I decided to post these journal entries to see if any other parents can relate or other's on the spectrum can at least assure me I'm not imagining that this is not 'neurotypical' behaviour. Some of these entries are brief, others more in depth and of course I couldn't type up every little sensory issue/problem, odd behaviour as it happened because I'd have been glued to the pc so I tried to stick with the bigger issues. I have video footage of some of the incidents as I've been filming her to show the doctors so ignore any reference to videos.
Friday 29th June
8.15am - Getting dressed for own clothes day at school she gets upset because the skirt she wanted to wear to complete her Draculaura outfit (monster high obsession) is in the wash. She then becomes more and more upset as she continued getting dressed...her vest was annoying her, she didn't have the right shoes (she wanted shoes to match the outfit but none were 'right'). Eventually on the verge of tears because it was "all too much", when asked to elaborate she said it was too much and she still needed to put her socks and shoes on and do her hair and loads of other stuff and it was all too much.
8.25am - Nail cutting...managed to cut 7 nails but her skin got pinched on the 8th nail. She yelled in pain and refused to have them cut any further. Pulled her hand away and made her upset noise whenever we tried to go near her. Ranted about no longer wanting the nail clippers that she wanted the nail file again like when she was little, that she was scared of having her nails done now. Eventually stormed off to her bedroom, slammed the door and was making her angry noise.
noon - We go into school for the family picnic event, husband wonders if it's normal for a 7 year old to want to run around the playground with her favourite teddy as her peers don't carry teddy's around anymore and she takes hers everywhere.
3.30pm - Wanted to play with her monster high dolls as usual she directed what I would make the dolls say(i.e pretend draculaura asked clawd to buy her a present..I then have to repeat it word for word or she gets annoyed). The game storyline was her day at school, so acting out what had happened that afternoon in school. This included splitting the dolls carefully into groups according to which activity they would be doing (including making lists of who was in what group who would be the teacher, the teacher's names etc). Then they had an assembly wherin certificates were handed out as is done in school.
4.45pm - Tea time, mildly annoyed about having to stop playing, ate very quickly so she could get back to her dolls. Became annoyed because I hadn't finished eating and she wanted me to go play too.
6pm - Toilet, spent 20 minutes trying to pass a hard stool (she has a chronic bowel problem). I then had to wipe her because she was too scared to do it herself becuase it hurt.
6.20pm - Shower, after alot of complaining finally got her in the shower, she did not want the light on because the noise of the extractor fan is "too loud" and hurts her head.
6.30pm - Says goodbye to daddy(who goes off to aikido without her), she goes to her bedroom to wind down before bed by watching some TV.
8pm - Got very upset and refused to go to sleep because daddy was not home to say goodnight and put her cream on (her routine is brush teeth, put lavender cream on, hugs, kisses, goodnights). I took her to brush her teeth but grabbed the wrong toothpaste(because we can't have the light/fan on) so put the strawberry flavour one on instead of mint which really annoyed her, she told me I had done it wrong, she removed the strawberry and got the mint out and put it on herself before brushing her teeth. She wanted to sit on my lap whilst brushing because that's what she normally does with daddy.
8.41pm - Found out the reason she didn't want to go to aikido tonight was because she's never in daddy's group anymore and she wants to be in his group.
9.22pm - After several times getting up she is on the verge of "losing control and is getting very upset"(her words). After much talking we discover it's because her routine has been changed, she missed daddy whilst he was out, everything was different and we had also forgot to put her cream on.
Saturday 30th june 2012
7.30am - Climbs on me in bed and shoves me to get up because she wants to play with me, she didn't want daddy to get up, gets annoyed when I say we have to have breakfast first.
8am - Watches a documentary 5 times in a row, would not eat her usual cereal becuase she no longer likes the feel or taste of that one anymore (after eating no other cereal for months).
9am - started playing, we did the number game her teacher had given us to help her with her maths. Then after that she took over the role of teacher, using her whiteboard to teach her teddies how to do sums. Became confused over the sums and flipped out when I explained that she had forgotten to add part of her sum up. She became increasingly agitated, hitting her pillow, hitting her whiteboard, throwing the whiteboard pen before throwing herself on the floor and making her grumpy noise. After alot of talking and calming down we came up with a strategy for school when she gets this angry and upset, she can't think straight and needs to calm down or can't do her work. We came up with the phrase 'crazy doctor' for her to say to the teacher so that the teacher understands she needs to go somewhere quiet to calm down (and I would need to explain to the teacher what that meant) she became much happier after that.
Noon - Wants to go to her school fete with just daddy, does not want to wait for me to finish getting ready and walk the dog. Her reasoning was that daddy said they could get there for when it opened so they MUST leave NOW to get there first.
2pm - Fixates on a specific teddy on the toy tombola, has several goes to try and win it but doesn't. Gets upset and lays face down on her bed when we get home, crying because she really wanted that bear (her other obsession is teddy bears).
3.30pm - Gets dizzy(her word for overwhelmed) in the supermarket because of the nosie and chatter. She has to go to the cafe with daddy to calm down, gets stressed because her usual slushie drink is not available.
Sunday 1st July 2012
8.40am - Got dizzy(overhwelmed) and had a headache as a result of the car making a beeping noise when daddy got out and left the door open whilst he ran in the house to get a cd.
4pm - Got upset over her michael jackson dance game and wanted to stop because according to her I was much better at it then her and that made her have no confidence. She then ranted about never wanting to play it ever again because she was no good at it (proceeded to call herself allsorts of names, despite me telling her she was anything but stupid, a bad dancer etc). We then played with her monster high dolls, the 'mean' dolls were very violent towards the other dolls, hitting them (she uses alot of force to do this, she's hurt my hand a few times from whacking one doll against the other so hard). It seems rather unusual and with very little provocation, so example ...Cleo's team win the fearleading competition(as per her instructions/mimicking the episode) and Nefera retaliates by calling them all names and then violently kicking Cleo's head over and over again..at one point I thought she'd broken the doll. When asked why she does this she shrugs and says the dolls are mean so that's why they hit the other dolls.
5.13pm - We lay on the floor and look out of her window cloud spotting (pointing out shapes in the clouds), then we start saying silly things and tickling and just giggling etc. She then gets over excited and tries to put her foot near my face and tells me to "sniff it, it's stinky", I tell her not to do that. She tries again and accidentally slams her foot down on my stomache and I cry out in pain and tell her not to do that it hurt. She laughs holds one of my amrs down and slams her foot hard down on my chest(whilst we're both still laying on the floor). I sit up and tell her off again, she just blankly stares at me and starts to chew on her thumb, something I've noticed she's been doing the past few weeks when stressed, excited or extremely relaxed/zoned out.
6pm - got very upset and angry over her homework, which I think is due to it being uninteresting and she misunderstood alot of the questions. She became increasingly angry and stressed, ranting about how the homework was stupid and boring, she then ran off to her bedroom, threw pillows about, hit her bed and was making angry noises(see video).
6.20pm - got angry because daddy told her to get in the bath but she wanted to wait for me (I'd promised we'd play with her toys in the bath because she hates baths but agreed to have one if we had toys) but I was on the phone at the time. She became very agitated and stormed off to her room, again I found her face down on her bed, seething and of course daddy was now in her bad books and she didn't want him anywhere near her. Calmed down and cheered up during her bath and went to bed without any problems.
Monday 2nd July
5pm - Became upset and angy over homework again(see video), stormed off, slammed door, raged, hit/kicked her bed
6pm - Played silly games, then she became angry when I said it was time to stop and she needed to get ready for bed (see video).
Wednesday 4th July
noon - Playing 'war' at lunchtime play with her friends when Girl A suggests my daughter uses her cardigan as a sword. So she starts swinging her cardigan around above her head and races to save Boy A. Unbeknown to her she had accientally hit Boy B in the head with her cardigan as she swung it. Boy C went to tell the dinner lady as Boy B was now crying, dinner lady came over and told them all off (apparently she had said "how dare you hit someone, apologise now"). Of course my daughter had no idea what she was talking about, tried to explain that she'd done nothing wrong the dinner lady told her off and said she didn't want to hear excuses and to just apologise. She apologises but is furious because from her perspective she has done nothing wrong but is being forced to apologise, so she storms off as she is very angry and needs to be alone. She has allsorts of thoughts racing through her mind and settles on the whole thing being Girl A's fault because she was the one who suggested the cardigan/sword idea. So she is extremely angry with her friend and doesn't want her anywhere near her, of course Girl A and another girl Girl B are completely unphased by being told off and come over to engage in conversation. My daughter is still in a furious temper and she ends up arguing with Girl A, who then tells her she is being mean and saying hurtful things and "does she not care about other people or something" this makes my daughter even angrier and she refuses to speak to Girl A anymore.
This was all relayed to me and it took me a while to get her to understand that nobody was at fault, someone accidentally got hurt, nobody was to blame. Also that the two girls were not purposefully trying to annoy her by coming over to her when she was upset, they were probably just concerned about her. We came up with the idea of her telling her friends she's angry and upset and just needs a few minutes to calm down so that hopefully she can avoid future arguements and hurtful verbally abusive outbursts.
8.30pm - We let her stay up a little later so she could help feed the snakes, wasn't interested at all and sat down on the sofa and watched america's got talent. Became really annoyed when I turned the TV off and said it was time for bed, she became quite stressed insisting she needed to see the end, she HAD to know who was the winner and why they picked one man over another. So I said we could look online the next day for the video of that episode, that calmed her down a bit.
10 minutes later she started to act 'hyper' on the way to her bedroom, laughing and pulling on my arms, then hit my breasts and shouted "boobies". It hurt quite a lot so I told her not to do that, that it hurt and wasn't a nice thing to do. She continued laughing and less then a minute later hit me again but with much more force behind, this time I cried out in pain because it hurt so much...she laughed hysterically, so I told her off and told her to get to her room and go to bed.
Saturday 7th July
Noon - Became increasingly annoyed because she wanted daddy to sit in her bedroom with her to have lunch, when we suggested she sit with us she refused and stated we were being unfair on her.
1.45pm Was very upset & annoyed by her trousers & trainers, insisted on wearing shorts and sandals despite the heavy rain. Became non-verbal, miming what the problem was when asked why she would not wear appropriate clothing. Finally talked her into wearing trousers, tried on every pair she has with the same outburst oh it being "annoying" and upsetting her on various levels. Some felt too tight, some irritated her bum, others just felt "wrong". Ended up wearing shorts with trainers because she was becoming increasingly upset at the idea of wearing trousers.
2pm - Bursts into tears stating that everyone is being mean to her and upsetting her (because we were encouraging her to wear trousers to stop her legs getting wet in the rain). Husband has to carry her around for the next few hours at the shops.
