Washing A Weighted Blanket

A lot of autistics - myself included - love weighted blankets. They're not only good for autistics from a sensory point of view, but they're also good for any mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. I always describe it to people as "a big, one-person hug" and I sleep under mine every night.

Obviously with me using it so much, and also with having 2 young kids around as well, it's bound to get dirty sooner or later. My daughter got mine dirty a while ago and it ended up sitting in the corner being unused for ages because I had no idea how to clean it. I eventually got round to finding out online how to clean it so I thought I'd explain how to do it here, as well as the mistakes I made so you don't repeat them.

First of all, weighted blankets do tend to be machine washable, although due to the weight of them it's best to hand wash them unless you've got access to an industrial washing machine. The same applies with tumble dryers.

Hand washing is simple. If you're washing the whole blanket you'll need a bathtub or something of a similar size to wash your blanket in. Regardless of how much of the blanket you want to clean you'll also need a mild detergent and somewhere to dry it. I'll explain the process here as though you're washing the whole blanket.

• The first thing to do is to fill your bathtub with enough lukewarm water to completely submerge your blanket, and add between half to a full cup of mild detergent depending on the size of your blanket. Strong chemicals, such as bleach for example, can damage your blanket so it's best to avoid them. Make sure the detergent is spread evenly by running your hand through the water.
• Put your blanket fully submerged in the water and gently clean it by kneading it. It's best to do it in sections so you know where you've cleaned and where you need to go next.
• Once you've cleaned it with soapy water, drain it all out of the bath and rinse the blanket all over with clean water, I used the shower rather than the bath tap as being able to move it freely made it a lot easier. Brush or swish the blanket with your hand to make sure all the soapy water has gone. Do this until the water from the blanket runs clean. When I cleaned mine the water coming from it was quite dark so it's easy to tell.
• Get rid of as much water as you can from the blanket, although in my experience you're not going to get rid of anywhere near all of it. Avoid wringing the blanket out like you would with most clothes as it can misshape the blanket. Instead it's best to fold it or roll it on top of itself and press on it to squeeze out the water. The tighter you roll it the better, although my blanket is too big to roll it effectively.
• The final stage is drying. You may need to think about where you've got the room to hang your blanket out to dry, which I found quite tricky. If it's the middle of summer and you have somewhere to hang it outside then it's easy enough but I had to get slightly creative with mine, which I'll go into shortly.

There are 2 mistakes that I made when I washed mine. The first one was that even though it was just a small area that my daughter got mucky I thought it was best to wash the entire blanket. I could have just washed the dirty area, which would have been a lot quicker and easier and I could have probably done it in the sink instead of the bath. The other mistake I made was that I assumed that I could just hang it up to dry on the kids' climbing frame in the garden overnight. The issue with that was that it was in winter and I underestimated how cold it'd be. My thinking was that even if the temperature doesn't dry it, it should still drip dry at least to a certain extent. I was wrong. I woke up in the morning to find it frozen solid. And yes, it was a stupid thing for me to do in the first place. After that I looked around in the house for where I could put it to dry next to a radiator. I ended up unfolding the decorating table on its side in the bedroom, and laying my blanket across it next to the radiator. I kept checking it every now and then and rotating it as it dried. So the lesson from that is plan ahead where and how you'll be able to dry it.

Hopefully this post has been useful as weighted blankets are quite popular among neurodivergents in general, not just autistics. If it's helped you or if it's been interesting please click Subscribe at the top of the page and follow me on social media. I'm @DepictDave on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and you can buy me a coffee at my Ko-Fi account here.

[Image description: Black and white outline image of a washing machine. The drum has water in it, and in the water is the text "10kg" as that's the weight of my blanket. Under the washing machine is "Autism" in rainbow colours and "Washing A Weighted Blanket" under that.]

Is My Son Autistic?

My son is 3 years old, about to turn 4 after Christmas. There have been things I've noticed about him that make me wonder if he might be autistic like me. Just little things and only occasionally, but there are things there making me suspect it nonetheless. We know that autism is (or at least can be) genetic, so it would completely make sense for any child of mine to potentially be autistic too. Before we dive in, I'm not saying that any given traits listed here are necessarily autism-related, rather that I feel there are too many of them to not at least consider the possibility of autism.

The first thing I've seen in him is that he seems to like lining things up neatly. I haven't seen him lining things up too often in the traditional sense, but he definitely likes building huge towers out of Lego and other things, which is essentially just lining things up but vertically instead of horizontally. He builds towers as big as he can with Lego, with Play Doh pots, sometimes with cushions. And I've found him lining things up on the floor like cars and dinosaurs before.

Something else he does is that when there's a loud noise such as a hoover or a hand dryer in a public toilet he'll cover his ears and complain that it's too loud. This is the one that I'm least convinced about being an autism trait because his sister does it too, and it never seems to actually upset him as such so I'm wondering if that's maybe just a child thing, but still. The possibility of autistic hypersensitivity can't be ruled out.

Speaking of hypersensitivity, he often complains that his eyes hurt. He had his eyes checked recently at the hospital and they found nothing wrong, which for me strengthens the case of it being a hypersensitivity to light. To be honest I haven't specifically noticed what his environment is usually like when his eyes hurt, but he has told me that it's when the lights are bright. I think it's definitely worth me noting down what the surroundings are like in future when he complains. The fact that he's had his eyes checked with no problems found is very similar to how I had my hearing checked several years ago because people noticed I couldn't hear them, yet the testing found that my hearing was fine. His eye pain could potentially be a light sensitivity just like my "hearing" issues are actually auditory processing issues.

After me mentioning that he might be autistic, my wife started to notice little things like he doesn't make eye contact that much. It's not something I've noticed myself, but that's maybe because I don't tend to do well with eye contact either. There's been times when she's had to tell him off that she's told him to look at her and he never does. It wasn't until I mentioned autism that she then realised that maybe that's why and demanding for him to look at her isn't doing any good. Because of my own aversion of eye contact, whenever I've told him off I've always told him to listen to me instead of to look at me.

He can be very hyper emotional at times. Sometimes when he shows this it can easily be put down to simply being a toddler and getting upset or throwing a tantrum as toddlers do. But other times it's not quite so subtle. When he watches anything on TV that even has the slightest bit of peril or threat he suddenly decides he doesn't like it and wants it turned off. It happened with Toy Story 1 and 2 when Buzz and Woody both lost their arms, it happened at the beginning of Ice Age when Scrat struggled to get that nut only to end up getting trampled on by a mammoth, and it even happened with the TV adaptation of The Gruffalo when the Gruffalo picked the mouse up to eat him, although he soon got used to that one. I think this is a sign of hyper empathy because he is a very caring boy and is usually happy to help or share with other people.

There are a couple of things that he is/was late at developing although I don't think that he's late to the point of being abnormal or causing a problem. His old childminder suggested that we had him referred to speech therapy because he was a bit behind but we've always put that down to him being born 8 weeks premature. The speech therapist wasn't worried and from memory I think they agreed with us. With that said there are certain sounds and words that he's currently struggling with saying so he's in the middle of being referred again, although from what we can tell it seems to be more to do with tongue tie this time than autism. We've also been trying to toilet train him for a while now, and it's only in the last couple of weeks or so that he's reached the point where he'll tell is he needs the toilet or he'll go to the toilet on his own so we've been able to completely switch him from nappies to pants until bed time. If I'm honest I think the main reason for him being delayed is that I've not been able to keep on top of training him like I really should have. He had gone backwards with toileting for a while until his nursery suggested trying him in just pants for a full day and he just took to it from there.

So there are a few reasons I think my son might be autistic. I'm not a psychologist or an expert but I think there's enough there to wonder about it. It doesn't make any difference to me or his mum whether he's autistic or not so we've got no plans to get him assessed. Whether he is or he isn't autistic nothing will change, and he's still the same handsome, funny, kind and caring boy that he's always been. All it means if he is autistic is that he's like me, which I can only see as a good thing.

I'm glad to be back to blogging after taking last week off. Let me know your thoughts and comments on this week's post and do the usual - subscribe with the button at the top, and follow me on Twitter @DepictDave. Also don't forget to send me your questions on Twitter using #AutQA for the Q&A post that I've got planned next week. You've only got 1 week to get your questions to me so do it now!

Victim Blaming: A Sudden Realisation

The reason I write this blog is because it's a way to use my limited time and skills the best way I can in autism advocacy. Any dealings in the world of autism will inevitably cross over into the mental health world although autism in itself isn't a mental health condition - it's just a difference in brain structure. It can also cross over into the way people treat each other and the way we raise our kids. This week's blog post isn't directly about autism other than being about the personal experience of an autistic person, but it does address my treatment at school and the issues it has caused. It's something that I suddenly realised today (although there is a delay of a few weeks between me writing this post and its scheduled publishing date) and it's something that the more I think about it the more I'm really unhappy about it. That being the heavy level of victim blaming that I was put through during my school years.

As a kid I was always bullied. Badly. On the surface of it, it was mostly for being overweight but I think I might have mentioned in a previous post that although I was severely overweight I wonder whether I would have been bullied anywhere near as much if I was neurotypical. It's clear to me that nobody knew I was autistic at the time but I must have been outwardly "autistic enough" to show some sort of difference or weirdness, and although they couldn't pin it on anything specific as they didn't know I was autistic they still saw fit to harass me for it. Targeting my weight was just the most obvious and easiest way they could do that. Why else would the autistic fat kid get bullied when the neurotypical fat kids were all treated absolutely fine? I tried countless times to get help to stop the bullying but my school did nothing about it. I was simply told to ignore the bullies and they'll stop. So I ignored them. They didn't stop. There were at least a couple of times when the bullying got so bad and/or I'd put up with it for so long that I reached breaking point (which takes A LOT for me) and I snapped and I physically lashed out at the bullies. Each time I reached breaking point and got into a fight the school would tell my parents "I'm not surprised, it's been a long time coming" and even "It's been heartbreaking to watch how the other kids treat him." Yet they were happy to punish me after they sat back, watched the abuse that the other kids put me through and did absolutely nothing about it. These teachers at my school were the so-called responsible adults whose care I was under. This is neglect and victim blaming, and it's absolutely not OK in any way, shape or form. It wasn't OK at the time and it'll never be OK due to the lasting damage that it's done to me, even now 16 years after I left school (I'm 32 - that's half my life!).

Because of the victim blaming I was put through I now feel like everything is my fault, or at least is going to get turned around and used against me. If there's something I don't agree with or where I should put my point across I don't, simply because growing up I was always told to ignore these things, encouraged to bottle it up, and then punished when it caused me to lash out. What kind of message does that send to a child at school age? It does nothing but show that their thoughts, their feelings, their opinions don't matter, and that when they reach out for help they'll either be ignored or have it turned around against them. If I'm completely honest I don't know which is worse. And yet people always wonder why I'm the quiet one and keep myself to myself. Your childhood is where you and your view of the world are shaped in preparation for adulthood. If your school can't (or in my case won't) set you up properly for adulthood then not only is it setting you up for failure in later life, but the school itself is failing in its duty of care.

I've always had a hard enough time talking to people and building relationships since I'm autistic but my experience at school certainly didn't help matters. The vast majority of my bullies at school were boys and I'm convinced that this is the reason I've always got on a lot better with girls. In fact, I'd even go as far as saying that I often feel intimidated by men to a certain degree, especially the ones who are overly laddish, macho and full of bravado. I would also partly blame this for my difficulty in forming romantic relationships as well. Because I always got on better with the girls I almost always found myself friend zoned when I hoped for something more. I'll leave the relationship side of it there because I've already addressed it in my previous post on Sexuality. Feel free to check it out if you want to delve deeper.

I have to wonder if things would have been different had it been known I was autistic. Both my primary and secondary school were equally guilty of ignoring the bullying that I went through, but looking back I think there was 1 teacher at my primary school who went as far as bullying me himself. I can't remember much about that part of my life but what I do remember is how he made it obvious that he didn't like me. I remember being put in detention a lot specifically by him although I really can't remember the reasons for it, and I'm not convinced that I knew/understood the reasons at the time. Based on what I can remember I think he probably just didn't like me because I was different, and I'm guessing that there was something I used to do that he saw as acting out when in fact it was most likely just autistic child behaviour. Either way, the way he treated me as well as the way my bullying was handled were unacceptable. I can't help thinking about whether this would have happened if the schools knew I was autistic? Would both primary and secondary schools have done more to protect me if they knew I was autistic? But then on the other hand, would an autism diagnosis have just given the bullies 1 more thing to target me for and made things worse? Would school have done more to establish and accommodate my needs outside of the bullying if they knew?

It's a shame that these questions will never be answered, and it's even more shameful that my experience at school has left me with these scars that I'll have for the rest of my life when they could have easily been prevented. It's strange how I never even thought about it this deeply until I saw a post on Twitter recently about a school that was guilty of victim blaming and it resonated with me so much. It's also strange how even though I always knew what happened at school it never really occurred to me how bad it really was until it got given the name victim blaming. I really wish that there was something I could do about it in terms of the specific schools I went to, but at least by blogging about my experience as well as about autism as a whole I'm raising awareness and educating so that hopefully the same kind of thing doesn't happen to other people.

It's been a bit of an emotional one this week but I hope it's helped put some things into perspective and helped your understanding. As always, feel free to comment if you've got any thoughts to share, and don't forget to follow the blog with the "Subscribe" button at the top of the page as well as following me on Twitter @DepictDave.

Pablo Thinks Differently

This week I wanted to talk about something that I could have included in my Autistic Parenting post the other week, but didn't think about it until afterwards. It's something that with being both autistic and a parent I feel strongly in support of. That being the kids' TV show Pablo on CBeebies (or RTÉ Jr in reland).

The show follows the adventures of an autistic 7 year-old named Pablo as he tries to tackle life's difficulties from an autistic perspective with the help of his animal friends in his imaginary art world. The show starts and ends with live-action footage and has a cartoon animated middle portion as Pablo enjoys drawing and it's the animal characters and art world that he draws that help him work through his problems. Each of his animal friends represents a different autistic trait as alluded to by the theme song:

Ren is a canary who represents stimming - mainly in the form of flapping as she's a bird.

Noasaurus (often shortened to Noa) is a dinosaur who represents the anxiety that often comes with autism.

Draff is a giraffe and represents the intense interests and hyper focus side of autism through his knowledge about lots of things and his catchphrase "In point of fact."

Tang is an orangutan who represents difficulty reading cues and social awkwardness. He's also quite clumsy which is common in autistics.

Mouse is a mouse (as the name implies) who represents hypersensitivity to sensory input.

Llama (again, as the name implies) is a llama who represents echolalia. She doesn't have any of her own lines but repeats bits of what the other characters say.

Pablo has an all-autistic cast, which is a first in TV history. The aim of the show is to humanise autism to its target audience (children from 0 to 6 years) and shows Pablo dealing with his problems in a way that children can understand so as to increase understanding and acceptance. For example, the episode "The Fiona" shows Pablo meeting his mum's friend Fiona and trying to process and piece together all the parts of her appearance to work out who she is. His hyper focus makes him see her curly ginger hair, her bright green top and its big red buttons etc. My favourite part of this episode is while everyone tries to work out "What's a Fiona?" Llama is seen bouncing around repeating "Fiona, Fiona, Fiona, Fiona..." The point that the show gets across is that Pablo tackles all of his problems himself and works out a solution in the end, showing that autistics are not only autonomous but also capable of making decisions and problem solving for ourselves. This is driven home even more by the fact that although Pablo is completely verbal in his art world, in the real world he is rarely verbal. In fact, in the whole of series 1 I think he's only been given 2 lines in the real world segments but I could be wrong about that.

All in all I think Pablo as a TV show is a fantastic concept that's much needed in today's world, and the execution of is brilliant from all involved. I would highly recommend checking it out, even if you don't have kids! If you're interested in autism at all it can give a good insight into an autistic child's mind. Series 2 started this past Monday, and it's also on Netflix so there's plenty of opportunity to have a look at it.

So that's my post about Pablo. Not the longest post I've written but it would have just been added onto the Autistic Parenting post had I thought of it at the time. As always, don't forget to click the "Follow" button in the side bar and the "Subscribe" button at the top, as well as following me on Twitter @DepictDave.

Autistic Parenting

This week's post is just a short one because of things that are going on in the family, so I haven't had much time to write. I wanted to talk this week about autistic parenting. What I'll do at the moment is briefly discuss my main struggle with being an autistic parent, then I might come back to add some other points to it at a later date. Being an autistic parent isn't to be confused with being an autism parent. Let me start by clarifying the difference between the two:

Autistic parenting: Being both autistic and a parent, regardless of your children's neurotype.
Autism parenting: Being the parent of an autistic child.

I needed to clarify that because autism parents have a reputation of misunderstanding their child's autism to the point of viewing it as a horrible disease that needs to be cured and eradicated from the world. I'm not trying to tar all autism parents with the same brush as I've seen evidence of some autism parents embracing their child's autism as well as the autistic community by actively reaching out to us for help so that they can better support their autistic child. But the reputation remains, and is one of the reasons I write this blog; in an effort to ease the misunderstanding and the stigma, and so that people can better understand their autistic loved ones, autsim/autistics as a whole, or even themselves if they're on the spectrum (with or without a diagnosis).

Anyway, it's autistic parenting that I'm looking to focus on here because I'm a dad of 2 young toddlers, and obviously I'm autistic. This brings its own unique set of challenges compared to neurotypical parenting because of the way we think and process the world. The main thing I struggle with (at least as far as I can tell) is picking my battles. By picking my battles I mean determining which arguments with my kids are worth fighting for even though it may upset them and cause lots of drama, and which arguments are worth just giving in to give everyone an easy life. An argument that's worth sticking out is for example if your child wants to play with a knife. If you say no your child will most likely get upset (or at least mine will) that they can't have what they want, but it's dangerous for them to play with knives so the answer is a firm no before they even get a hold of one. An argument that's not worth fighting might be like the other day when my daughter wanted to wear a pullup instead of a nappy. Initially I said no because the pullups are for her brother to help him potty train and I don't want to waste them. My wife's input then was to just let her wear the pullup because they're about the same price as nappies anyway and it just saves a lot of drama. So Girl Child got her way.

I'm very much an all or nothing kind of person in that I either go to one extreme or the other in most situations. So I try to do/get my kids to do everything "the right way" as much as I possibly can. With the example above, should the nappies be kept for my son because that's why we bought them? Yes, they should. But thinking about it, does it really matter if my daughter wants to wear one instead? Not really. It's still covering her for when she wees or poos. All it means is we've got 1 less pullup and 1 more nappy than we would normally have had.

I'm going to leave it there for this week because I'm short on time, but don't forget to follow with the button in the side bar, subscribe with the button under the header, and follow me @DepictDave on Twitter to keep up if I post any updates later on in the week.

UPDATE
I've got lots of spare time over the next few days so thought I'd pop back and talk a bit more on autistic parenting since I didn't have much time before. This lack of time is common for all parents, but it severely limits how much time you can set aside for self care, which is often needed more by autistics than neurotypicals. In my particular case it's difficult because my wife works during the day while I look after our 2 kids, then I work from tea time until midnight which means I'm pretty much on the go all of the time except for the 6 hours or so that I'm sleeping. Self care is needed by everyone from time to time, although it's absolutely crucial after things like autistic meltdowns, burnouts etc, and I've had a couple of incidents where I've been burnt out over the last year and a bit. Admittedly, the burnouts were caused by lots of different things happening all at once (the car needing repairs family illness, work and a few other things) but the way the kids were acting in the period leading up to me burning out seriously didn't help. They were just toddlers being toddlers - they all have good days and bad days - but this was just a couple of really bad days with them being grumpy, clingy and generally difficult to handle. I think I mentioned this in my previous post about burnout but I had to just spend the day at home on my own either in bed or laid on the sofa to recover while my wife took the kids out somewhere for the day.

A lot of autistics have sensory issues that can make parenting difficult. These can be to do with any of the senses. The most obvious one being noise because children are really, really noisy, especially when they get over excited. The lack of sleep that comes with parenting young children also doesn't help. I personally find myself much more sensitive to the cold when I'm tired, and the sound of my screeching 3 year-old hurts my ears and head more.

There are always things that can help with any sensory issues, but one issue that might not seem so obvious is an aversion to being touched, and this can cause issues with breastfeeding. Having supported my wife through 2 births and the breastfeeding journeys that followed I can absolutely agree with the saying "breast is best". But that doesn't mean that your baby absolutely has to be breastfed because it may or may not be right for you, especially with a touch sensitivity issue. While breast might be best in general terms, you can only do the best that you can for you and for your baby. I understand from experience with my wife that some women might be absolutely adamant on breast feeding (especially with an all or nothing personality like mine that I discussed earlier) but there is always bottle feeding that you can try if breastfeeding doesn't work for you. Nobody will demonise you for bottle feeding - in fact, quite the opposite here in the UK where it's mostly deemed more acceptable to bottle feed, at least in public. As long as you're doing the best you can for yourself and your child, then that's all anyone can ask of you. And that applies to all aspects of parenting, not just breast/bottle feeding.