How could something so lovely and familiar be interpreted as a danger to avoid?
Every child will experience some level of anticipation when the summer holidays commence and change is in the air. With our PDAer the level of anticipation is extreme lurching between sheer excitement and total fear. We often grapple with the balance between planning fun things we know he will love and just staying in our safe space. With the 6 week stretch ahead we initially decided to plan a small trip to visit family. The rationale is:
- We know he will love it when he’s there – he loves the people and places 100%.
- We don’t want him (or his bro) to miss out on shared holiday experiences with his cousins, grandparents, aunties and uncles,
- We will otherwise all die of total boredom at home(!!) and not expending enough energy from doing anything will mean a lack of sleep, which, we all know, comes with it’s own issues.
Of course, it is a no brainer we will visit the family, it is just a 4 hour drive. After much preemptive discussion of previous adventures there, and the sharing pictures of the safe and familiar places over a few weeks, suddenly it was the day before we were due to leave. Everything seemed settled and everything seemed calm…
As always, on the head of a pin things turned quickly and dramatically. That evening, with no warning, no build up and no known instigation we suddenly became aware of a major meltdown happening: unbridled howling, sobbing, hyperventilation, threatening to kill us and other general abuse. What we eventually established, hours later, was that the meltdown was covering huge anxiety around death and what could happen to our cats in his absence.
However, it was not instantly clear the direct connection between this behaviour and the fact we were going away. We attempted to find out what was wrong as there was no communication about what had triggered him. It became increasingly apparent between sobs and threats that the idea of leaving home and going somewhere he considered to be ‘different and unfamiliar’ was causing G major trauma. We had assumed our preparation was helping and had worked, and we felt like we had followed the well-trodden PDA-process and were still coming up seriously short. With multiple reassurances we would not go away if he was not happy with it he eventually settled. The guilt, oh the guilt!
The next morning, we reassured him he doesn’t need to go, and we went through the following steps that may be useful for others:
- Using guidance from a support worker we (G and parents) worked through a worry board. These work really well with G, because he operates in facts, and sometimes even acknowledging he can’t do anything about a worry is helpful and we can tick it off the list.
- We took out the laminated profile he had made of his likes and dislikes and I sent it to all members of the family to reinforce G needs adjustments and as a visual reminders – he seemed to like this reassurance that we were taking his differences seriously.
- He selected an array of soft plush toys he could hug in the car and take to bed there – there was huge deliberation, clear criteria formed, this was no quick process!
- We` made the cats a den, and asked a friend to take pictures of the cats daily to help G know they were happy and ok at night, when he will miss them the most and think about the unknown.
The most important thing is that we took his feelings and thoughts seriously, we addressed each one with consideration and when he was ready he initiated us leaving the house to go on our family holiday. (We will continue to work on the underpinning issues of anxiety around death!)
As things turned out, G had a brilliant week away on the whole, he reverted back to his toddler years at his grandparents house, discovering old toys, books, nooks and crannies. He was so happy in the bath at night with toys he’d known. Everyone in the family was on point and gave him enough encouragement, space, and love to make him feel safe.
On the way home, new soft toy underarm, G seemed very happy with his time away regaling his well-practiced stories of his walks in the Lakes, spotting deer, picking fruit and veg and cooking with them. That was until half an hour away I thought the car would take off with his (what I now deem as) beautiful pigeon-sounding cooing, getting increasingly louder along with the arm flapping getting more and more frenetic and frantic at the thought of being home and snuggling his cats.
So, despite us knowing what the sound of sheer distress sounds like – we also know what true happiness sounds like.
