#parenting alice

[krisrisk]

my therapist is guiding me towards accepting that my teen is controlling me instead of just panicking.

And i get it. From any outstanders view, she's absolutely controlling me in some moments. And it is very important that my therapist has me overturn this thought in my head because it will change me and give me new tools.

But the thing is, and my therapist thankfully knows that, my teen NEEDS that control to barely function. Her autism and permanent pain make her feel out of control at any moment. She needs the reassurance that she can control situations to BE a teenager and GROW into and adult.

So we have been talking about this, and the underlying problem is not her taking control of me, i'm merely collateral damage here. The real problem is that our needs are opposite from each other.

She needs to know i'm around / i need to have times where i'm not mentally around. She needs to call me when she's outside / i need her to not call me just because she went out with the dog and he farted.

The list goes on.

I know that i should defend my boundaries but i know what happens when i do that: she will become more anxious, more insecure, more unstable, more clingy. I've read about this thirty years ago in a relationship book. I've experienced it.

She needs security to grow independent. Which mean i need to give her security. Which means i have to be "around". Because her biggest fear is that i vanish.

[krisrisk]

kid has found out about "autonomy" - which comes as a small surprise to me, because she was basically allowed to do as she likes since forever, but she never really used this "power" (probably due to her autism).

Now, every time she finds another thing she *can* do, she'll go: "who's gonna stop me?" and then storm off with an "MWUAHAHAHA".

Today, she went to the store to buy some gummybears, after looking at me from the side and going: "Are you gonna stop me?" (I just replied "no I'm too fatigued", so she laughed her evil laughter and sprinted off.)

It's like she's three again, discovering and conquering the world. 🥰

[krisrisk]

one of the more rewarding things is watching someone from some department of a kind trying to threaten my kid. They would never do that openly, so they're subtile and word their sentences carefully so as to not actually threaten you.

And my autistic kid does not understand that. They will say things like "if you don't cooperate, i certainly don't know what conesequences that will have" and she'll just shrug and go "ok?".

She doesn't hear the threat. She hears the information. And it makes me grin like an idiot every time, because i get to choose my reaction based purely on sympathy towards the person who's trying to threaten her into obedience; either i tell them in that moment out loud that my kid does not understand threats that are formalized, or i get to ignore their threat completely and later on tell my kid what was meant.

[krisrisk]

Kid said she has no pain in her legs!!!!!

omg. I had given up hope for this day to come. She says she feels some pain after some things, but compared to a daily (!) 6 on a scale of 10 that's basically none.

The relief. Omg the relief. I am crying, literal tears here.

It's burnout. It's overwhelm. It's dissociation. It's autism. It IS manageable!!!!!!

[krisrisk]

today happened what i have been afraid of for so long.

Kid fell while getting out of bed.

There is little i can do. It's too early to call her doctor to ask who to call and what to do. This is not an emergency, we don't need the emergency doctor for that. We also can't come in to her doctor's office, because the kid can't walk. She can't even stand.

What do we do?

i don't know. I got the office chair with the wheels for her, so she was able to get from the bed to the toilet (3 meters), but the bathroom is too small for the chair and we have two bumperlines within the doors which it can't cross...

I don't know what to do.

[krisrisk]

It turns out that kidteens panic response is actually literally to laugh. You know, the pterodactyl screech type of laugh.

Not freeze. Not fight. Not flight. Laugh.

It's also tension relief, which makes it all the more fucked up to be a panic response.

[krisrisk]

I was RIGHT!

We went to kidteen's doctor about a month ago because of something and i demnaded he test her vitamin d levels. I never heard back from them.

BUT wehn we went there this week, the doctor asked wether we knew about the results, and i defeatedly said no, and she (it wasn't kidteens usual doctor) was klnda shocked about it, so she opened the file and BOOM! Vitamin D deficite!

I knew, of course, because kidteen does spend approximately zero minutes per day in the sun. Ever.

But i clocked it because her chronic pain became much more and because her sleeping issues became much more.

And wouldn't you know it, i was fucking right! She got the meds and has to take the highest dose possible because her levels are that low.

I'm still not fit enough to get angry about the doctor not informing us, but i should be.

[krisrisk]

I gotta say i'm very proud of kidteen today. Cooking regularly, including veggies most of the time. Walking the dog when asked to without any fights. Downloading new apps and immediately turning off notifications and mobile data access on her own.

*sigh* she's so grownup sometimes