The month of April is best known for
the explosion of Easter Bunnies, obscene amounts of chocolate as gifts for
children and a magnificent feast to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. To
many people April is Easter, They plan, they organise, many months in advance
sometimes, Children have the time of their lives, gorging on chocolate,
receiving gifts from extended family members, but to me, April is Autism
Awareness month.
So to celebrate this, I am going to
dedicate my blog for a whole month to families who wish to share their Autism
Journey with you. Some of these people have autism themselves, some are
autistic parents to autistic children. We have teachers with autistic students
and even Bloggers who want share their journey with me, which I am very
grateful for.
Let me start by introducing myself, my name is Louisa
and I am, mummy to Kate who is 10. Kate has Autism, Learning Difficulties, Anxiety and a
Speech and Language Delay.
Kate attends a special needs school and since starting
she has really thrived and has gained a lot of confidence not only in herself
but also in the world around her. Not a lot phases me with regards to Autism nowadays
but Puberty certainly terrified me.
Knowing that my daughters body would be changing and
trying to explain that to her really worried me as I had no idea how Kate would
react to these changes. My Husband and I decided that the best people to seek
advice from would be her Paediatrician and her Teacher.
A plan was devised that both at home and school we
would speak to Kate about her body and start to prepare her for the changes
ahead. I must say Kate's teacher was an absolute super star and Kate would come
home and tell us what she had learnt.
We wanted to ensure that Kate had plenty of time to
process what she had learnt and digest it as it can be an incredibly
frightening and stressful time for a girl, especially a girl with Autism!
We first noticed that Kate’s body was changing as she
developed body odour and was developing breasts. We did worry slightly that in
a class full of boys Kate would become self-conscious of her developing figure
but to be totally honest she hasn’t even given then a second thought!
Currently we are in a bit of a head to head battle for
Kate to start wearing a crop top under her shirt or a training bra but she
finds them very restricting and we are at a stale mate. It can be a little awkward at times reminding Kate
that if she needs to get changed then she can’t just take her top off wherever
she is and that she needs to go into her bedroom which we call her private
place and undress there.
Another big change was noticing Kate getting hairy,
this bothered Kate a lot and many a time she asked why she was growing hair and
she found it a little distressing as she didn’t like it. We found that reassuring her that it was just a sign
that she was becoming a big girl like her big sister helped a lot and we found some books online about
bodies changing but they were simply glanced at and placed back in her toy box.
Kate wasn’t a fan of the books!
Along with the changes to her body we also noticed
that Kate's emotions were very erratic and her sleep was all over the place too,
and we found that just listening to Kate when she was agitated or leaving her
to calm down when she was angry and upset helped a lot.
As much as Kate loves attention and physical comfort
such as cuddles she began to resist these in the run up to Puberty and we just
went along with what she wanted until she had calmed herself down.
So we’ve dealt with boobs, body odour, mood swings and
newly acquired body hair apart from spots there was one e more thing left to
come and we hoped that it wouldn’t arrive for a good few years but at the
tender age of 10 Kates first period arrived!
The moment I had been dreading since Kate had started
developing!
No amount of reading or talking can really prepare you
or your child for their first period as you never truly know how they will
react.
Kate’s started last Monday after a particularly vile
evening with epic mood swings followed by what seemed to be buckets full of
tears. Nothing I could say or do appeared to help so I took Kate upstairs for a
bath so she could relax before bed.
Well all I can say is - Kate was DELIGHTED!
As I mentioned earlier Kate has a big sister and
obviously has seen the sanitary products we have in the bathroom for periods
and Kate had made sense of it and unbeknown to us had actually learnt how to
put a pad into her underwear herself!
The icing on the cake for Kate though was being able
to write Kate P on the calendar on the date she started just like myself and
her big sister do when ours arrive.
These last few years have been spent worrying about
how Kate would react to Puberty but we needn’t have worried as she has taken it
in her stride and just accepted it.
I couldn’t be prouder of her - she really has just
got on with it.
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