Lonely Caterpillar
 

Melting moments

I always remember my dad saying to me when I complained that it was raining ‘you’re neither sugar nor salt, you wont melt’

From pretty much the day Eli was born, he hated water, from his very first baby bath he screamed the place down and still almost 6 years on he still hates water. This was one of the key factors in recognising his ASD, he has several sensory issues but water has always been a big one for him. Over the years we have tried various methods to get him past his fear but nothing has really worked. He has been to water parks, kids pools, normal adult pools, the sea etc but nothing has appealed to him. The funny thing about this is Eli is the child you will see standing singing in the rain, refusing to wear a coat and splashing in muddy puddles – apparently rain ISNT water??!!! The same logic unfortunately does not apply to having a shower because a shower ISNT rain. When we went to centre parcs in November last year, it was the first time since diagnosis we had attempted swimming with Eli, he was still screaming every day when getting washed but we had the ‘genius’ idea of taking his ear defenders to the pool convinced it was the noise and not the water that was the problem, it made a little but not a huge difference and once we left Eli had no desire to go back. By this point we had pretty much just accepted this was Eli’s ‘thing’ and he would either grow out of it or be fine living with it.

We went to Chessington this month and stayed in their safari hotel where they have a swimming pool, Megan had asked to go swimming and we asked Eli if he would like to go too expecting his usual reply but instead he said yes. We expected him to go in last 5 mins and be crying to leave but this time he stayed the full hour. The pool was very quiet as thy restrict numbers and there are no kids splash pools that get water in you eyes, these probably helped a lot. Eli went again the next day and again although a little anxious really enjoyed himself.

We where even more surprised when once we got home Eli asked again to go swimming so today we packed our stuff and took him to the local pool, thankfully it was quiet and we stayed away from any splashing, Eli clung to ben for the half an hour we where there and we are a very long way from him learning to swim or anything but he was in the water and he was laughing.

To any non asd parent and probably to some who also have children on the spectrum this might seem like a very long winded post about nothing very spectacular but to me this was a milestone finally met. This was Eli refusing to be limited. He reached out of his comfort zone, he knew it would be hard and he would be nervous but he chose to over come that so that he could find fun in something he was previously missing out on.

Eli teaches me every day how to live life, refuse to be limited, reach for the stars and even when something is difficult keep going, don’t give up, eventually you will get to where you need to be.