{"id":2023,"date":"2021-03-09T09:21:38","date_gmt":"2021-03-09T09:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/centre-for-trials-research\/?p=2023"},"modified":"2022-04-13T13:59:09","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T13:59:09","slug":"neurodiversity-during-a-pandemic-one-parents-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/centre-for-trials-research\/neurodiversity-during-a-pandemic-one-parents-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Neurodiversity During A Pandemic \u2013 One Parent\u2019s Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Unbelievably we are reaching the 1-year anniversary of our move to working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0I wanted to mark the anniversary and celebrate international women\u2019s day (March 8th 2021) by writing about motherhood, caring for my eldest son who is autistic and non-verbal, and balancing my career during the pandemic. During \u201cnormal\u201d times my wife works part-time whilst the children are in school, but is the main carer for the children outside of school hours.\u00a0During the pandemic she has been unable to work and naturally took the main home schooling role for our youngest neurotypical son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back to March 2020, the first lockdown was admittedly a bit of a novelty for the whole family. The weather was improving with the onset of Spring and after a full winter term in school our boys were happy to have some time at home with free time in the garden and our youngest was enjoying playing with his friends on the PlayStation.\u00a0My eldest son relished in the fact that there was no pressure to leave the house, a usual trigger for his anxiety.\u00a0\u00a0We spent all our time together and had fun completing jigsaws, splashing about in the hot tub and tending to the garden.\u00a0We made the most of the sunny days, thinking that this family time would be relatively short term.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We didn\u2019t worry about home schooling during the first lockdown.\u00a0It\u2019s very difficult to home school an autistic child who has a learning disability and a very clear separation between home and school.\u00a0It also seemed very unfair to a 9-year-old neurotypical boy that he had to do school work whilst his brother didn\u2019t. Our main focus was keeping our boys calm and happy.\u00a0At that point we also had the summer to look forward to and the hope that restrictions would be lifted and some normality would resume.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The autumn term brought about a return to school, but it wasn\u2019t school life as my eldest son knew.\u00a0He attends a special school which had many confirmed positive covid cases in staff and pupils.\u00a0This meant that there was little consistency or routine\u2013 a day or so in school, then a few days off, with no real prior warning.\u00a0This had a severe impact on his mental health, which resulted in challenging behaviours and self-harm.\u00a0He was miserable all of the time and it was really difficult to work out whether he was poorly or anxious as he could not communicate this verbally.\u00a0Eventually schools closed.\u00a0He missed school and the structure and routine that it brings and it was almost impossible to build a routine into home life when there are so many restrictions on where you can go and what you can do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The pressure from schools for home schooling increased in the winter term.\u00a0\u00a0I think this is the point at which life became really difficult.\u00a0My wife became very poorly so I needed to take over home schooling for our youngest, whilst caring for my wife and eldest son.\u00a0For about 4 weeks, every day was really, really hard.\u00a0Feeling that you\u2019re failing at everything is a horrible feeling.\u00a0It was impossible to attend any work meetings – I just about managed to check my emails.\u00a0I was very thankful to have an understanding line manager and the ability to use some dependents leave.\u00a0My eldest son\u2019s self-harm increased significantly, which was absolutely heart-breaking. Home schooling the youngest was awful \u2013 I really do not wish to learn anything more about the Tudors or Imperative Verbs!\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The break came when an emergency part-time placement at school was made for my eldest.\u00a0Almost immediately the self-harm stopped and it felt like the boy I had lost came back to me.\u00a0Now he is back in school full-time and is calm and regulated most days.\u00a0There are still some residual behaviours that we are working on and he currently refuses to leave our house other than for school at the moment.\u00a0Contact with the professionals who work with him has resumed (speech and language, occupational therapy and psychologist), so I am hopeful that brighter times are ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Significant challenges have been faced by all over the last year, and my story isn\u2019t a unique one.\u00a0I wanted to share my experience, not for sympathy, but with the hope of spreading some awareness of living with neurodiversity during these challenging times.\u00a0The news is quite rightly reporting on the impact of the pandemic on our children and their ability to \u201ccatch-up\u201d academically.\u00a0We must also remember those parents who have the worry of their children adapting to \u201cnormal\u201d life after a year of rarely leaving the house.\u00a0When we can socialise and visit the places that we have greatly missed, be kind to those who are behaving differently, they may be having a difficult time adjusting to \u201cnormal\u201d life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unbelievably we are reaching the 1-year anniversary of our move to working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0I wanted to mark the anniversary and celebrate international women\u2019s day (March […]","protected":false},"author":1247,"featured_media":2024,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7dIou-wD","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2492,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/centre-for-trials-research\/the-last-of-us-fungal-infection-readily-overlooked-as-significant-cause-of-human-disease\/","url_meta":{"origin":2023,"position":0},"title":"The Last Of Us: Fungal Infection Readily Overlooked As Significant Cause Of Human Disease","author":"Richard Haggerty","date":"March 13, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Fungal infection is readily overlooked as a significant cause of human disease, limited to irritating superficial infections of the skin, hair and nails or mucosal membranes (thrush), with severe disease only occurring in those with an existing underlying condition or immunosuppression. 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