January was a tough month in the household.

The family moving in together after six months apart was taxing for all.
Jenna’s three siblings found life difficult to adjust to 24/7 Jenna. In turn, Jenna was far more accustomed to 1:1 time and her space and schedule.

Fireworks, explosive, nasty, vicious, aggressive are just some ways to explain the last four weeks.  Although afternoons as been shared walking in the fresh ocean breezes, lovely evening swims in the bay, and Netflix amidst cold airconditioning, these are just minutes in an incredibly difficult day, weeks and month.

Having the family back has been wonderful for me, and having the four kids and my wife around has brought much excitement and fulfilment; Although it’s been a stretch these past few weeks to extract a positive message from a painfully disastrous day.

The pleasant sea change life that was dreamed off currently looks like a catastrophic disaster and an ill-informed life choice, that in hindsight we would have run from extremely fast.

The ‘we verse them’ mentality in our household (that is autism verse the universe) is at the end stages of the war, and the participants are grumpy, angry and extremely fatigued.

Our castle that we hold so dearly to be the safe place and a place to explore feelings, learning and test out theories and experiments, is far from that. We have bunkered down, and we are in defensive mode and don’t have the strength to push, teach and explore.

The January 2017 My ASD Princess blog is far from joyful and reporting on learnings. We haven’t even been maintaining a constant sameness. There’s sadly been the regression.

We have seen language/speech deterioration, now needed to work with Jenna on her diction, the speed of her speech and to work on not mumbling her words.

We have seen sleep patterns go out of wack and a dramatic increase in her anxiety.

Her physical ailments (common signs of increased anxiety for Jenna) are a daily addition to the comedy that is our lives currently. Her stomach, legs, head and eyes are amongst body parts that are broken this month.

These demands have then increased the need to provide support and care for Jenna, thus increasing the frustration and anger towards her from her siblings.

Moving to a regional city near the beach was the dream, a dream that in the background we have been planning since we were married nearly 18 years ago.

The cost currently does not weigh out the benefit (beach verse unsettled child)

With High School started, no specialist in town to assist with review of her mental health and a child that is defiantly not coping with the vast change in our lives, its not the dream start to 2017.

But we will get through this, we have 16 years of parenting that prove we will somehow get through the other side wiser ( with much less and greyer hair) and healthier. the light at the end is just extremely dim.

To Finish, I thought I move from the negative and outline a few highlights that can be found.

  1. Jenna’s high school is speaking to her about autism and helping her explore what that means for her.
  2. We have natural supports within 10mins from home that frequently help with the kids and when needed us.
  3. Jenna has made a friend at school.
  4. We have joined a local church, as a family and the first youth group event went well for all the four kids.
  5. The beach and long walks although not a frequent or as long as we would like are still a refreshing end to a mostly difficult day.