Caroline Foran

We were on eggshells.

And we had laid out loads of cushions on the grass and he wanted me to sit on this particular pillow and he wanted me to lie down.

And we were having some food and I was like, no, ma'am, you can't lie down because I can't eat while I'm lying down.

And he's like, no, you have to because he had laid them out in this way.

He had this vision in his head of how things should go.

And...

I was like, no, I'm not doing that.

And it went on and on and on to the point that he was so lost in distress.

He couldn't breathe until I was like, oh my God.

Oh, okay.

I'm just going to like, I'll just put my head in the pillow.

And then he was like, oh, okay.

Okay.

When I showed that to like my friends who are psychologists and stuff, especially child psychologists, they're like, this is not just a kid who's just trying to get their way.

This is a...

a loss of perceived autonomy in his world that he feels is so important that he doesn't feel safe then when he can't put things in order the way he wants them to do.

But all of that was happening all of the time because we didn't know what was going on, because he was so dysregulated.

So it was all fires all day, every day.

He'd just be like, I'm not doing it.

And we could sit there for hours.