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Schooled in Autism
How My 11-year-old Autistic Daughter Pushes Me to Do Better
Tomorrow my 11-year-old girl starts fifth grade. Like many parents, I find myself wondering how time has gone by so fast that I have a child starting what at our small public charter school is pretty much Middle School. But even more, because my fifth grader is autistic, I find myself wondering what her school year will look like.
Sending your autistic child into the world can be a little scary as a parent, so I cannot even begin to imagine what my girl is feeling.
She has shared some of her anxiety, some of it by pulling out her hair one strand at a time on the back of her head and telling me it’s because she’s anxious about school. But she has also told me she felt a familiar wave wash over her tonight, the one that pushes her to want everything to be perfect. This tells me just how high her anxiety is, more so than the hair pulling.
We’ve been there before, she and I, the place where nothing is right because it isn’t exactly, specifically right. It looks a lot like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and she hates it. She hates the way it makes her feel and she hates that she can’t make it stop.
I wish I could stop it for her, but I can’t. Even so, I can hold space for her. I can let her know I am here and I…
