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Low mood and stressed

ParentingAutism

Hi again, I'm so sorry for bothering again. Myself and school have noticed slight changes in my daughter's mood. She seems to be quite low in school, and is no longer smiling and seems disengaged with the world around her and seems deep in thought. She is doing things at a slower pace than normal, for example walking with her head down, completing tasks and seems to have no motivation. 

She is getting stressed about the smallest things that she usually wouldn't. For example, she just had a complete meltdown about her dinner, her sister made. It was pizza, noodles and sweetcorn. She's now not eating again because she did so many things wrong to the dinner. She doesn't like sweetcorn hot, the noodles were touching the pizza so the pizza was soggy. It even wasn't on a big plate, it was on a small plate. I understand why she's upset but she's never been this upset. 

She's also starting to refuse to go to school and get out her bed because 'she can't be bothered'. She's low and seems stressed. We are also having an extension done soon which probably isn't helping. We are currently ripping up the carpet and floor boards so it's noisy which won't help. What can I do to help her. We have so many issues going on right now... 

Thanks. Sorry for bothering you x

Parents

  • This isn't autism-specific but we have found the Hand in Hand parenting tools really helpful with our kids (the older of whom is definitely highly sensitive and may be on the spectrum but we haven't gone down that route yet as she seems OK "enough" at the moment). There is a UK instructor who has at least one child with autism who has found the tools really helpful. https://www.handinhandparenting.org/instructor/emilie-leeks/ There are also lots of other articles on the website that may be worth a look (I think after you've looked at a few articles you need to set up a free login. There are also paid courses etc available through the site and trained instructors.)

    All that said, it sounds like your daughter is really struggling with overwhelm. What are things she finds calming/regulating? One of the Hand in Hand tools is something called special time, where you give your child a definined amount of time (we do 10 minutes a day) where we let them take the lead as completely as we can, and delight in them. If you have the emotional resources yourself, I would start trying to build in some specific activities which might help her regulate and some special time. The other thing I've learned from Hand in Hand is that meltdowns aren't necessarily bad in themselves - they're our kids' nervous systems getting rid of all the yuckiness that they've accumulated. Obviously a kid with autism accumulates more stress than a NT kid would at school etc so it's not necessarily completely surprising that she's needing to meltdown. But if we were brought up in ways that didn't tolerate meltdowns then that can be really hard for us to hold space for their feelings and be OK listening to all that!

    Is the school able to offer support?

    I'm sorry your beloved daughter is struggling so much. It sounds really hard, and I hope you are able to find some tools & resources to help.

Reply

  • This isn't autism-specific but we have found the Hand in Hand parenting tools really helpful with our kids (the older of whom is definitely highly sensitive and may be on the spectrum but we haven't gone down that route yet as she seems OK "enough" at the moment). There is a UK instructor who has at least one child with autism who has found the tools really helpful. https://www.handinhandparenting.org/instructor/emilie-leeks/ There are also lots of other articles on the website that may be worth a look (I think after you've looked at a few articles you need to set up a free login. There are also paid courses etc available through the site and trained instructors.)

    All that said, it sounds like your daughter is really struggling with overwhelm. What are things she finds calming/regulating? One of the Hand in Hand tools is something called special time, where you give your child a definined amount of time (we do 10 minutes a day) where we let them take the lead as completely as we can, and delight in them. If you have the emotional resources yourself, I would start trying to build in some specific activities which might help her regulate and some special time. The other thing I've learned from Hand in Hand is that meltdowns aren't necessarily bad in themselves - they're our kids' nervous systems getting rid of all the yuckiness that they've accumulated. Obviously a kid with autism accumulates more stress than a NT kid would at school etc so it's not necessarily completely surprising that she's needing to meltdown. But if we were brought up in ways that didn't tolerate meltdowns then that can be really hard for us to hold space for their feelings and be OK listening to all that!

    Is the school able to offer support?

    I'm sorry your beloved daughter is struggling so much. It sounds really hard, and I hope you are able to find some tools & resources to help.

Children
  • in reply to WeaverBird

    Thank you, this is helpful. The school does help her understand her autism and give her some of her favourite things to do, like word searches when she's feeling it. She does like to do cycling in her free time, getting ready for races but she's been very where round us and is getting bored of it so hopefully going to find some new routes.