Cut a long story short, my oldest is autistic and prone to aggression and lashing out. I’ve tried and tried to take her out, but it’s getting too much for me and I genuinely don’t feel I can cope with taking her out anymore.
The problem is that it can happen completely out of nowhere. There doesn’t necessarily have to be anything that sets her off.
For example, the last time we were on the bus, she was sitting in her seat and absolutely nothing had happened. She suddenly stood up and started screaming and shouting. I went over to her and told her to calm down and that we would get off at the next stop, but she then started jumping up and down, screaming and lashing out.
There was a woman with a pram nearby and I was really worried she was going to hurt someone. Obviously, the bus was moving, so we couldn’t just get off immediately. We had to wait until it stopped and then get off.
There was genuinely no build-up to it. Nothing had happened immediately beforehand. She can just become extremely dysregulated very suddenly, which makes taking her out incredibly difficult because I never know when it’s going to happen.
I’m now at the point where I don’t want to take her out for the rest of the summer. I’m honestly scared that one day something will happen in public and someone will call the police.
I have other children as well, and I can’t constantly be dealing with a situation where this keeps happening with little to no build up.
I feel awful saying it, but I genuinely don’t know what the alternative is anymore. If it means we all have to stay in for the rest of the summer because I can’t safely take her out, then I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.
Should we just accept this is it now and stay in for the rest of the summer? Shes at an age now where someone will call the police and I don’t want to be dealing with that.