford Don as he used to teach there. He has always been gifted in the Sciences, with degrees in maths and physics and a PHD in particle physics. My sister-in-law has a PHD in electrical engineering. Both my parents were chartered scientists (my father was also a chartered engineer) which meant with my meager BSc(hons) degree I am rather the weak link in the family. 

That said, all of them put together have less common sense than a concussed duckling. Despite having a degree in physics my father thought that putting a CD in the microwave was a good idea (spoiler – it isn’t), my brother and sister-in-law dismantled a microwave (what is it with microwaves?!) to find out why it wasn’t working and neither of them checked the fuse before I suggested it. As for my mother; she once attempted to eradicate a woodworm infestation in a piece of furniture by dousing it in ethanol and smacking each worm on the head with a toffee hammer when it drunkenly appeared on the surface. That didn’t work either but it did burn well on bonfire night. 

So what has this got to do with raising fae? Well, there is a long held myth that all ASD children fall into one of two categories; they are either low functioning which means that they will need support for the rest of their life, have little ability to do anything for themselves, and won’t talk or socially interact. Think Ralph Wiggin on The Simpsons. Or they are high functioning which makes them extremely intelligent, have super intuitive memories but limited social skills – there are endless examples from TV here e.g. Sherlock in the BBCs modern adaption of the same name, Dr Shaun Murphy in the Good Doctor, Temperance Brennan in Bones, and Sheldon Cooper in Big Bang Theory. 

None of these are particularly good representations of ASD as it is a spectrum and thankfully the ideas of high and low functioning are falling out of favour, toward the idea of levels which I’m still not so keen on – but as I can’t really suggest a better approach I will just have to live with it. It may be because there are only three levels and I don’t feel this is enough especially when Asperger’s syndrome and Autism are now lumped in the same bucket. 

My fae is difficult to level – she is somewhere between levels 2 and 3. She stims continuously, she will often exhibit echolalia. She can, however, mask when she wants to – she can interact with her peers, but that behaviour is mimicking, because she has the intelligence to work out what is expected of her. She has specific interests and hyperfixations that rule her waking moments: one of the big ones has been Paw Patrol, which she has been taken with for 4 years.

So she can instigate interactions with neurotypical kids – putting her at level 1 – but she needs constant support and stims. That’s level 2. BUT also needs speech and communication intervention. She relies on Makaton signing to support her speech as it’s underdeveloped, so that’s level 3. 

Needing round the clock supervision is also level 3, and she does need it, or she will find things she shouldn’t do to do, and new and impressive ways of hurting herself. 

So intelligent, yes, but also lacking any common sense. So she fits my theory as well, even if she is the hottest chili in the spice rack. 

I am of the firm belief that I am raising a cartoon child. If you are unsure if you have a cartoon child there are things you can look out for that will tell you for certain. 

1. Has your child ever ‘reached offscreen’? Think Wylie Coyote reaching for an Acme product in Road Runner. My daughter does this fairly often. The most memorable occasion was in a big blue supermarket, where we were standing in the toy aisle, discussing what we needed and my husband said ‘chocolate’. She promptly reached onto the shelf between the playdoh and Paw Patrol figures and handed him a bag of Smarties. We to this day have no idea how she did it. 
2. Does your child take comic timing to a whole new level? Last night, she was being a baby giraffe in the bath (don’t ask me, I just live here) when we needed her to get out. She was reluctant. My husband (I’m sensing a common factor here) urged her out with ‘Quick, before you turn into a baby elephant again!’ There was a gasp of ‘oh no’ and she literally sprang out the water like a penguin onto an ice floe. I have no idea what happened. 
3. Are they easily distracted? My husband (again I’m sensing I know what is the cause of my cartoon child) managed to distract my fae out of a tantrum with a cry of ‘look, a distraction!’ She immediately stopped crying and perked her head up like a meerkat on guard duty and shouted ‘where?’.
4. If looking for something, do they have all the sense of a concussed duckling when looking for it? My daughter lost me at a local gym we frequent. She went looking for me on the ceiling.

If you answer “yes” to all these questions, then you too may have found yourself living in the surreal world of raising a cartoon in the real world. The good news is that, like their on-screen counterparts, your child is highly robust. The bad news is, like their on-screen counterparts, you are now living in a sitcom, there are no rules, and your child will not notice when they are actually injured (my fae tried to shake off a broken arm) but will act as though you have immersed them in lava if you try to cut their nails. 

Next up, signs you have a cartoon spouse…..