I wish I didn’t listen to my peadiatrican…

I was sitting with my 2-year-old angel boy in my paediatrician’s office and I remember him telling me clear as day that it was super important for my son’s development that he go to daycare.  That he needed to socialise and be part of the group plan.  That this was the way he was going to learn social skills.  By going to daycare, he would observe other children’s social skills and mimic them.

In my mind I was grateful because someone was ‘letting me off the hook’.  As terrible as that sounds, I was getting permission to take my angel boy to daycare 3 days a week which meant I could just look after my typical baby girl, and we could go shopping and I could get some downtime.

Little did I realise that I was causing so much more harm that good.

I don’t know if you’ve stepped into a daycare recently, but the sensory overload is on steroids.  Kids are screaming at the top of their lungs.  Educators are doing their best to keep the peace and find their way through the day, and there are more people in fight, flight or freeze in that setting than we care to think about.

Every day that it was a daycare day, my angel boy would fight me every step of the way.  He didn’t want to leave the house.  He didn’t want to get in the car and he sure as heck didn’t want to go into that daycare.

With my uneducated brain, I couldn’t work out why he didn’t want to go in.  Was he that attached to me?  Was someone being mean to him?  Did he not like the food?  Nooooo!!  I held onto those days so tightly because I just needed some rest myself.  Someone else to take the wheel and drive whilst I could, for those few hours, feel like I had some sanity back in my life.

What my beautiful non-speaking autistic child was trying to tell me was that his nervous system was on fire every time he stepped foot into that place.

Now as a typical person, going into his daycare room, it was noisy and even I had a hard time trying to communicate with teachers, but for my angel boy it was like he was in a nightclub for those hours with the music blaring constantly.  He couldn’t think, he couldn’t breathe he couldn’t function.  Trying to stick with the ‘group plan’ what out of the question – he was just trying to survive.

Back then I had no clue was sensory overload was.  I was barely keeping up to date with what autism was, not to mention how overwhelmed with grief and uncertainty I felt.  I, myself was barely surviving.

So, what I want you take with a grain of salt from this blog is this…listen to what your GP’s, paediatrician, and therapists are saying.  Hear them fully.  But and there is a big but here….. you know your child best.  Better than any of the professionals out there.  They don’t live with your child, you do, so when your child is expressing behaviour that doesn’t seem to match with what you’re doing believe them.  Believe them when they’re showing you that they feel overwhelmed even if you don’t.  Their body language is showing you so much more than you think.

My angel boy couldn’t learn social skills or communication in that setting because there was too much going on.  He was too overwhelmed in that setting.  How can anyone learn anything when they are in a state of overwhelm?    Very hard to do so.

Don’t try to force the situation.  They will learn in their time and when they’re ready.

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