... 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.
Life with a child - now almost an adult! - with 2 spectrum disorders - autism, and auditory neuropathy.
Showing posts with label meltdown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meltdown. Show all posts
Saturday, 17 October 2015
Thursday, 10 September 2015
Six days that we never want to repeat ...
This isn't going to be a nice post.
My original plan was to write a wonderful post towards the end of last week, regaling all the fun that we had on holiday in North Wales - caravan, the Rhyl air show, climbing castle walls. But I didn't get any time last week, and haven't stopped to breathe until today.
Thursday - after the first day of term - our son came home and had a meltdown. Not a tantrum, a full-scale meltdown. Screaming, throwing things, scratching himself, banging furniture, banging doors.
Fine you may think - many autistic children do this, even the most placid ones. However this meltdown has lasted from Thursday afternoon until Wednesday morning, even through the nights, and he is still only calming down, not out of it completely. Six days from hell that we never want to go through again.
Was it school? We doubt it, he loves school, has no problem with transitions, and in fact school reported that he wasn't misbehaving terribly. Nothing had changed at home - no food changes, no clothing changes (he still fitted last summer's uniform), no environmental changes.
By Sunday, with no let-up, no sleep, and worried about the self-harm, we took him to the GP. We were hoping that our son had an infection, some reason for being completely out of character. The GP found nothing, but prescribed penicillin in case of an underlying virus; and asked us to monitor for any improvement. There was none. On Tuesday, we took our son into A&E. Now, we're not hypochondriac parents, we hate medical intervention - but something was distressing our son to this extent. We had a fantastic doctor, he ran all the tests under the sun, but ultimately found nothing. It eased our minds to know that various illnesses had been ruled out, but we - and the doctor - were left puzzled.
On Wednesday, we let our son return to school, warning them of his behaviour. (That's not as unfair as it sounds, he attends an ASD school so they are trained in handling challenging behaviour.) And whilst he was at school, we repaired the chest of drawers and spun it round so it faced the wall. We removed all hard toys from his bedroom, and provided only soft toys. We added a foam pad to the back of the door where he was hitting it. The replacement of the curtain rail will have to wait, a blackout blind will suffice.And we started breathing again.
Today, he is calmer. There are still short bursts of distress, but nothing compared to hitting the door 40 times repeatedly with clenched fists whilst screaming unintelligibly. Short bursts we can cope with.Hopefully we are on the other side of this horrific episode. But without knowing the cause, how do we stop it happening again?
My original plan was to write a wonderful post towards the end of last week, regaling all the fun that we had on holiday in North Wales - caravan, the Rhyl air show, climbing castle walls. But I didn't get any time last week, and haven't stopped to breathe until today.
Thursday - after the first day of term - our son came home and had a meltdown. Not a tantrum, a full-scale meltdown. Screaming, throwing things, scratching himself, banging furniture, banging doors.
Fine you may think - many autistic children do this, even the most placid ones. However this meltdown has lasted from Thursday afternoon until Wednesday morning, even through the nights, and he is still only calming down, not out of it completely. Six days from hell that we never want to go through again.
Was it school? We doubt it, he loves school, has no problem with transitions, and in fact school reported that he wasn't misbehaving terribly. Nothing had changed at home - no food changes, no clothing changes (he still fitted last summer's uniform), no environmental changes.
By Sunday, with no let-up, no sleep, and worried about the self-harm, we took him to the GP. We were hoping that our son had an infection, some reason for being completely out of character. The GP found nothing, but prescribed penicillin in case of an underlying virus; and asked us to monitor for any improvement. There was none. On Tuesday, we took our son into A&E. Now, we're not hypochondriac parents, we hate medical intervention - but something was distressing our son to this extent. We had a fantastic doctor, he ran all the tests under the sun, but ultimately found nothing. It eased our minds to know that various illnesses had been ruled out, but we - and the doctor - were left puzzled.
On Wednesday, we let our son return to school, warning them of his behaviour. (That's not as unfair as it sounds, he attends an ASD school so they are trained in handling challenging behaviour.) And whilst he was at school, we repaired the chest of drawers and spun it round so it faced the wall. We removed all hard toys from his bedroom, and provided only soft toys. We added a foam pad to the back of the door where he was hitting it. The replacement of the curtain rail will have to wait, a blackout blind will suffice.And we started breathing again.
Today, he is calmer. There are still short bursts of distress, but nothing compared to hitting the door 40 times repeatedly with clenched fists whilst screaming unintelligibly. Short bursts we can cope with.Hopefully we are on the other side of this horrific episode. But without knowing the cause, how do we stop it happening again?
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