To ask you to help me process things and get home from France.

[Notsurehowtoprocessthis]

I've come away with a friend and our children and she's been struggling since before we got here.

Tonight my daughter got really tired and had a screaming meltdown after my friend's daughter hurt herself and my daughter saw the blood and couldnt cope and it sent her into an epic meltdown. My friend has got it into her head that my daughter was being out of order for screaming when her daughter had hurt herself and couldn't understand that my daughter literally just can't cope with things like that due to her autism. She kept coming over trying to tell my daughter off for screaming and saying to me it was out of order (my DD is 5) and I said just leave it she's having a meltdown. I kept repeating that she's having a meltdown and there's nothing anyone can do to calm her until she's calm, so she's gone back to the room and text me that she can't be here and she's booked something else and leaving in the morning.

Which is fine. İf she doesn't want to be around us, I can't fault her for that. Only I booked and paid for the accomodation and she was paying for the transport. She drove us here and I don't drive. I don't even have a suitcase for my stuff as I just threw it in a supermarket bag for life and a large shoulder bag and put it in the car for convenience, as well as a couple of blankets and a pillow. I'll have to try and ask the staff if they can help me sort out a suitcase. We are in the countryside on a Eurocamp and there's a train station but I doubt it would take us anywhere nearby easy to get to with a suitcase shop and my daughter doesn't walk far due to her autism.

There hasn't been any issues with my daughter. She's well behaved. She has her moments like all kids with not listening sometimes and asking for sweets constantly, but no different from her friend. There's been no drama, everything has been fine all holiday between us all. She hasn't had a meltdown for weeks because it's been summer holidays and life has been much calmer. My friend hasn't been sleeping though and struggling with her daughter between the two of them, some kind of discomnectand it seems like she's just taken this as her personal last straw and wants to be alone. Which is fine. İf she can't cope with other people right now that's not something I'd hold against anyone. They didn't have to be around us for the meltdown, we were outdoors in a public area with loads of different things to do, and I've done my own thing all afternoon as we wanted to do different things, so there hasn't been any animosity building up. İn fact, me and my dd had only been back for about ten minutes at the campsite from our day out when this all erupted. My daughter has meltdowns, that's just autism unfortunately, but no one was forced to be around us, we weren't at the room when it happened and it's the only one in weeks and weeks. I've warned my friend loads of times about the autism. We all went on a group holiday before and shared a glamping pod and everything was fine, so I don't know where this has come from.

Anyway sorry for the long post, just trying to process it all. Through the accomodation booking I booked a heavily discounted ferry crossing. Would I be out of order to cancel it and book myself and DD discounted foot passenger tickets. İt's the cheapest way for me to get home. I've already paid the accomodation and my friend was meant to be paying the travel. I can only get the discount once so I'd have to cancel the ferry we were booked on, in order to use the discount for myself. I'm already going to have to pay for really expensive last minute trains all the way here in France and UK and a taxi from the station and it's going to be a much harder and longer journey and there's less ferries per day which take foot passengers.

The other thing is, is that my friend was really keen for us to do Disney on this holiday for a day. I went along with it to be a good friend, even though it's a big extra expense on what was supposed to be a cheap holiday, and she wanted to tell the children before we had booked it. Anyway I was only able to go as she gets DLA for her child so booked queue jump for us via her DLA. I can't take my DD now as she can't cope with queues and her DLA hasn't been processed yet. My friend did a big surprise thing with getting them to scratch scratch cards to see where they're going even after I said let's tell them when we are on the way, because I didn't want to make promises which might not be kept, knowing how tired everyone gets on holiday. Now I have to tell my dd that her friend is leaving early and we can't go to Disney now either.

Sorry for the long post I just don't want people to jump in and say maybe your dd is being worse than you think, and i wanted to properly explain the autism and how much I've been on my dd's emotions to make sure there hasn't been any outbursts.

I thought you didn't name the campsite on this thread as you didn't wanted to be identified or for the thread to be found and posted somewhere like the Daily Mail as then the former friend would know about it.

However i have now seen your photo and first name...

@Apolloneuro im pretty sure that’s just the site module, and you can ‘subscribe’ without paying, it’s as much that they’ve ported paying language to be used for the concept of signing up as anything.

I’ve reported my own post for troll hunting! Just felt like I wanted the kind, generous posters on this thread to tread very carefully. Substack is pushy about pledging money to people.

Substack is free to read. They put the paid option on, not me. And I literally changed it from the amount they had on there to the lowest possible amount on there. I tried to put £1 as the lowest subscription but it wouldn't let me.

Someone said I didn't want to be exposed. No, I actually said I didn't want the name of the campsite on here incase people googled the campsite and then I'm forever linked to it in search results via my upsetting experience. There were people I was talking to there, who were literally googling the campsite to add positive reviews, and I didn't want people I knew to be reading all my emotions and thoughts. I don't know anyone in real life who uses Mumsnet. No one is going to find me via a blog with my first name on it, I've got no public social media and my photos aren't anywhere else. Anyway, my name was already on it, I couldn't take it off entirely, I tried, and I didn't have the mental energy to try and start all over again on a different platform.

İt was other mums on here anyway who asked me to start a blog and keep writing, so how could I be a scammer? They said I was good at writing. We all learned to write different styles in secondary school English, so I don't understand how you could say to others that me retaining that knowledge and writing a bit more focusedly for an introduction, could make me a scammer?

İt's been around two weeks since someone mentioned it. Two weeks of getting my mind together and my body rested enough to mull over whether I wanted to or not, and focus enough to write one short post and figure out how to change the name. I haven't even figured out putting on the pictures yet so it's not exactly quick work or like I had this lying in the wings waiting like a Blue Peter presenter. I know you've reported your post, but just putting this out there incase you've planted any negative seeds about me in others. I can use my secondary school skill of writing in my own voice and a more formal voice, interchangeably, but that doesn't mean that I'm immune to someone being absolutely awful to me and having an emotionally crap time in another country. I can also do calculus still, and I remember some of the periodic table, does that mean I shouldn't get upset about stuff and reach out for emotional support on Mumsnet?

Mmm it’s just a fortunate consequence that your problems in France has led to a writing for profit opportunity then.

If you were uncomfortable with the pushy, donation profile of Substack, why use it, or at the very least you could make it very clear you don’t want people to give you money? You didn’t, though, did you. ‘Hey everyone. I’m using an existing setup I’ve got. Please don’t give me any money; you can read for free.’

Why not set up a new thread on here. There’s threads that renew and have been going for years. Surely we’d be an ideal audience?

When I saw 'AU' I thought they were an Aussie family and got a bit excited, as AU is the abbreviation for Australia. Never heard of AUDHD. It's ASDDHD or ASDHD.

Substack is the current 'in' place to blog. That's where I would have went if I was going to blog. It would never occur to me that people being able to subscribe to substack meant I was after money.

But it shows she launched the blog 9 months ago. That's a bit strange. This thread isn't even a month old. So, I don't know.

Good luck with your blog Op. You are a great writer and I've been cheering you on all the way. x

I agree, good luck OP, not sure why people are being twatty when you’ve already said you set up the blog months ago for a different purpose.

Hope you and daughter have settled back into normal life.

Was this blog set up this week, or last year??

Yeah I did one post all those months ago which was an exercise in a free journalling group I joined by Beth Kempton, who I've followed on my substack. She encouraged us to create a substack so we could share our work with each other and her. İf anyone doubts my authenticity, well İ wrote one opening paragraph for one of the exercises- when there were about two weeks worth- and gave up. You can look at her work and see that that's her prompt I've used around the time of her winter writing course. I've never logged in since. That's how much of a regular writer I am 🤣 the mums here have encouraged me to try to write regularly. I've had over 500 views since yesterday, so if I was really writing for profit, I would have made a wordpress blog and stuck an advert in there with AdSense.

Anyway, surely most people have one social media or Pinterest or something similar account where they've done one post and never gone back to it.

I could have created a thread here but they have a limit and no one has really been responding much the last few days, so I had no feeling of connection or interaction. At least on substack I can connect with other mumsnetters long term, if they're also blogging.

AuADHD is a legitimate term. I know several people who use it

OP, remember to declare the earnings to HMRC. And check if it affects other benefits.

@CrochetForLife pretty sure I saw a post from OP explaining that the substack thing was something OP had setup for something else previously.

What earnings? 🤣

I like to think that Mumsnet users are clever enough not to paid subscribe to someone who has only written a few paragraphs and hasn't even figured out if she can commit to writing regularly or not yet.

I just left it there for a bit of personal self encouragement.

But anyway, as it's caused upset, I don't want anyone from Mumsnet to ever subscribe to the paid content. You can ignore substack and just subscribe for free, or just go on there for free, which is something I checked to make sure. I've left it there incase I get really good and a rich billionaire comes along and likes my writing.

Yes, I went on yesterday and thought I had to pay, but when I tried again today I could look at the content for free - so don't know what I was doing yesterday. I also remember the OP explaining that the substack was already set up previously.

Okay well I’ve said my bit, so I’ll bow out.

This is where I started my substack. As you can see it was to connect with other people in the course. She does mention you can make money in the future but I know it's not very common for people to make money from substack. You can Google substack earnings and look through Reddit to see how much people really earn. Unless you're an established writer like Beth, which I'm not. I just used it because it is the easiest platform to use and isn't saturated with adverts. For what it's worth, none of her courses are targeted to people wanting to make money from writing, but rather just to get into writing regularly for yourself and to enjoy it. Which you can see if you look at her website. I'll probably get accused now of being a bot advertising for Beth, but I'm sure she does well enough on her own.

İf you read my previous posts you'll know I'm on lcwar, applying for pip and have health difficulties, an ASD child who struggles at school, and am a single mum. You'll also see I sorted out my debts from the cost of the chaos on holiday and my income is due to increase. I'm not desperately seeking an income.

I'm glad you're writing the blog OP and have subscribed for updates.

I agree.

you said you didn’t have time to update about your time at Disneyland, which is what I think most were still following the thread for, then said you were going to provide small updates as and when, - I assume this is now going over to the blog you have to subscribe for?

maybe the 15 mins is over, good luck with the blog.

I don't understand the issue with the OP's substack. It is free to read, you don't even need to subscribe. If you want to receive a notification when there is new content, you can subscribe without paying anything.

I subscribe to a sketch writer on Substack (Rob Hutton), because I like his writing. He emails updates so I can see new content, he has never requested payment.

İ have updated about Disney though? I shared a whole load of info about the queue pass and tickets for anyone who needed info, which I thought was the most important thing to share. I've responded to over 20 private messages with lots of details about the campsite I was at and campsite tips for neurodivergent parents who have asked for it. All the most important info another person might need for a Disney trip, has stayed within Mumsnet. İ said I'd do some more info here and there about the day as well, when I get moments. I got the blog layout and url set up with an intro so I could share it here before the thread filled up. I literally haven't written anything on the blog other than an intro.