Okay, we are better most days now, but had this earlier.
You need her regulated like peeling layers off an onion. Some help like melatonin from the GP to get her sleep, and other referrals like mental health and OT or physio- she may have sensory or other needs (proprioception, core instability) making life harder.
Ask the school or another special needs parent if you can borrow ear defenders, weighted blanket, compression or weighted vest, compression shirt etc to see how she responds before buying- and consider buying anyway and kids loops or alpine earbuds.
No on purpose crowds or noisy places, grocery delivery and Amazon! Do any cooking while kids are at school. It fucking sucks. Listen to your music and watch your shows and have a walk while you work/during school.
Get her a tablet. A tablet is better than constant elevated cortisol. She might break it but try a cheap one. Baths are also great for calming down and she might need one after school to chill out. Sometimes my son needed multiple a day. You can also try swimming as a family instead of noisy lessons.
Treat her 2-3 years younger than she is - and she might want to be your baby and be fighting for that attention.
Read the explosive child (when the fuck are you supposed to read) and in a calm time ie TV tell her you want to work together on making her life better, and you can chat about it later. Don’t expect a response.
For bed without melatonin have her in pjs and clean teeth if possible and then let her watch a show or something like marconi union calming music/we did chalkboard music of our son’s interests. During this have a nice cozy bedtime with your son, and then do cuddles with daughter. She probably needs mama time and can’t.
Yes screentime is going to be too much, but you can reduce it once things are going well. We also try to direct to things that are longer form and still engaging like wild kratts and land before time. Our public broadcaster has great stuff. If she’s behind on reading, alphablocks catches attention and helps literacy
If mealtimes are hard, I just left son’s food out and he could eat as his own choice, not mine (low demand technique). You could also let her eat by the TV while you and son eat at the table. Let her know you would love her to join you but want her to decide which is calmer.
For activities like painting or crafts just start doing it and she might join. Puzzles just buy cheap off shein or temu or pound shop and accept they might get ruined. She is probably also ready for LEGO. Just start doing some and she may join in. She is probably bored as well as lonely, angry and overstimulated. I’ve heard games like minecraft or tula?land are good but we haven’t done them. If you know what her passion is, indulge it.
When she’s feeling okayish ask her to sort through her clothes and get rid of anything not uniform that she dislikes. For uniform I guess you need to talk to the school.
My son’s school refusal is worse when seasons change/different jackets etc. We finally have shoes he’ll put up with.
As an example, at the beginning of this school year we were doing what I thought was amazing compared to before, but still hard.
we/I’d dress my son downstairs while baby brother sometimes dressed himself. He’d hit me the whole walk to school (if your youngest isn’t at school, see if a neighbour can watch him while you go). Sometimes he’d lie down flat. Sometimes I cried. Sometimes I dragged, sometimes I took a deep breath and managed.
Any chores or cooking happened while he was at school. After school I met him with a cookie and he hit less but took forever getting home. At home I kept my body between him and baby brother and then would read a book and he’d gradually climb on my lap. In Wednesday and Friday I’d do TV instead. After an hour or two he’d take off his jacket and use the toilet and eat. God help me if I’d needed the toilet before then. By that point he’d want to ramble about his interests and do some crafts.
Now 4/5 days the walks are better, we started him dressing himself in January and he does it 2 or 3 days a week. If I haven’t cooked I can now out frozen beige stuff or leftovers to warm up. We still do OT or PT once a week and he has an IEP at school and good teachers. They went to a soft play area as a field trip and he spent most of it under a slide but happy. My goal is to replace OT and PT with martial arts.
oh god I want to cry writing it because I might never have a career again and I usually focus on how good it is and not how our life centres around all of this. But it does get better.
oh! And tie every complaint to healthcare or school around education or activities of daily living. Not around behaviour.
Sarah cannot eat her meals because she cannot cope with the fact her brother eats differently and she expresses that through anger. I am worried about her ability to nourish herself
vs
She goes mental and attacks her brother because he holds his fork in the wrong hand and beats me to shit when I protect him.
for your appointments
I am burnt out and can’t take adequate care of the kids because I am always stressed