Work and autism
I have learnt the hard way that Joe needs a routine, he needs time, days, who’s doing what and where, he is a literal child and needs straightforward facts and routines. Sounds easy right? But it took me a long time to get to grips with it, i had lost my part time job during the recession and it was so difficult to find part time work in the same field, so i ended up with a community care role, i was led to believe the hours were flexible, great i thought, school hours only this will be a breeze… how wrong was i! It was shift work, early starts, late finishes, split shifts and 24hr shifts! I didn’t know my shift pattern until a week before the following month (if we were lucky) Well, those hours and joe did not get along, and this was due to him not knowing who would be taking him or collecting him from nursery. Childcare was hell on earth to arrange because each week was different, there was no continuity, i quickly found i was constantly chasing my tail. Joe had started at nursery and they were amazing with him, he loved being there. I noticed his behaviours were, for want of a better description, different, he would constantly cry and was always seemingly unsettled. I thought about how our lives had changed over the past few months, i arranged a meeting with the nursery manager and we talked about Joe’s challenges and how we can all work together to help him manage, the nursery manager was very honest with me, which i truly appreciated. I took my new found information to my manager at work, thankfully with being in mental health she fully understood my position and done everything in her power to help.
She was amazing, even cried with me when the floodgates opened and i poured my heart out to her, i wasn’t expecting all that, anyway we got our heads together and came up with a plan which we then implemented, and joe was a-lot calmer. He knew who was picking him up, me or his dad, that was it, no more frantically trying to arrange childcare between friends/childminders/ex husband, it was sorted and so much easier all round!
Fast forward i got another job at a local college, part time and term time only, i can’t begin to say how much easier this made our lives, i was there all the time when joe was at home and the difference in him was amazing, so that is what i have done ever since. It was difficult because i was the person trying to please everyone else, it was as if the bulb switched on and i stopped trying to be a superhuman! I burnt out, big time and still suffer the effects today. Really, i can say thanks to autism, it made me slow down and focus on the importance of my existence, me and raising my boys. Since that time, i have always made it quite clear that i am mum first and if what i am being asked to do doesn’t fit in with that, then i simply say no. It’s imperative that joe has stability, for him that mean i need to be at home when he is.
I quickly learnt that i can work and raise a child with autism, but i have to manage it very carefully. joe likes routine and this helps him to thrive. So everything i do is revolved around his needs first. Well that’s not strictly true, i like to work, i like being out the house and just being me. It gives me a refresh to be mum again. I am mostly mum but i have 9-18hrs a week where I’m not mum. But it makes no difference to Joe, because he has a set routine, 2 days a week his Dad picks him up, the rest is me. It’s worked well ever since the coin dropped all those years ago, that he needs a consistent routine.
