The pandemic created a social void for an autistic Northland teen who already grappled with social interaction. Photo / 123rf
The pandemic created a social void for an autistic Northland teen who already grappled with social interaction. Photo / 123rf
An autistic Northland teen and her mum share in their own words the challenges and ripple effects of navigating the pandemic.
Our daughter is 14 years old and is autistic, diagnosed at seven years old. She currently goes to a supportive high school, where teachers work hard to support her and accommodate her learning needs to the best of their knowledge.
The pandemic has had a substantial impact on her sense of well-being and mental health and continues to be a challenge.
Her anxiety has increased over the last two years during the pandemic. She is taking medication for anxiety, which was increased because of the intense episodes of panic attacks that she was experiencing.
Some of the impacts on her included struggling to adapt to online learning and coping with the sudden change. It hasn't been smooth sailing - a lot of school work is self-directed and requires an ability to manage and plan your day and manage spare time at home in and around learning. This is reasonable for a neurotypical child but not for a child with autism.
Learning outside of the context of school is not easy. Face-to-face learning for autistic young people plays a big part in their ability to feel connected to their school community and friends, and achieve to the best of their ability.
The teen's mum says online learning requires an ability to manage and plan your day which is reasonable for a neurotypical child but not for a child with autism. Photo / 123rf
We found this was a huge challenge - not having access to daily support left it up to us to support her to plan her day and work through the online learning tasks with her.
She could get overwhelmed with all the work emailed through to do and would often melt down. At the beginning of the day I would go through it with her one by one, and in some cases some school work just didn't get completed.
The school was really supportive in reducing the workload and expectations placed on her.
Going back to school after the last lockdown, yet another change was having to wear masks in school. It made it hard to read people, especially teachers. Not being able to see their faces as they were behind a mask meant information was missed or she misunderstood instructions.
As well as sensory processing issues, wearing a mask all day made her very tired come the end of the school day. We are still dealing with this on a daily basis.
When the teen went back to school masks added to the challenges she faced as reading people became incredibly difficult. Photo / 123rf
The yo-yo in and out of lockdowns, the feelings of uncertainty and anticipation impacted her greatly. She became overwhelmed with feelings of isolation from the things she enjoyed accessing in the community, such as playing badminton and spending time with school friends.
These created a social void for her, and in her words: "I have lost my confidence. Being in social situations, I often freeze and don't know what to say or do.
"I only feel OK with friends that know me really well. Social situations were difficult for me before but now I have social anxiety where I just shut down, especially with people I meet for the first time".
When she accessed the community and went somewhere where social distancing was required, being autistic it was really hard for her - gauging what social distancing looked like was difficult.
She would often get flustered when people would walk towards her as she struggles with proprioception - the sense of where her body is in proportion to other people - which made this a challenge for her and us.
Getting vaccinated brought on a whole different challenge, as with our daughter some autistic young people are oversensitive to pain as well as being highly anxious. If not for the support of our family doctor it may not have happened at all.
More recently, the requirement to get Rapid Antigen Tests (RATs) created a whole new level of challenges. Our daughter's sensory sensitivities and low pain threshold makes poking a large cotton bud swab up her nose an interesting time for her and the person administering the process.
Being a teenager is hard enough. Being a teenager with autism in the middle of a pandemic has been really hard for her to navigate.
Connecting with friends online is her preference these days. We have encouraged her to join a club with support, so we are hoping she will build the courage to do so.
The loss of momentum of trying new things has been difficult, the continual stops and starts make her more hesitant to try new things. Access to respite care for us as parents wasn't attainable during the lockdowns. Even afterwards, it was difficult to navigate this process and find adequate carer support workers.
But we continue to walk closely with our daughter. She is prone to moments of intense depression but we create space for her to be her, follow her cues and continue to be her soft place to fall.
The only good thing that has come out of this situation is she has developed her impressive skill in digital art and is extremely talented.
We are very proud of our daughter and continue to celebrate her achievements, despite all the difficulties she is faced with.
