We Laughed!

My poor girl is getting roasted big time by her younger siblings! I was in my bedroom with her and Micaiah and she started trying to do push ups. She was complaining that she at least used to do four before but now can’t do any at all.

Micaiah said something about her arms…

“Why do your arms look so big and fat? It’s like you’re that obese uncle with the very big front tummy!” I forgot to even ask which ‘uncle’ this is because my girl started laughing at herself so I just joined her as I tried to see if her arm really WAS that bad.

I have one answer to the previous post. She is still gaining weight. She’s gained a kg in a week and is now heavier than her 20 year old brother. I told her our first goal will be to stabilise her weight before we even look at loss.

Then, later, her sister was outside looking all cute reading a book (The way my parents used to hate it when they caught me reading was awful.) so I silently went out to see her.

This is her when her ADHD meds have worn off. I love it.

Micaiah and Amarissa came out and then this little one said to me, “Mommy…I’m really worried…Why does Amarissa eat so much? All the time she’s eating. And now she’s fat.”🫣 Thankfully, the girl herself thought it was funny because we’d been talking about her weight while her sister read outside. And we’d checked everyone’s BMI and laughed at the results.

First, we’d calculated her BMI, the pointer moves, so it moved all the way round to red and ‘obese.’ We did mine, and mine moved to the upper end of ‘healthy.’ Yes, I know the stats are not for people like us because our body composition naturally has more genetic fat than who it was used for, and the creator apparently even said he had never meant for the BMI measurement to be used on the general public anyway. But still, our silly Discovery med aid still uses it.

Then we did her little brother and it moved less than it had moved for her and I. And then, her big brother. Our autistic who never gets hungry and eats only when I remind him to but I have four small special needs children and pain so I don’t make him eat regularly as I forget he’s my other baby…

His needle moved like two millimetres to the upper end of ‘underweight.’ My girl thought it was hilarious that his barely moved, while hers made an almost 180 degree move to the other end of the scale. At least she thinks it’s funny😩.

But she was also roasted by the assessor and I. In her absence, of course. The DISCO day one assessment was apparently lightning fast. The psychologist said I was the fastest parent she’d ever had. I bet none of the others already had four already diagnosed children! And hadn’t BEEN talking about autism for the child for probably two to three years like my friend and I have been.

The questions were very different to other assessments they use. Interesting questions. Things that opened my eyes to autistic traits I didn’t know about. Like how her refusal to get dressed and also to tidy up is clearly PDA. Duh! Because she doesn’t always verbally refuse like her younger sister does who has it and it is severe, I just thought it was only ADHD responsible for it. And things like how badly she does her chores were asked about too! And the answer is, VERY badly. Yes, she definitely ‘needs supervision’ for all her chores because she will pick up two things, throw them under the bed and she’s done. But there will 39 other things still scattered all over the door or the table.

Another one was how she wasn’t safe outside at age three. Most kiddies can go out and just faff around and then come in. She was eating weeds and flowers until she turned NINE years old! She was disobeying us and catching bees and getting stung last year.

Another one is all her climbing! It was asked about! Oh yes, climbs on table and dances about on it very dangerously. Climbs trees and hangs upside down. Climbs wardrobe shelves, kitchen counters. Yeah, an 11 year old doing that is one of the traits of autism! I didn’t know that.

And one roast was her common sense. We laughed because as she herself had observed when she assessed Amarissa alone, “She has no common sense! We mean that in the nicest possible way. But no, she has none!”

This was the first time I didn’t feel sad when answering questions. Other tests focus on deficits. What’s missing, or stopped happening. I understand why there are always tissues available. But this was about actions and behaviours and thought processes that exist and point to autism and PDA.

And of course, her total lack of social skills. Not caring that she is out in public looking crazy with pantihose on her head, never realising her skirts are always tucked into her leggings at the waist. And too friendly with everyone. The type that will happily go off with a stranger. Add how she runs away and you have danger. I plan to buy an alarm for the gate so it warns us when she goes out, though her father doesn’t care. Instead he even told her, “You want to leave? Then take your stuff that you bought, and go.” Or he told me, “I will take her to Dunoon on one of the Saturday drives I take them on, and leave her there and tell her to walk home. Then she will see if she still wants to run away.”

For the West, Dunoon is a huge slum area with a LOT of crime. One of our old church families used to live there. He has been mugged twice there. Why would you even plan to dump a child anyway, let alone there?? Another case for why he must never have unsupervised visitation with the children.

But yes, we got through much, much more than she had ever gone through so she doesn’t think we will use all the sessions we’ve booked. My body is glad about that. But so far, the answers point to autism with PDA.

And the BMI scale is on the middle of obese and still moving. Oh boy! And I just realised I forgot to hide food last night. To be fair, she herself roasted herself. I sent her birth sister a recent photo and like birth mom two days before, she commented on the cheeks and called her her twin as she too is overweight and has chubby cheeks.

My girl asked why she’d written “twin” when her (sister’s) cheeks are smaller than hers.😅😅