Friday 7th September – caterpillars and water pinball

The funny thing about having an autistic child (and by this I don’t mean “funny haha” or “funny weird”, it’s more “funny baffling”) is that no two days are the same. None. I’ve been doing these daily posts since March and yes, every day is different, every day is unpredictable. There are the constants with routine naturally but it’s the bits in-between that are so varied.

After yesterday’s lets-run-through-all-the-emotions, a better day was definitely needed. The majority of yesterday’s upsets were caused by one change to routine at school so I printed off a copy of a clock showing the time I would be there to collect D in class and ran through it with her this morning.

She held on to it in her SN buggy all the way to both T’s and her school, bless her. We also took the very large, very wriggly caterpillars in to show her class. They are very near to pupation and as all D’s classmates are boys, I thought they’d be interested. D said she was going to make sure nobody shook the jaw…well done D!

We had to wait for a TA to collect her from reception and off she went very happily, still clutching her piece of paper.

No Early Bird calls today (surprise, it’s only been two days since someone was going to call me back) but I did have a chat with the SENco at T’s school, we’re meeting next week after she’s had some preliminary discussions with staff and, should we all feel that the diagnostic process is an option, then it can be pursued through school rather than a GP (the paediatrician who diagnosed D has left the area and all her (GP’s) patients are sort of in limbo, picked up as and when by an already busy department, which goes part way to explaining why our clinic appointment is 11 months after referral).

D was a completely different girl to the one I collected yesterday, happy and smiling. She said she’d used her piece of paper with the clock on *result* and we collected the caterpillars. One has started the pupation process!

So it was a happy walk/buggy journey home journey and a jump into the pool for all of us! We had lots of fun all sitting on inflatable rings, letting them float into each other – sort of water pinball! There were a couple of stroppy non-sharing moments from both of them, but it was generally good-natured. Hoping for more of the same tomorrow before D and I head off to Taplow for a birthday party tomorrow afternoon (more buggy-lugging!)

So a 👍 (thumbs up) from us, how about everyone else?

Comments/RTs as ever welcomed, thanks for reading Jx 😘