Hello All
I'm the father of Maia, an eleven year old autistic girl. We also have a younger daughter, Lily, who is 8 years old. I'm looking to reach out to parents of autistic children/teenagers in the Oxfordshire area for community and support.
Today was one of our most challenging yet. We'd taken the girls to Paris for the weekend, and Maia found it a bit much. A couple of her meltdowns I could see coming and we managed to cope with them. However, today was the worst yet. She wanted to get a coffee from Starbucks (a place with which she has a newly-developed obsession) and the line was just too long for us to get what she wanted and board the Eurostar home. Maia started acting out - screaming and swearing at us, and hyperventilating. This led to something like a panic attack and the Eurostar staff came over to help us. I thought we weren't going to be able to board the train, it was that bad. Eventually, she calmed down, but it took a while and left us all feeling exhausted and emotional. One of things I've noticed Maia has started doing when she has a meltdown is physically twitch, jerking her shoulders and grunting. This is a fairly new development and I'm not sure what to do about it.
Maia's school is very supportive, which is great, but my wife and I are starting to feel a touch isolated as we don't know many other parents with autistic children in the area. Doctors and books are all very well, but sometimes we just feel we need to share our experiences with fellow parents and find community and understanding.
Am open to advice/suggestions about how to go about this.
Many thanks
Jon
