Our House 

Being the Dad of a severely Autistic child is very demanding. Excuse the expression, A mind fuck.

To describe our family set up, lets use a ship at sea as the analogy. The sea is life, the ship is Dodger, the captain of the vessel is Angela, the engineer is me ( Matthew).

As the engineer, I run everything that goes on in the back ground. From her toys, tv, iPad, printer etc., I have to make sure that they all work, have replacements in reserve where possible, be able to repair or acquire another (making sure that there are no differences that could upset Dodger).

Simple items like dvds, are a huge deal in our house. Where a “normal” child who has a faulty disc, you can just replace the film, and they will be happy with that, not in our house. Dodger, not only watches the movie, she watches the adverts. So hopefully you can see where I am going with this. Toy story for example, she has a disc that is 20 years old, the adverts on that will not be the same on a replacement Toy Story movie. You have to get one with the same adverts on it. This takes so much time and money to try and find the right one, but not only that, the disc itself has a picture and emblems on it, so all these have to be the same. To helps with this, we invested in a disc cleaner, not just any disc cleaner that you are lead to believe work, which they don’t, we had to buy one from America that a business would use if they were a reseller of discs. This is just part of the nightmare.

B Side Girl

You have probably heard of the phrase, she is an A side girl or a B side girl, for those who haven’t, this is in reference to a girl who just listens to the “hit songs” where as a b side girl listens to “the songs that just make the album”. Well, Dodger like her mum, is a b side girl. But instead of music, I am talking about background characters in movies (Pixar is her favourite), characters that the artist use as fillers. Yep, my daughter will point to a particular car in the movie cars, say in the stadium scene, in a far away seat, and in her own way of communicating, wants to know their name, and probably wants it as a toy for her collection, A Nightmare.

Keeping Nearly Everything

Angela and I, have to make sure that nothing gets thrown out without it going through stages of where it is put. To use the prison system as a reference. Toys and other items start of when first bought or given, start of in A, high priority, then as time passes, they go further down the system, according to use and awareness. Some items can be so surprising that they stay in A a long time, even little toys from Kinder eggs. This is because she loves taking pictures. When she gets a new toy, that toy has become the new kid on the street, the new model among models, the elite status. It is photo shoot time galore. So as they go down the list, the further away in Dodger’s room they are, until it is to the loft. No, it is very rare that items are actually thrown out. We keep the majority of all her toys, because she has been taking pictures with her iPad for years, so can look back a long way to tell us she wants this one back on the scene, but not only that, of course, Dodger has a memory of a elephant. Now that is quite a good thing to have as a “normal person”, but a bloody nightmare for us, the ones who have to then try and understand what she is remembering / asking for.

A Gallery in the loft

Yes, not only does Dodger have iCloud at her finger tips, we have had to keep so many of those pictures she has taken and printed out, Loads of black bags full of A6 size photos, sit upstairs in our loft because we are to scared to throw them out just in case.

I am apparently rubbish at finding things, well my daughter, has taken this to Olympic level and beyond. Instead of looking for something, most of the time, she refers to her iPad and points at what she wants. Bloody bugger, sometimes it could be just feet away from her, but she will just stand there pointing and moaning, saying what it is in her own way over and over and over and over again, until it is found.

Good Luck

Matthew