... I'm sorry that I haven't written for a while. (Sorry to all my blog readers too!) Life hasn't been brilliant during the last five weeks, and it has taken its toll on us.
Andrew has calmed down a great deal since the madness of early September, but he has not returned to the "happy autistic" that we once knew. We see the old Andrew sometimes; and we see the new, quick-to-anger, distressed-for-no-obvious-reason Andrew sometimes. The furniture is surviving, probably thanks to the wall and door padding in his room. Hard plastic toys are now carefully rationed, and are removed once he falls asleep so that he cannot throw them when he wakes. Family outings haven't really resumed.
School asked us to collect him one lunchtime after a particularly bad morning. I then had a mini-meltdown of my own - if a specialist ASD school were unable to cope, how on earth were we, as untrained parents, meant to know what to do? It transpired they sent him home due to his raised temperature (unsurprising after screaming all morning). My mini-meltdown has had a good outcome though - school are giving us more family support, and are trying to arrange for professional support too so that we can get a break from caring.
We are exhausted. Andrew is sleeping, but wakes 2 or 3 times each night and is difficult to re-settle. We are sleeping, but always with one ear open, listening out for him so that we can try to settle him before he gets too distressed. We need time to re-group, time to take care of our own health, so that we can take care of him better.
You wouldn't believe a small 6-year-old child cause such mayhem.
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