Back when Lela started out in her career, she was a nanny. Now anybody who has worked in childcare knows it’s not just the children you look after, but you are also instrumental in supporting the parents and often their mental health. After leaving those jobs (because the children were rude enough to grow up), Lela would still periodically go back and help those parents clear house and clear life. Clearing out all the unnecessary clutter from their lives, old clothes and unused possessions, toxic friends and relationships and being that impartial ear so many of us need but don’t always have. I guess ‘normal people’ would call it life coaching, we call it life laundry.
Our life has become very muddied the last few years. We have got bogged down in the fights that getting a diagnosis for our children takes, the shame from the meltdowns and non neurotypical behaviours, the hiding away from the world through risk of judgement, the masses of junk from shopping of unnecessary toys, games and house stuff from the amazingly cheap shops that just popped up overnight. It was time to do something. As with a lot of people, lockdown showed us something needed to change. We were stuck inside amongst our mountains of clutter we could do nothing with, our children who were struggling with the everyday demands of life and boundless amounts of energy with nowhere to aim it at and an outdated outlook on life that no longer fit the children we were parenting or the life we were leading.
We could do nothing about the mountains of clutter, other than beat it back with a stick, during lockdown but we could change our attitude, so that’s what we started with.
We got the children into a routine, which although we knew was desperately important to autistic children we hadn’t done yet. The honest reason for this…is a difficult one.
Samantha has had a diagnosis for a year but hides it very well, and due to her anxiety most of the time does not come across as what you would expect of a ‘typical’ autistic person (please do not take offence here I am trying my best to explain my thinking) but more a stroppy teen (this is a coping mechanism), so we almost ‘forgot’ she was autistic. Riley has been diagnosed for a few months (at the point of lockdown he had been diagnosed for a matter of weeks). We knew the children had autism but we didn’t really know what that meant or what we were meant to do with that information. Honestly it takes a serious adjustment period even if you are expecting it (*a diagnosis) especially when reality hits that you are now raising two children with autism and every expectation you had before children is now blown out of the water.
During lockdown with all the stresses of school and conformity removed the children were allowed to truly be themselves and they thrived. We implemented a flexible routine into the house. Flexible so they can still adjust to changes that everyday life will throw at them but so they knew what to expect and most importantly we changed our expectations of them. We no longer expected them to act like neurotypical children, we understand they are going to get thoroughly distracted when set a task and will need additional guidance, we understand they are not working to their chronological ages and therefore have adjusted our expectations of them. We have more patience because they are not (most of the time) doing these things to purposely annoy us, sometimes yes they are after all they are children and they are held accountable, but we have learnt to stop and assess the situation first. Calmer parents, calmer kids, calmer house, most of the time. Sometimes there is really just no stopping the chaos, no matter how calm you are.
Next up was to sort the clutter. We had a Range, B&M and Home Bargains open in our town in very short succession and we got a little bargain crazy. It was cheap, we had to have it, and very quickly the house became over capacity. We have now reigned in our spending and are trying to only buy something if we need it. We also made the decision to cut back on Christmas and really think about each purchase as our ability to pass on a bargain was proving impossible. On past Christmas’ we were opening presents for days and the children were too overwhelmed as were we. However we were still left with the over capacity problem.
Before 
Lost and Found 
After 
To go!
OK two birds one stone. Our local LGBTQ+ charity has been raising funds at a market, so we had a massive clear out and donated it to them for their stall. Hopefully it will help them raise some much needed funding as they are currently getting no help from our local council and they almost had to fold recently which would be devastating for the community.
We aren’t quite there yet but we are getting there. We need to clear the house, we need to make it more autism friendly and we need to do it for the adults mental health. Clear house, clear mind.
So we had the children and a clearer house on track, there was one thing left to tackle (well there are many things left to tackle but we are only human)…getting out there.
We are trying to be brave but it has been hard. We stopped going out after several bad experiences. The children began to have very public meltdowns and we were unsure how to keep them safe. Their behaviours were becoming more extreme and we didn’t want to ‘inconvenience’ others with it. We were openly berated by people, they actually came up to me and told me what a bad parent I was and how I was doing everything wrong. When I was out in my wheelchair on day trips (to several UK theme parks), I was treated like a second class citizen and have never felt so embarrassed and disabled in my life. I think that was the last straw. We lost our confidence and our will to try and engage with the outside world anymore and shrank into a solitary existence. It was during lockdown when we decided enough was enough, we will not let others’ judgement dictate and rule our life. So, we are taking a deep breath, putting our big girl/boy panties on and getting out there. We have dipped our toe in by going on a day trip to Kilve beach (blog review to follow) and we have started taking the children once a week to our local playbarn after school to run off some of their endless amounts of energy, which in turn is having a positive effect on their behaviour.
One of the sayings/mantras we have as a family that gets us through is, ‘We’ve got this’ and we do, we’ve got this. We will make a more positive life for those babies and ourselves and maybe we’ll even have a little fun on the way.
