Normal is whatever happens every day.  What happens in my house may be very different to what happens in your house, and that’s fine.  We have our normal, and you have yours.

However, when you live with square pegs, or when you are a square peg, little things happen, behaviours start, and you adjust accordingly.  Little quirks, oddities and things that happen every day get absorbed into day to day life, and you end up rarely going out and getting home after 10pm.  Or you realise that since your child was born you have only been away for one night – not one night at a time, but just one night.  You watch their face when you’re somewhere new for signs of stress.  You carry Calpol and a bottle of essential oil just in case the stresses start.  You miss concerts and sports matches on a regular basis because although you’re there, you are too busy avoiding meltdowns or using distraction techniques to know the score or what’s happening.  You regularly have to think of the material and colour when choosing clothes – for you and for them.  All this becomes your normal, until, one day, you realise that this is a long way from most other people’s normal, and you begin to think and slowly put the pieces of a jigsaw together.

Is it ‘normal’ (and how I hate that word, even though this post seems to be full of it) for a 10 year old to hate sleepovers, both at a friend’s and when a friend stays here? Should a ten year old retch at strong smells, and new tastes? Should a ten year old like to finger eat rather than use a knife and fork, even though they are quite capable of using said knife and fork? Poor sleep patterns? Yes.  Lots of imaginative play when little? Not really, not like our older child. Imaginative conversations? If you mean deep discussions about which Marvel and DC characters have the potential to be real, then yes.  But this is a science based conversation rather than imagination.  For example, you could be an inventor like Tony Stark (Marvel) or Batman (DC – the differentiation between the two is important), and who knows what Gamma rays could do to a person, if they survived (Bruce Banner, Marvel) and there are still undiscovered tribes in the Amazon, so Wonder Woman (DC) is possible, though unlikely…….and so the conversation went on. Only today I realised that I can’t remember them ever having a full on temper tantrum.  I can remember hysterical tears once or twice, but a full blown toddler tantrum? No, I don’t think there was one.

So, now we have a CAMHS mental health worker.  We have already filled out a form for ASD (autism spectrum disorder), and school also have 3 copies.  Our next appointment will be when the forms are all back and analysed.  If they show ASD traits, then we are referred for a formal diagnosis.  If not, then I presume there will be more forms and more traits, syndromes and disorders to be screened for.

However, whatever the findings are, there is nothing ‘wrong’ with my child.  Yes, he is a Square Peg, but Square Pegs change the world – think Einstein, Newton, Jobs, Darwin, Turin and so many others.  I really hope that this journey helps him control his anxieties, and on a selfish note, I hope we get to have a bit of a ‘normal’ social life, but more than anything, I hope nothing changes within him.  I want his amazing brain to keep coming up with extraordinary ideas, I want to keep sharing his boxless view of the world and I want the amazing essence of his ‘normal’ to stay and to shine as brightly as it can, free from the shackles of his anxiety.