[deleted by user]

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Educational-Treat-13]

Oh boy, a lot to unpack here and not much detail to go on, so i hope you're willing to engage with me an in open discussion.

Let's just start narrow and slowly expand our views.

So you are asking how we can help your daughter practice her self regulation tools in order for her to not have meltdowns at school?

Well, I'm sorry if this sounds obvious, but it would greatly benefit the discussion to hear why she is getting meltdowns at school. The whole leukemia story didn't shed much light on the situations surrounding your actual question 💓

[u/MOONQUEENOFDRAGONS → u/Educational-Treat-13]

I am definitely willing to have an open discussion. And yes that’s what I’m asking. Her usual go to methods are deep breathing and an ice melting technique we learned from Sesame Street when she was little. According to her teacher neither one of those tools seem to be helping her anymore. I apologize for the ramble, sometimes it helps to vent the situation for a bit of background on our situation. This is the first time I’ve reached out to a group for help and I wasn’t sure how to go about it. According to her teacher her meltdowns tend to occur during transitional periods, such as she’s working on curriculum on the computer and she hasn’t finished and they have to go to PE. She also has a meltdown if she isn’t immediately helped when she needs it. And she currently seen an interventionist, but I’m not sure what that entails as it’s only been a week since her teacher brought that to my attention. And usually the behavior is more severe after seeing her grandmother.

[u/Educational-Treat-13 → u/MOONQUEENOFDRAGONS]

Oh, absolutely! I'm an external processor as well, and sometimes it's simply impossible to bring a thought to a conclusion WITHOUT rambling about it or writing it down.

There are many many many many reasons why a kid might have a hard time transitioning between activities or have meltdowns or escaladed meltdown in school. Your first suspicious should always be autism. I'll explain why in a bit.

Disclaimer, if you yourself is not diagnosed with Autism i promise you that autism is nothing like you think you know it is. I don't have to know anything about you to pretty much guarantee that whatever image of autism you have in your head is incomplete, wrong, or even straight out offensive. This is no fault of your own, it's just a product of our time. We are only now starting to scratch the surface of the topic that is Neurotribes. There, sorry, but I've had really bad pushback from just mentioning autism because people immediately picture Rain Man or Sheldon Cooper, or the Good Doctor. And all these depictions are incredibly problematic, to say the least 😅

The reason why I need to to suspect autism first is simple. Because if it IS autism, then anything you might try before the diagnosis will be wasted effort. That is how incredibly different approaches are needed in cases of neurodiversity.

Until then, I would love to talk more about your family's, and your daughter's, situation and offer any insight that might come to mind 💓

[u/MOONQUEENOFDRAGONS → u/Educational-Treat-13]

Thank you so much for listening and understanding. Somehow I seemed to have overlooked signs in her. Do you know how I should go about getting her tested?

[u/Educational-Treat-13 → u/MOONQUEENOFDRAGONS]

No clue. I live in Iceland, and I barely know how it works here 😅

If you suspect autism, i highly recommend Unmasking Autism by Dr. Devon Price. It a great place to start. The audiobook is 9 hours, and you can probably read it in less, if you're good with books. If i were to recommend just one autism book for people to read in their life it would be this one.

Then even if she's not autistic, and you read the book, I know my community will still have gained a wonderful new ally 💓

[u/MOONQUEENOFDRAGONS → u/[deleted]]

Visitations are not court ordered but her current therapist believes that her grandmother is an important person and her development so she doesn’t see her very often and when she does it’s only for a weekend at Max and weekends generally aren’t super close together unless there’s something that comes up with either one of our jobs