Thank you actd, hope you have a good Christmas too 🙂
Hi There,
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Sometimes you have to hit that point to realise what you have, and that you aren't ready to lose it.
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I would agree with actd, the way you write and from what you have said, I think that you share a lot with your daughter, have you ever thought of writing with your daughter, With your daughters creative writing and your style off writing, I bet you could work well together and write some amazing fiction.
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GTTS
Thanks GTTS,
She is an amazing writer. I did do a quick search for some of her writing online to share here, unfortunately google quickly links it to who she is and while she is an adult I try hard to respect her privacy while blogging. It gives me the freedom to write about our experiences.
I have written with others in the past creating interesting characters and stories. I'm not sure about collaborating with my daughter, she seems to prefer to writing on her own. That said when we do collaborate it is good fun and often funny. These however are often spontaneous and short, lasting up to 20 minutes. For example the last time was a couple of days ago, though I cannot remember what started it, I would sing a line and she would finish it with 'In the toilet'. I think she enjoys pushing me on when we do these sort of things to see how long I can keep it up.
We do share a lot of the same humour, ways of looking at life and are murder to watch a film with together. We both also get into trouble occasionally with our own take on news stories. As my wife often says its more like two peas in a pod than father and daughter.
Hope you are having a good Christmas.
A Father's Christmas Carol for his daughter
Or how to make sure she stays safe.
I taught her this one in her first year at Uni when she returned after the Christmas holidays.
Tis the season to wear Jollies
Tralalalala la la la.
You won't get any without one on
Tralalalala la la la.
You won't get none, you won't get none, you won't get none without one on!
Tis the season to wear Jollies
Tralalalala la la la.
She later complained to me because she was sat next to a cute guy on the coach and could not get the stupid song out of her head.
Job done :whistle:
Great blog, thanks for sharing your experiences with us!
Thanks Yoda, I enjoy sharing our experiences both good and bad.
When our daughter was born I was absolutely terrified of being the father of a daughter. I did not feel prepared, I did not know how the [censored] I was going to cope with all the challenges. I even asked a friend how he had coped with two daughters, let alone one. His advice was to relax and enjoy the ride, and remember all the awkward questions were for mum to answer. Trouble is someone forgot to tell my daughter this, so I got most of the awkward questions and mum got all the easy ones!
It has been a real coaster ride and worth every moment, so pleasure to share.
Coming to terms with Asperger’s
Or where does the disability end and the person start?
Asperger’s is part of the autism spectrum, which means the person’s brain is hard wired differently to most people. It is not curable, though many learn develop coping skills which can disguise what is often already a hidden disability.
I use the term disability because it affects their everyday lives in their interactions with others. There is a strong genetic element.
Many parents on receiving this diagnosis for their child feel a sense of loss, a feeling that their real child is trapped within the Asperger’s cage. For me it was a journey to understanding much of my own past, but also in discovering who my daughter was, and learning how to adapt to support her in growing up.
One of the most common question asked about my daughter is where does the Asperger’s end and the person start? In trying to answer this question here I should point out that I am in no way medically trained and these are my conclusions from living with my daughter, trying to understand myself and working with autistic children.
The short answer is there is no distinction or cut off point from the disability and the person. The variations of how it affects an individual is as wide as the number of people who have it. There are similar traits, but the individual impact varies per their experiences and support they receive. In short how disabling it becomes is often as much to do with how others interact and perceive the person as the Asperger’s itself.
To give an example, most will find forming friendships difficult, this is due to social awkwardness, lack of understanding of social rules and difficulties with reading body language or facial clues. Because of these, they are often vulnerable and easy to manipulate so parents can become very protective. This protection can increase their isolation which lead to other problems.
My daughter is no different, she has always struggled in building friendships. One thing I have found fascinating is in the friendships she has developed overall there is high level of loyalty and protectiveness endeared towards her. Having spoken to some of her friends this is due to the fact she has Asperger’s, even when the friends are unaware of it – most people are not. As a friend my daughter is fiercely loyal, refusing to get involved in petty squabbles among her friends, and by being clear when they do fall out with each other she will not pick sides. This strength is part of her Asperger’s and her sense of right and wrong.
I have not always been keen on her friends, and if honest would rather she had not gotten involved with some. One early group of friends were skateboarders with a wide range of ages from 13 to 19. They did impress me with how protective they were of her. She came home over an hour late one night and I was not in a good mood over it. To their credit, they saw her home and when I pressed the buzzer they came up with her to apologise and accepted responsibility for her being late. Being the gracious person I am, I thanked them for making sure she got home safe, and bringing her to the front door, but as I was not happy at that point would they ‘kindly [censored] off now’. Part of the privilege of being the father of a girl to make young men uncomfortable at times.
These experiences helped to give me confidence in my daughters’ ability to pick her friends and who to trust. It is also a good example of the challenges facing parents with potentially vulnerable children. From when we found out she potentially had Asperger’s I constantly asked three questions for most decisions I made. Was I saying yes or no because of her age, her [censored] or because it made me uncomfortable as her father because of her Asperger’s and the extra vulnerability this added?
While I do not want to understate, or overstate, my concerns constantly in the back of my mind was a whole bunch of what ifs. What if she was attacked, raped, or her vulnerability resulted in a poor experience with the police? What if she was in an accident, suddenly found herself stuck and unable to get home or snatched. Living in the centre of London is no picnic and full of hidden threats. What if something happened to her and I could have stopped it by saying no?
What if answering my first two questions I misread the last and change my mind and say yes only to find out I had put my daughter at risk? Looking back, it is easy to see that each decision was a risk assessment. What were the risks compared to the benefits and what, if anything could we do to reduce those risks? We had started early with her in managing those risks. She had to gain our trust to earn greater freedoms. Life itself is a risk, and if we were to achieve our aims for her to be independent she would need to take risks and learn. If something went wrong, we would be there to support her.
She did well at school, her Asperger’s side relished the discipline, set out rules and expectations. Her ability to focus on something and get it done, including homework, meant even in the subjects she was not naturally good at she did well in. Her determination to achieve her own goals, such as going to university meant she kept on track.
One of the biggest changes in our relationship was being able to recognise what was going on and to be able to take a more relaxed view on issues. I stopped shouting at her and told her to go to her room. Eventually I even appreciated her melt downs, and would often send her to her room before having a quiet smile. Recently we had a chat about these times. My daughter said she always thought it was strange that I sent her to her room as punishment. This was because all her things were there, and that is where she wanted to be. She was a bit put out when I explained it was not to punish her, but to give her time to calm down and regain her control.
We learned to let her come home and decide when she was ready to be sociable. If she came in, stomped upstairs, slammed her door shut and put her music on, that was fine. When she was ready she would join us and chat. How long that took was usually a good indicator of how good or bad school had been for her that day.
While some people suggested this was us ‘walking on eggshells with her’, the truth is she was learning to recognise her own moods and learning to deal with them to reduce tension around her. Over time the need to spend time alone lessened.
To answer the question, where does Asperger’s end and my daughter start? It does not, it is way of describing that my daughter’s brain works differently and this affects how she perceives and thinks about the world around her.
When we finally got the diagnosis, it was important to me how she would be told. This meant emphasising her strengths and putting her weaknesses into perspective. The school arranged a multi discipline meeting involving the Head Teacher, SENCO, year head, year mentor and the educational psychologist. I was clear about how I wanted it explained. In the end the issue of when to tell her was taken out of our hands as my daughter was present and asked what Asperger’s was. I told her it meant she faced different challenges to others. I explained while she found it difficult to make friends other children found other things difficult, like English or Maths. I then pointed out that it also gave her different strengths. It helped to give her focus on what she needed to do, it also allowed her to see things differently to most people which came out in her writing all the time and the way she expressed ideas.
Her main concern was if this meant she was stupid and so would not go to university. I explained that she was the same person, just as intelligent as before and so long as she continued studying hard she would go to university. It just meant she had different challenges in life, and as she got older these would not be so obvious.
The truth is at that meeting I had a lot of concerns for her future. The frequent meltdowns, trying to get past some interesting interpretations of what was going on. Fortunately, those who attended the meeting were as committed to her future as we were. I think the turning point for me began when she came home one day in a happy mood. I asked her how school went and she told me one of the boys tried to steal her money, he had accused her of stealing his money. The year mentor saw it and he was punished.
Summer holiday and after summer holiday I watched as she grew into the wonderful and confident person she is now. I never dreamt she would work in a busy shop and thrive in such an environment.
The different way she views the world has led to some wonderful moments, though some her still from her early childhood. Like the day, she ran into the kitchen and asked mum what periods were. Thinking she had heard the term from school my wife began to explain it to her. She stopped when our daughter started crying and looking distressed and asked where she had heard the word. ‘The man on the telly said we would have sunny periods tomorrow’.
Or when her reception teacher told us how they had been discussing using symbols to stand for different types of weather. My daughter put her hand up and when the teacher asked her replied ‘trees’. Bemused she asked her to explain. The explanation went on for twenty minutes showing how trees could stand for every type of weather, including answering a couple of question from the other children. The teacher wanted to know if it was something we had discussed with her, I said no. But, it had not surprised me because she could be very observant about what was going on around her and had shown me previously she could see a cause and effect, and deduce a cause by seeing the effect.
And so, I will answer another question we have been asked; given the opportunity would I have cured her of Asperger’s or would do so if I could now. The answer is no, because I do not believe there is anything wrong with her, and without it she would not be the same person.
brilliant again. I love your style of writing - have you thought of writing a book of your experiences? I really think it's soemthing to consider. Perhaps even jointly with your daughter.
Carry On Educating
Or dealing with professionals
One of the biggest things to change after we found out our daughter had Asperger’s was my role as her father changed as well. To achieve what we wanted for our daughter I could no longer act just as her dad, but also as her advocate. This meant changing my attitude with some of the professionals in her life, especially at school. One of the first things to change was realising how confrontations with schools work and working the system to get what we needed. For many the usual exchange goes like this:
The child’s behaviour causes concern and so they contact the parent/s and ask them to come in to discuss their behaviour. As an example, I will use a child was caught hitting another pupil. The parent finds out that the reason for doing so was because some of the other children was bullying them, which the teacher did not see.
So, the school wants to discuss and deal with the child’s behaviour and the parent wants to defend their child and deal with the bullying which caused the behaviour. The parent goes into school ready for a confrontation knowing the school will not want to listen to their side, and from the school’s perspective they have another parent who does not want to listen or deal with their child’s behaviour. You end up with a Mexican standoff with neither side satisfied with the result because both want to air their viewpoint first and not willing to listen to the other.
To make sure there is no doubt where I stand on this, teachers and schools promote themselves as professionals, my own view is, how they approach in these sort of situations often fall short of professionalism.
Acting as my daughter’s advocate and getting the best result for her I could not afford to get caught in this trap. As the professional would not listen first, a simple technique I found was to get their concerns out of the way first. I would listen to what they had to say, ask for my daughter’s version of what happened. I would then explain to her that her response was not acceptable and then turn it on to the teacher on how best to resolve the problem. What she should do in similar circumstances and put a strategy in place that she would understand. The school is now happy that as her parent I was taking their concerns seriously and dealing with it. With this out of the way I could then address my concerns and ask what strategies we could put in place to deal with the bullying. 99% of the time it meant a win for my daughter.
It was not always issues with my daughter or other children which caused problems. I was invited to one meeting with the SENCO and year mentor to discuss an issue which had arisen. It quickly became obvious the real issue was their working relationship with each withholding information from the other. Eventually I stopped them and told them both I was disappointed in both of them, and expected much better from them as professionals. Both of them needed to put my daughter at the centre and if one of them had information the other needed I expected them to act as adults and share that information. Anything less than they were letting my daughter down. As I had a good relationship with them both I told them if necessary I would bang their heads together until they understood this principle. Both apologised to me then, and separately later.
In another dispute with them I found out one of the teachers was in trouble because of the way she had spoken to my daughter. I intervened on the teacher’s behalf, asking for both the teacher and head teacher to be present in the meeting. While I agreed the way she had spoken to my daughter could have caused problems it did not, and for a very good reason. She did not treat my daughter any different to other students and it was one of the few classes she felt safe in because the teacher was consistent, and would intervene if any student started belittling another. I made it clear that as my daughter’s dad I would be extremely disappointed and upset if any action was taken against the teacher and she had my full support. I found out later that a disciplinary hearing had been cancelled after the meeting, at the time I had no idea it had gone that far.
It was not all plain sailing for my daughter. She would want to know what I was going to say, and as I explained to her I could not tell her because I would need to deal with the conversations as they went along. The worst, in her view, was when I dropped her in it. She had quickly worked out that by pretending to cry she would get their sympathy and support. When she had not done her homework she stood in class and started crying. Sure enough, they were more concerned about what was wrong and the homework was overlooked, giving her more time. She was mortified a couple of weeks later, when I brought it up with the SENCO and told her why my daughter had been crying that day. The SENCO explained that if she kept doing this they would not know when she was being genuine or when she was being naughty and she would suffer. When my daughter asked me why I told them I asked her what made her think I would be happy with her behaviour or let her get away with it. Doing what she did also undermined me when trying to sort out issues for her.
Not all the battles with the school were easy. As part of the strategy to help her cope at a mainstream school she was offered a safe area where she could go and calm down and do her work. A couple of years later it was decided, as this room was always staffed, it would also be used to send disruptive students too, so classes could continue without disruption. My daughter’s behaviour when she got home started regress to what it was like before. When I asked her, she explained the change and said she did not want to go there any more as she did not want others thinking she was naughty. I tried speaking to the school and made my dissatisfaction known, but I was told the change was permanent so there was nothing I could do. Knowing I would not win I spoke to a friend who was also a councillor, he told me he would look into it. A couple of weeks later my daughter came home happy, they had reversed their decision. I explained I had spoken to the wine man and he had dealt with it.
The wine man
Just a quick note on my councillor friend, the wine man. As a councillor, he was aware of the drink problem many of our young people have. He was also aware of my view that because of either poor example by parents or gaining access to forbidden fruit was one of the reasons why drink was a huge problem. We allowed my daughter a glass of wine at home on special occasions when her mum would have a drink as well. When the councillors held a community event to thank the community he offered my daughter a drink of wine. When I tried to object, he pointed out it was not illegal, food was available and he was happy we would keep an eye on her. Forty-five minutes later when she had finished her bit of wine he offered her more. My daughter looked at me and I said yes, but no more after that. My daughter referred to him as the wine man after that.
My daughter has always had a healthy approach to alcohol and I have only known he once to have too much to drink and that was by accident. At a friend’s party, someone bought her, what she thought was, a coke. As she was thirsty she was drinking it too quickly not realising it had vodka in it. Feeling a little unwell she decided to go home. As I had not gone to the party my wife called me to let me know she had left and would be home soon. When she took longer to arrive than I expected I decided to walk to the pub to see if I could find her. I found her sat at a local bus stop. She had taken the right choice in going home, but on the way, it had occurred to her I might get angry at her for being drunk and so had found somewhere to sit down. I asked her if she was ready to go home, and when I saw she was unsteady on her feet I offered my arm which she took. I was not angry or disappointed in her, as I have said young people need to make mistakes so they can learn from them.
Hi There,
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I really enjoy reading about your journey, you seem to have a god grasp on how to deal with things, I don't know if you have had any conflict training, but how you describe your approach to the conflict between the teachers is spot on.
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I have had conflict training through a job role many years ago, and you are told to allow each party time to speak and air thier views and then to add your view and ask them how they will resolve the issue, the idea being if they decide how to resolve things between themselves they are more positive about the out come than if you just give them a solution as niether would really believe that it would work, I;m sure there has been a lot of researched into it in order to train people, but in reality it's just common sense Lol
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Keep writting I look forward to reading the next installment.
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GTTS
Hi GTTS,
My daughter was my training in conflict management. I went through a period of self reflection to turn things round between us and that included reflecting back on how things went wrong in previous schools and what worked. Typically where I was supporting her teachers the relationship was much better then when I lost patience with them and went in guns blazing defending my daughter.
This has made a big difference in my approach with my voluntary work and paid work. By stopping and listening to what others are actually saying and then looking for solutions to create positive changes I was able to achieve a lot. Knowing when to stand my ground has also helped to defuse difficult situations.
For example when talking to one of the residents in my voluntary one of them got really aggressive and in my face telling me he knew where I lived. The threat was very clear and intended to intimidate me, so when I laughed and said 'Of course you do, we're neighbours, we live on the same estate, I know exactly where you live' it helped to defuse the situation so we could reach a compromise.
In my paid work it has served me well in defusing people's anger, though I know that anger is often born from too many mistakes in the past and poor experience. I am careful about what I can achieve and concentrate on what I can do, and to get back to them by a certain date. Sometimes it is not possible and at the level I currently am there is little I can do as I depend on others to do things.
I'm looking forward to writing the next instalment myself. I'm going to take a step back to when she was younger and share some of the things we did together for fun and to build memories and a bond. I am hoping it will help to give dads some ideas and to encourage others to share some of the things they have done. My working sub header is: Or Computers, Pom Poms and Exploding Cow Pats.
Hi there,
It sounds as though your role is similar to mine I am customer facing but don't have full control over the whole journey from when they arrive with me and when they leave that is taken care of by a different department I just have to keep them happy and up dated Lol.
GTTS