My daughter has just turned 9 and is diagnosed autistic. She remembers that when her older brother was 9 (very mature and sensible), he started to occasionally go to the local shop by himself (2 roads away, including crossing a main road at the lights with the green man).
She is now fixated on going out on her own.
The issues for me are:
- She is emotionally younger in many ways than most 9 year olds, she has frequent meltdowns most recently lying on the ground screaming and it took us 45 mins to walk a 10 minute journey after a difficult day at school.
- She will not talk to people she doesn't know.
- She has a fear of dogs and has been known to run into roads if they approach her.
- She is impulsive, she frequently climbs into shelves at the supermarket in the split second I'm looking elsewhere and doesn't respond when I look for her.
- She has rituals she has to follow like walking a certain number of paving slabs before turning, climbing onto certain bollards, only walking through the middle gap between bollards if there are an odd number and the left if the are even, while she completes these she has no thought about others who might be coming her way or if they are blocked or unsafe because of how cars are parked etc.
- She struggles with transitions and leaving places, it can take us 10 minutes to get her out of the pool after her swimming lesson ends, and we were in the adventure playground 20 minutes after it shut despite multiple countdowns and several staff members, myself and a friend all supporting her to leave as they were locking up.
- She reacts extremely strongly to what she perceives as being 'told off' by strangers e.g. when a librarian asked please her not to stand on a shelf as it wasn't strong enough she had a huge meltdown.
I could go on. I tried to talk to her about building up to it slowly because she needs some skills first, and she said it wasn't fair that she can't do things because she's autistic (not my phrasing).
Anyway,
Yesterday I was out and she was with her dad and my mum at home. She became insistent that she was going to the shop and long story short, they let her go. My mum then tailed her and watched her from a few meters behind but she went into the shop by herself. She was cross if my mum was too close and kept telling her to go away. Mum kept her in sight but too far to grab her if anything happened, and she went into the shop alone.
When I got back my daughter was so happy and proud of herself. I said "it's good that you walked to the shop with granny, well done". I have pointed out that she was watched and that's all she's doing for the foreseeable.
I'm just not sure what to do now. I'm quite cross with my mum and my husband for letting her go. I think she gets away with a lot because they are scared of the meltdowns and I think we need to say no to her sometimes especially when safety is involved!!
Where do we go from here? 😕