Another New Person - Hi!

Hi everyone. I'm a new member - my 3.5 yo daughter was diagnosed with autism in November. I live with her, my husband / her dad, and our cat. We haven't yet received any actual support / services since the diagnosis - in fact, we haven't had the diagnosis in writing yet.

It's been a pretty rough year; I went back to work in March, she started daycare, everything was quite hectic. She has a speech delay (and has had therapy for over a year now) and this summer was the perfect culmination of her being too big and too toddler to be forced, and not able to communicate what she wanted. Throw in the extra stress of work / daycare / etc and it was all a bit much.

I'm pleased to say she's made excellent progress since then, we've all got ourselves into a workable routine, and things are a lot better. But there's still room for improvement - neither of us have family nearby, nor close friends who are experienced enough with kids / autism to manage her alone for any length of time, so we really have no breaks from parenting other than the odd hour at the end of each day when she's in bed.

We're also at that time where we're looking at schools; as she's been diagnosed so recently she doesn't have an EHCP yet, so we're sort of in limbo as to whether we can apply for special placements or not. We have a plan for navigating that, but it's all a bit stressful.

The good news is that my work is wonderfully understanding and supportive, so that's one less thing to worry about!