AND I CANNOT GET BACK TO SLEEP!
WHY?
This time it is not daughter number 6( who is profoundly autistic, she is sleeping like a baby!), it is not daughter number 3 (who is somewhere on the spectrum and woke me at 5am yesterday!) BUT daughter number 5 (who is also on the spectrum and lives on the planet Fiona!).
I awoke to to find her asking me could she cook pasta! I blame all night TV, she is watching a house makeover show! When I was growing up there was no all night TV and only at the weekends did we have late night films. Fiona like SnoWhite(21 year old sister) is somewhere on planet autism.
I have read a lot about autism(hasn't every parent of a child on the spectrum?) and there seems to be approximately 4 boys who are on the spectrum to every girl but that is just a statistic and obviously varies from area to area. I was quite surprised to read recently that in Utah in the USA the ratio for girls being on the spectrum is higher(I wish I had noted the article) and this was being discussed on someones blog in the light of Utah's polygamist history(possible reduced gene pool) and the possibility of autism being a genetic thing.
I have also read that autism is a male-brain thing.........you cannot comprehend(unless you have been there!) what it is like to be in a household where 3 girls, with three sets of female hormones rushing around and on the spectrum, can possibly be like. Fiona and SnoWhite are like a pair of feral cats when they set to each other, fights between them are infamous!Yet it is usually not a physical thing, they have the same nasty habit of giving one punch and then running like a squealing rodent. When the civil partnership laws came in in the UK I read what one gay man said, 'if you thought divorce was bad before then you have no idea what it will be like when two gay men separate', yep,I can imagine that the fur would fly.
Autism in our house is definitely not a totally male-brain thing. I have seriously hurt my wrist on one occasion holding one of them back. AND don't forget my autistic tendencies too.........but I am more the type who likes no noise, everything in it's place and just a quiet life really and there is nothing wrong with that.
4 comments:
Obviously I can't imagine what it's like to cope with autistic children but I can sympathize with being woken up far too early in the morning... my 5 year old used to make a habit of waking us up most mornings at 5am so he could watch Cartoon Network. I remember the sandy eyed feeling of not-enough-sleep well. Thankfully he has at last started to get the hang of telling the time and - miracle of miracle - is not getting up to 7 o'clock. It feels like a humungous lie-in by comparison!
Oooo your site is all er.....completely different, a 'make over' no less. Very fetching.
I more than sympathize with the waking early in the morning to pursue somebody with a mission to do something.
I have a pal out here, here son is nearly 7 - they've not slept through the night since he was born as he's 'up' several times a night - can you imagine!
Luckily is usually just an extended 'phase' for mine, not so luckily it tends to be sequential - if only they could be be nocturnal at the same time! No consideration for frazzled parent.
I have a lock on my telly cabinet which of course solves everything - find child at 3 in the morning hammering on the cupboard and screaming - much more peaceful.
As for the female hormones, gosh you are in a rare position. I know 4 women each with one autistic [younger] girl.
I only wish there were more data for your special club - the minority in the minority = what it must be to be so exclusive.
Best wishes as always
Just in thinking quickly about the number of families I am in contact with who have an autistic child, which is about a dozen, 3 of them have an autistic daughter. Two of those families have more than one autistic son.
Most of my child-rearing experience is with raising boys (3, none of whom have yet reached puberty, 1 of whom is autistic). Yet, from the 15 months I have raised a daughter, I can already see that it will be easier to deal with the male emotions than the female emotions . I cannot imagine how intense female emotions(hormones) + characteristics from the spectrum must be!
Cheers!
My sister's son is mildly autistic, I was showing her your blog site and a picture of Beauty, it's strange but she and my nephew could be related. My nephew is highly intelligent, but because he can't communicate properly with people (due to numerous ear infections as a child) his peers treat him like he is mentally handicapped. He is 12 years old now, and although capable of doing school work, his social skills are typical of autism.
My sister thinks it's caused by getting his immunizations as an infant, she thinks she should have waited till he was a year or two old to start them.
Anyway, I like popping over to your blog, your life is pretty interesting, and you tell stories well.
Cheers!
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