It has been one of those weeks where I have seriously
questioned how the traditional workings of my usual thought processes are
supposed to read/process/handle thought patterns on what appears to
be entirely different wave lengths. Suddenly being just a caring, patient
and sympathetic mother wanting the utmost best for her child is not enough to
equip me when I am questioning whether I even have the right degree of empathy.
I joke about brick walls but maybe its actually my mind that has just hit one
because I am suddenly frustrated that I can't understand the internal intricacies
of how my daughter's mind work beyond the most basic, superficial level.
How can you be someone's biggest advocate when you don't even understand where
they are coming from?
I have learnt how to reach her and she has so kindly let me
into her world for which I will be forever grateful but those brick walls are
still growing higher. I feel a complete stranger in her world because the
parameters are too abstract for me to comprehend at this point in time.
All of these feelings of helplessness were sparked by a very
small incident at school this week. But even though it was minor to the class
and teacher, it was not to the Dancing Queen who re-lived it for nearly 24
hours as she had mis-interpreted the severity of it all and as a result chose
to punish herself to a far greater degree than what the incident
warranted.
Maybe its only now that I am beginning to comprehend what
autism actually involves. I know that may sound stupid and ignorant, but
in those initial years I think maybe I was more caught up in dealing with the physical
side of things. Initially as a non verbal child, she was a very angry and
frustrated one and day to day life came down to surviving the constant
meltdowns and her need to run from anything that disturbed her. These
days she can talk and I have become a master of monitoring and evaluating all
environments and external stimuli as a potential trigger so life is far less
stressful on that particular front.
However I now suspect that I am still in fact still at the
bottom of that ever increasingly steep learning curve and while I somehow
managed to protect myself from comprehending the full implications of what an
autism diagnosis entails, reality is about to give me another sharp lesson.
