The life of Annabelle

This is my first entry on steemit. I thought I would do a entry on the day to day life of my daughter Annabelle. My daughter Annabelle is almost five years old. She has a few behavioural issues.

Just last year she was diagnosed as low functioning autistic. Annabelle is currently non verbal. She has a intensive speech program set up for her this year, at her preschool to hopefully get her to communicate at some level. We are teaching her sign language, as well as using pictures to communicate to us. With persistence, this will eventually work.

On top of this, she does have severe developmental delays as well as sensory processing disorders, which apparently is normal for autistic children. To me, autism will not define who she is as a person. It is just a part of her.

The day to day routine is always different. It depends on what mood she is in, as to how well she will perform. In the mornings, she's usually calm and placid. Happy to sit down and watch a bit of television. Lately her favourite TV Show is Zootopia. She would then get up, and start dancing up and down in the room, flapping her arms. She would then have breakfast, and we would head to the gym, where she would attend creche. Usually she is fine at Creche, but lately she's been attention seeking.

She would do things deliberately just so she would get the attention she needs. This she does on purpose. I would then try and do some sign language for her, and some picture messages to get her to communicate with me what she requires.
By lunch time, she's starting to become a bit overwhelming with her behaviour. She has melt downs, and usually there is no trigger of what the melt down could be.

The melt downs are not only frustrating for her, but they are frustrating for me as well. The reason being that I don't know what to do or how to help her. These melt downs are not tantrums. These melt downs would often be her in tears, red faced, screaming, lying on the floor and pushing her bum against the floor. To hitting, pinching, and sometimes biting. My energy levels drop as she has these melt downs.

People would sometimes tell me, oh she's just having a tantrum. Or ask me what causes the melt downs. Usually the melt downs are not caused by anything in particular.

In the afternoon she looks forward to a long bath, which is usually water play. This again is for sensory. It helps calm her, which in turn helps me. I usually get to either sit down and write, or catch up on dishes. There's a very rare chance I get me time however. As I am constantly going back and forth to check that she's okay.

By the time that it's around 830 mark at night, it's bed time. We try to read to her, but she's never interested, instead we let her settle herself down. Which can take ages. As frustrating as it is, as long as she is happy when she goes to bed, we really don't have any issues. Once she's in bed, then I get my time. Usually it's bed. This is just one entry of her daily life. She's hard work but she's most definitely worth it.