Sea Shells – Mon 25th Jan 2016
By Jeannette | January 25, 2016
I’ve felt a bit guilty today. Scrub that, more than a bit.
D’s class are doing a topic tomorrow, that of all things connected with going on holiday to a beach.
We’ve never been as a family with D. We did before she was born.
When you have an autistic child, a child that has immense stranger anxieties and a tendency to get overwhelmed by sensory issues and therefore get a “bit noisy” on public transport (I don’t drive), busy touristy-packed places are avoided.
It doesn’t mean she’s never splashed in water and had tons of fun or made sand castles, or got sand everywhere. Of course we have. Every summer holiday was spent in our back garden, either whisking wet sand or pouring it between sand and water tables, or watching as we had an “ice age” melting in the sun with dinosaurs, pebbles and glitter emerging from (plastic carton made) ice blocks.
Child minding at home meant that we were busiest during the summer holidays, the garden (feeling like) full of bouncing, happy children, enjoying the decent weather.
Now that’s all stopped. My choice. The youngest started school and I stopped advertising, didn’t renew my licence. I wanted our house back.
Maybe this year we’ll get to the beach. D is now mature enough to appreciate that we can’t just click our fingers and we’re on a beach, that any journey would involve a walk, a bus and then probably two trains and then doing it all again to come home.
In the meantime, D’s got her seashell necklace and little trinket box to take in tomorrow. She loves shells. One day she’ll collect them for real on a wonderfully sandy beach. Definitely.
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