Sometimes when I chat with people about the boys’ and their various quirks, people tell me that they are just like their children, that all children are like that.  This was especially true when they were younger, when we had years of sleep deprivation, or fiddly fingers or other things that are perfectly ‘normal’ (argh, that phrase again), and seems to be true again when they reach the teenage years. At the moment we are dealing with a hatred of most people (all teenagers are anti-social), stress and anxiety with school (yep, seems everyone else does that too), food fads, surliness and lots of other things that most of his peers do too. And I really do understand that their behaviours are completely (here we go again) normal, but it’s the intensity and constant nature of their quirks that cause us, and them, problems.  How can I explain to another parent that the reason why my son has blanked her and her son, who is a friend, is because he’s having a bad day and just doesn’t want to ‘people’? Or that the friend he liked last year did something small and apparently insignificant, but it was the final straw and my son can’t face being friends again this year.  That he doesn’t want to go to their house as he doesn’t like the smell of it as they use different cleaning stuff to us, that if people come to our house, they can’t go into his room as that’s his safe place and only a few of us can enter.

Right now I’m writing this in a waiting room in the children’s department of our local hospital while our youngest has more assessments for ASD.  When we arrived it was noisy – but that’s because it’s a children’s waiting room, and is full of toys and children and their parents.  It’s a fabulous place, much nicer than the waiting rooms we had to visit when our eldest had regular appointments at a different hospital.  There are playing children running round, there is no hospital smell, and, as far as waiting rooms go, this one is great.  Except it isn’t.  It’s too noisy. There are too many people, there is a variety of smells and sights.  There are children everywhere it is a complete sensory overload for a child like mine.  So we waited outside. That was fine, and we chatted and used predictive texts to make up funny sentences. We smiled and laughed. And then he checked his phone, and it was time for his appointment, and they hadn’t appeared. Then someone came outside and lit a cigarette right next to the no smoking sign.  Cue rising stress levels, so we went back inside, and he was called into his appointment.  I’m not involved in this one, so I went into the room with him, and left him ‘masked up’ and stressed. So now I wait.

While I’m waiting, typing this (yes, I’m that strange lady in the corner of a children’s waiting room with rucksack and laptop) I am really struck my how different both my children, but especially our youngest, were to most of the younger children around me.  Our eldest would have made eye contact and spoken to people, or would have been quietly playing on his own.  Our youngest would have been stressed and would have been sitting next to me.  I would have brought a favourite book for him, but he wouldn’t have gone off to play.  He wouldn’t have chatted to other children or initiated play.  He might not have spoken to them if he was spoken to, and he would have spent most of his time on my lap or by my side.

It has been quite shocking and a real eye opener sitting here and reflecting.  No one behaviour is different to any other child’s, and many behaviours are shared by many children, but there is a stark difference.  There is a wall between my child and the others I have seen today, and that is fine, as they are all different, but I have been hit by how close he is to others, and yet so very far away.