Our crazy family

As the readers may remember, I often write about my daughter and her difficulties due to mental problems. But she is not the only one with problems in our family. I seem to have them too. After I learned from her about different disorders and read some information by links she gave me, I could see some autistic features in myself. Especially when I read description of children on spectrum, I recognise myself a lot. My ex-husband, the child’s father, is also not quite neurotypical – so no wonder that she came out like that. And finally, my nephew. He is also different, though in his own way. So it’s as follows:

• Daugher: social anxiety disorder, autistic spectrum disorder, maybe gender-queer. Left-handed, bad with numbers. Sleep disorder, maybe depressed.
• Me: slightly autistic, socially awkward, cannot tell left from right, bad with numbers and people’s faces, aromantic and demisexual. Mild depression or chronic tiredness.
• Nephew: attention deficit with hyperactivity, dyslexia, social anxiety (mild, recently aquired), asexuality.

It’s really sad that I did not know about all these things while the kids were small. And I did not know about the nature of my own difference. Now I know, thanks to my child, and it helps to understand each other better. For example, we don’t push the boy to read, knowing that he can better learn things by hearing. Unfortunately, his dad (my brother) is so very normal, and like many people in Russia, he just doesn’t believe in mental disorders. Maybe that’s why the boy prefers to spends time with us.

So you can imagine how it goes when we live together, all three (my nephew often stays with us). It’s like a sitcom. We have our own, disorder-based jokes. Like, “If I have social anxiety, and you have social anxiety, who will order the food?” Or when my daughter is teasing her cousin with sexual jokes which he hates. Or when they buy some goods for stimming and play with them happily (if nothing is available, my nephew uses any unexpected things for this purpose). Really, it could be a sitcom! I’d love to see something like that.

TV shows

Sometimes me and my child watch movies, or cartoons, or TV shows together – kind of fun and cosy shared time. Our favourites are Steven Universe, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, Wander over Yonder… all those nice magical stories. Who told that adults cannot like cartoons? I think I’ll never stop it.

And when I want some comedy, I watch Big Bang Theory. Sheldon Cooper is like a brother for us – even so stereotyped as he is,  we both recognise our own traits in his character. So very true sometimes! But we wish there were more geek things and less romantic things, all this woman-chasing. Well, all the girls are great, but romantic… just no! And Leonard is the worst one, he’s such a bore.

Cabbages and kings

It’s hot. Days and weeks of heat non-stop – a really extreme summer this year! I try not to take too much work because my head can’t work well. And when I don’t work, my child would come to me and talk. Or she calls me out for a walk (in the evening when the heat reduces a little) – and talks.

She can talk for hours. She talks, and I listen. I know she needs it because she has too many thoughts about lots of things, like:

• Movies, cartoons and TV shows
• Comics and superheros (Batman and Joker – oh no!)
• Evil characters and why people like them
• Gender, its natural and social aspects, stereotypes, and gender queer people
• Families, parents and children, and why she doesn’t want a family in future
• Discrimination of all sorts and why Russians don’t understand it
• What is empathy, and if it’s OK to live without it
• Why people need religion, and what’s good and bad about it
• Time traveling and what time period she would choose if it were possible
• Star Wars
• Computer games
• Robots
• Cabbages and kings

… and many others, I just can’t remember right now.

Of course she says that I shouldn’t listen if I don’t want to, and that I can stop her at any moment if I feel it’s enough. And it really happens sometimes when my brain gets overloaded, but mostly it goes fine. Some problems are interesting for me too, and we discuss them together. When she speaks out all her thoughts, she goes to her room and leaves me alone.  It’s fine, but… I feel that she needs someone else for a listener except me. That’s why I’m so glad when my nephew comes to visit us sometimes – at least they can discuss computer games and Star Wars!

Bad luck with jeans

Me and my daughter went to a shopping center today because she wanted to buy new jeans. She found one black pair (black is her preferred colour) and went to the trying room. I was waiting somewhere near… and it seemed to me strangely long. At last she went out, threw the jeans on a hanger rail and headed out of the shop with fast steps, saying “I can’t try on anything”.

“Why? Is something wrong with them?” I asked.

“It’s noise. I cannot stand this noise. Too many people in the trying rooms. And there was a child next to me, her toy was singing so loudly. I can’t!”

As a result, we didn’t make more attempts in other clothing shops. Moving to the entrance, she saw a shop of art and craft supplies and dived there with a relief. Paper, paints and incense sticks  had a good effect on her. She bought some, and we returned home.

 

Such things happen quite often when my daughter tries to do shopping. Her reaction for noise and crowd is so strong that she is unable to continue the process, let alone enjoy it. She hates music playing in shops – why is it always so loud and rhythmic? I wonder if it’s a feature of Russian shopping centers only. She can say suddenly that she feels bad, or has a headache, or not in the mood to choose anyting.  In such cases, we both go back in a bad mood.

Yes, I can be angry and tired and irritated, having to follow my child everywhere. But of course things are harder for her. We healthy people can’t imagine how it feels to live like that.

Sometimes everything goes fine though. She even manages to go to a shopping center alone and buy things she needs to. What does it depend on? I don’t know. But it’s preferable for her to go on weekdays when it’s not too crowded. And it should be a shop that she knows very well, so needn’t spend much energy for orienting. She analyzes her own sensations very carefully and learns all the time. Yes, our own efforts are not enough but I want to have a hope…

 

My child’s research

Recently my daughter is searching for information about disorders that supposedly could be related to her condition. Social anxiety disorder, autistic spectrum disorders, neuroatypical disorders… She diligently reads information in English, watches videoblogs – also in Englsh, because, according to her, information that could be found in Russian Internet is all outdated or prejudiced. For the same reason it’s hard to find a competent specialist in reality, espedcially in a provincial city like ours.

Based on this information, she tries to analyse her own behaviour, habits, feelings, childhood memories. And she finds many things that look like symptoms of some condition… She explains to me that she never thought something was really so wrong with her. She took it as normal that her time in pre-school was only suffering and she was unable to communicate with other kids. Then at school… I admit it, I also took it as normal, never finding it too disturbing. Partly the reason is that me and her father, we are quite shy and have poor communication skills. So I thought like, it’s normal if a child hates school – so what? everyone hates school. And so on. Lack of information is a bad thing…

Anyway, I’m glad that she is doing this research now. I’m glad to see her interest, and I deeply respect her great thinking work. I can’t imagine what her future will look like, but I’ll do everything possible to support her…