General Catch Up

As is usual when I’ve not updated the blog for awhile, I’m just going to ramble in a general way to get everything updated.

So, Meggy’s been at school for nearly 6 weeks now. Just to refresh your collective memories she’s in a mainstream school with full time 1-to-1 support.

It started very brightly indeed. She loves going to school, of that there’s no doubt. As soon as you get her school uniform out her face lights up and she tries to get you to hurry the whole dressing/hair brushing process along as quickly as possible.

The first two weeks went brilliantly, she settled and met all her IEP targets. However, towards the end of week 2 we were growing a little concerned that the school weren’t ‘cracking down’ on her. That sounds awful but let me explain.

A lot of people with autism really need the structure of a rigid system of rules. It makes them feel much happier and settled. Without it, behaviour and comfort can both degenerate. Therefore we always try and let Meggy know that there are strict rules in place and she knows that Naomi and I are the ‘law-enforcers’. This isn’t to say we’re overly strict but the structure is there and is adhered to.

Anyway, weeks 3 and 4 confirmed our fears. Megans behaviour first at school, then later (and to a much lesser extent) at home started to degenrate. She pinched, scratched and hit her support worker and started on us, particularly me. Her sleep also became badly affected again at this time.

Now, we have a number of factors all coming into play here. Firstly we have the fact that Megan is in an entirely new environment, secondly we have the fact that she’s growing up and we have also have the fact that the rules in this new environment aren’t being rigorously enforced. As a behavioural specialist we spoke to (who is autistic himself) said, each new environment for an autistic person requires a new persona – how many times have you heard it said “He’s like a different person at school/work/wherever!”? Well, for autistic people thats literaly true.

We had a meeting with the school a week ago where we explained that Megan needs the rules and needs to know who the ‘rule enforcer’ is at all times and since then they have started to give her less leeway. The were only acting in what they thought was Megans best interests by cutting her some slack at first so this isn’t an issue of blame, rather lack of knowledge.

Megans behaviour has marginally improved over the last fortnight (you must remember to amply reward the good behaviour and even the abscence of bad behaviour “Well done for not having a tantrum! Good behaviour!”) but it will take some time before she’s comfortable and accepts the rules. The continued scratching is her ‘pushing the boundries’ to see if the rules will definitely be applied – remember she’s hoping that they will, she needs that reassurance.

We’re also tweaking her Homeopathy and its beginning slowly but surely to work. Her sleep pattern is still disrupted but better than last week.

We (well, her Nan at our asking) got her a large outside trampoline for her to bounce on when she gets home. I thoroughly recommend this to the parent of any autistic child!

In other news we’ve started giving her increased amounts of Vitamin B as it is apparently beneficial to people with autism. This is quite a new thing so we’re unsure as to its impact just yet….