Adventures in Metaphor

When she was five years old and in her first year of primary school, my daughter approached me one day with something to show me. I looked down into the plastic box held clutched in her small hands, lined with scraps of greenery from the garden, a few pebbles, and nestling in this tiny habitat, three, no four, glistening bodies. Slugs. Oh. I swallowed down my revulsion, like many gardeners I find slugs difficult to love and appreciate. “It’s a slug sanctuary!” she informs me proudly, and adds that she wants to take it to show Miss F, her beloved reception teacher. Fighting every impulse I agree, because of course I believe in supporting my children’s interests, don’t I? Later in the year I attend my daughter’s first parents evening. As I come into the classroom and fold my long legs onto a too small chair Miss F says with a laugh “Well, what do we say about V? She’s…” she glances at her teaching assistant seated beside her, there is a pause and they both reply in unison “Quirky!”. “She is, isn’t she” I reply happily, feeling glad that they have recognised her marvellousness, her individuality. She has always been absolutely herself.

But nearly ten years later when I am filling in a lengthy questionnaire that will form part of my daughter’s autism assessment, it is this kind of memory that gives me a pang. It turns out that traits we in our family had considered beautiful eccentricities, also map fairly neatly onto the diagnostic criteria for Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Enthusiastic interests in unusual subjects, sensitivity to sounds, clothes not feeling right, dietary oddities, struggles with friendships… Here they all were, waiting for me to spill my words into this form, the first of many. Like many autistic girls, my daughter was diagnosed fairly late, at the age of 15. There are many tangled reasons for this, some of it is because autism tends to present differently in females, and diagnostic models skew towards a male presentation. Some of it is due to ‘masking’ where autistic girls are much more sensitive to social pressures and learn early on to cope in social situations by copying their peers and hiding autistic behaviours such as stimming. They are sometimes described as social chameleons, but as we have discovered, being a human chameleon is highly energy intensive, and comes with other costs.

Choosing the right words feels so important when telling this story. It is difficult sometimes to find them, and safer to reach for euphemism and metaphor, I have to slide into this sideways. The slug sanctuary makes me think of the importance of habitat, of adaptation to a particular environment. I am happy to report that shortly after the trip to show Miss F, the slugs were returned to their more familiar ecosystem of our back garden. V and I agreed that it was unfair to keep them in captivity. For my daughter, whilst primary school had its challenges, it was on the whole a nurturing environment, where even slugs were welcomed. Beardon writes about the importance of the environment to autistic individuals, arguing that schools should focus on changing the environment for autistic students, rather than trying to change the person. His vision of Autopia is welcome, but unfortunately has not yet reached many mainstream secondary schools, including my daughter’s. Too big, too loud, too much. At this point, I must scrabble around for the euphemisms again, she was apparently “anxious” but also simultaneously “fine in school”. The absolute inanity of the word fine makes me grind my teeth in rage. For so long she was so far from fine, and ultimately we nearly lost her, she nearly slipped through my fingers.

That part is too painful to write about, and it is not my story to tell. I can only tell of the aftermath. The loving, the creation of a new environment, a soft nest, a place to recover. We returned to the rhythms of early childhood, sleep, food, a walk to the park to feed the ducks, bedtime stories. While doing this necessary work of repair, I was also required to conduct futile conversations with sympathetic head-tilting professionals who whispered phrases such as safety plans, thresholds for support, reasonable adjustments, but that is a story for another day. For now I reach for another nature metaphor, I take photos of frilly miraculous lichen growing on a road sign and share them with my daughter. I WhatsApp her links to articles, a tale of symbiosis, two organisms living entwined for mutual benefit.

This was a final piece I wrote as part of a short nature writing course at University of Bristol. I have read quite a bit about autism in the last ten years, looking for ways to support my daughter. My solution for most things in life is usually to read, read, read. Dr Luke Beardon at Sheffield Hallam University has written extensively about autism and is a passionate advocate. I also recently read and enjoyed The Lost Girls of Autism by Gina Rippon. For more about lichen, this is a good place to start: https://britishlichensociety.org.uk/learning/what-is-a-lichen