Tag: writing
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What My 6-Year-Old Taught Me About Emotional Regulation
The four of us sat down for a quiet New Year’s Eve meal together. This year we chose raclette — one of those meals that involves cooking at the table. The grill was hot, the table was crowded with ingredients, and the fun of sizzling bacon and melting the perfect slice of cheese began. The…
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When Reading Doesn’t Equal Writing: Supporting a Hyperlexic Autistic Child
I genuinely thought I must have been getting something wrong. My autistic 6-year-old can read at a level far beyond his age, yet he struggles massively with putting pencil to paper in the classroom. None of it made sense—until I learned more about hyperlexia. H is reluctant to read with me, or with anyone. But…
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Living With Alexithymia – Learning To Process Emotion
Living with a reduced connection to my emotions is tough. It doesn’t allow for natural emotional processing, and it leaves me sitting in turmoil I don’t even recognise is happening. How can you process emotions that you can’t see or feel? But that’s starting to change. After a year of hard work regulating my nervous…
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How to Survive Working from Home During the School Holidays: 4 Practical Tips for Parents
Balancing work and kids at home during the summer holidays? It’s exhausting—but possible. Here are four practical tips that have helped me survive the chaos of working from home with little ones around.
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Buddy the School Transition Bear: Helping Autistic Children Cope with Big Changes
When my husband returned from a work trip with a couple of free teddy bears, I smiled politely. Cute, yes. But nothing groundbreaking—until I noticed something that made me stop in my tracks. The bears were wearing little yellow T-shirts… the exact same colour as the school uniform my four-year-old, E, will be wearing in…
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The Transition Glitch: When Autism Doesn’t Agree with Your Plans
We’d been looking forward to this change for weeks. The grown-up bedroom was moving downstairs, and the boys were upgrading to the bigger bedroom upstairs — more room for play, less noise for us, and shiny new “big boy” beds ready to be built and jumped on. It was a proper family project. Furniture was…
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The Magic of Music: Easing School Transition for Neurodivergent Children
How a music session gave my anxious preschooler confidence and calm One Thursday afternoon, I arrived at preschool to collect my youngest, E. I already knew they’d had a music workshop that day with Boogie Mites, and I was fully expecting to hear that he had refused to join in—just like every other time. But…
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The Painful Tide of Autistic Burnout: When Part of You Is Washed Away
Throughout my working life, people have described me as “a bit bipolar” (yep, that old gem). One week I’m fired up, enthusiastic, and firing on all cylinders—the most productive human alive. The next? I’m sluggish, sullen, and struggling to type a few coherent sentences. At first, I thought this was just the way I worked.…
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Emotions on Delay: Living with Autistic Emotional Lag
I got some news this week that I knew should trigger an emotional reaction. Logically, it should have hit me like a freight train. But instead? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I may as well have been staring at a shopping list or thinking about putting the bins out. Not a flicker of emotion to work with.…
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Burnout Before the Holidays: Helping My Autistic Child Recover In Time To Enjoy Easter
When Burnout Looks Like Illness It happened again. Just days before the end of term, my six-year-old broke. His little body and mind, utterly exhausted from weeks of masking and trying to keep up with school demands, gave out. The result? A high temperature and vomiting. Now, logic might say this sounds like a bug.…
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