Tell me you're a parent of a ND child without telling me...

My DS won’t say ‘please.’ He has to say ‘platypus’

Oh God. We watched ‘Hello, Dolly!’ multiple times a day over lockdown. I was not allowed to stop watching even for a second - he would hold my face in place. I could probably perform all the dance routines from memory.

The fact I can count the number of full nights sleep I've had.in the last 17 years on my fingers and toes.

When the head of your DDs college spends 45 minutes coming down on the 14 other girls on her hair and beauty course (that she's looked forward to doing since year 7) like a ton of bricks because they imitated her stimming and laughed at her and called her names. I love her college.

When the hands tick over from 7.55am to 7.56am and the world ends because you haven't set off for school yet and DS will be late. Even though school starts in 45 mins and it takes 5 mins to get there.

Having a fridge full of food that she liked this morning but…

worried about secondary school in case people think “I’m a weird freak “

“Mum… I just want to be normal”

“Mumma, I need you, you’re my safe place”

knowing he will find the hoover anywhere we visit and know how to disassemble and reassemble it

one year we watched Home Alone at least once a day for about 8 months

Calling sweet potatoes "pink potatoes" so she'll eat them

I had no idea this was a thing! Mine won't eat "cottage pie", we have to call (the sssh cottage pie) "Cumberland pie".

I cannot use the word "lovely" or say "I love.." something

Words are a huge deal

There's a great article from the mum of an autistic daughter in todays guardian that I could have written word for word.

Sorry to distract... has everyone seen the 20 page special in the Guardian on neurodiversity?

Having to throw away 3 bowls of Shreddies this morning because

Bowl 1: the wrong spoon was accidentally provided, meaning cereal was contaminated with wrongness

Bowl 2: Shreddies initially too dry, then too soggy because DC got distracted and left it all to soak up the milk. Rage ensued.

Bowl 3: Milk ‘seemed different’, and apparently I’ve ruined his whole life and he wishes I would die.

DD getting incredibly anxious and delaying getting ready (back in the days when she left the house) until the only way to get there in time would be to invent a Time Machine. And having her yell at me that I had to sort it somehow because I'm the parent and that's my job

When you have to read obnoxious posts from NT kids parents telling you that "oh dont mind their meltdowns/outbursts, if you dont give in they will stop, my NT child used to get upset a bit but it's no logner happening because we were firm" and you no longer pay attention as there are gazillions of them a day and you just dont care.

Tears because one of the neighbours changed from a house number to a house name, so now he can't count all the house numbers in the street correctly....

Constantly hyper focused on a particular food then without any warning he doesn’t like that brand of chicken nuggets anymore when I don’t have anything else in as he hates everything. Asking what’s for tea every night when he only likes a limited amount of food. Never being on time for school as it’s not worth the argument every morning. He’s almost 14 and if I’m out I’ll have a hundred calls where am I, even if his dad is home with him

Going to school with my husband to drop Dc to school because he won't go without me, him breaking up earlier than the other children and me Going to school twice because he's done a poo in his pants , him triggering because someone touched his face or toy , him screaming because he doesn't want to leave the house then screaming because he doesn't want to come in , screaming because he doesn't want to brush his teeth or have a shower , him being really tired but refusing to go bed I could go on for days lol

I have just spent £25 on pens. Yep £25 on 12 pens because he won’t use any other type.
“I can use the dupe grape toothpaste but nothing else”

We've just had/are finishing up a lovely stressful time where mine got a bad stomach bug, didn't/couldn't eat for 3 days for being sick then food tasted/felt weird when he could eat so all he could manage was salted pombear style crisps, which was fine, better than nothing and stopped his stomach hurting from hunger, but it's taken me days to get him somewhere close to eating what he was eating before (he is fussy with food, barely eats protein but actually amazing with fruit and okay with veg so this has been soo worrying and frustrating that his food might deteriorate to only unhealthy food). And then today he came home saying he's not allowed fruit in his lunch box for a school trip tomorrow, because if he says he has fruit his teacher will take it and eat it all so he's scared that will happen... Have messaged the teacher and he is allowed fruit, but it seems the 3 classes that are going have different rules on what they can take so she wanted her class to keep the fruit secret. He takes everything very literally so really believed she would eat it and has asked me not to give him any, he's only just got back to eating most of his packed lunch after the stomach bug and is barely managing to eat school lunch still and no idea if they will have anything he can/will eat with them for the shared lunch, so very very frustrating. He ate nothing all day Tuesday at school and came home complaining his stomach was hurting from hunger, so really not helpful to scare him off something he will eat when they will be out in a forest and he will need the energy!

Sorry, that was long.

More things specific to him;

• I'm not allowed to hum/sing to myself.
• He can spend hours watching short videos on Youtube/playing computer games but hates films, such a shame as I'd love to sit down with a film and watch with him but he says films are 'too long'. He is also very sensitive so even though we reassure him it's made up, everyone will be fine in the end he gets very upset at seeing film characters get upset or hurt and even gets upset when characters do naughty things (he's very rules based).
• I have to cut the spiky bits off of blueberries, they used to be fine as long as they were firm enough but he suddenly went off the spiky bits and my compromise is to slice that bit off so he at least keeps eating them...

I too wish that schools would be more careful about healthy eating talks. In a home where someone has severe arfid and you are hoping that Child 2 won’t follow suit, a teacher telling someone that a strawberry isn’t healthy.. it just is not a help!! Yes, it might contain sugar but it’s way healthier than a staple diet of digestives and nuggets.

May I commend your DD on her bold choice of deep dish! That is next level ND food squish tolerance - my DC will only eat the thinnest possible pizza cooked to a crisp so that the cheese has carbonised and nothing about it is remotely moist.

As bad as all of these experiences are to read, in a way it makes me feel better than I'm not a terrible mum for trying to just get through the days. Family do make the occasional comments of how my DD is a "fussy eater", and that I'm pandering to her. I've just handed her one of the four approved meals she'll have (a Chicago Town Deep Dish margherita pizza with sliced cucumber), while the rest have all had homemade enchiladas, but at least she's eating something

The short-term effects were even worse. The poor thing left those primary school lesson, convinced that it was healthier to go without food entirely than to eat anything "unhealthy" your fond but foolish parents might make you.

Yep, careful questioning revealed that my child thought the health effects of a suboptimal diet would kill you faster than starvation! We sorted that out, but the emotional aversion to anything burger- shaped seemed too well-rooted.

Next time there was a healthy eating unit, I made sure to explain to the school how the previous one had gone, and the staff must have been far more careful because there were no problems.

Thank goodness too, because as already noted, the definition of 'unhealthy' that was taken away from the first set of lessons was incredibly broad. It seemed to cover everything except literal vegetables.

Hoping DS would get a place in the specialist autism base, but in case he didn't ringing around every school to speak to them about his needs, if they could accommodate them, and picking schools based on the ones I felt most reassured by with regards to flexibility over uniform. He lives in jogging bottoms and will only wear wellies. If he got told off over uniform I know we'd be straight back to school refusal and probably violent meltdowns.

Luckily he got the place he needed.

Making sure there's a Costa nearby if we go anywhere new so he can have a cheese and ham toastie if he gets overwhelmed.

Working around all the appointments and the home visits from various professionals, and then they all just disappear on the grounds you have all these other people involved. Except none of them are now.

And things are going ok at the moment, quite calm, but I can't relax because it can change so abruptly.

I really wish these people put a little thought into what they're saying. 🤬

Thanks to the healthy eating lessons, my child from then on refused to eat anything in a flat, round shape, because "burgers are unhealthy".

We don't even eat meat- this was vegetable burgers that were being boycotted for life. It's nearly a decade later, and there's still no point in buying or making anything in a burger shape.