Zoe introduces us to her daughter Maddie and explains how our Library Service has helped them both.
“Maddie loves to mark make, draw and colour in her own unique way. She loves to sing and dance and sing along to nursery rhymes. She loves to be her own individual self on her tablet and watch her own programmes. She likes to meet new people and make friends. Water and sensory play is her absolute favourite thing to do and difficult times occur when we transition from this to something else.
She dislikes walking anywhere and this can lead to tantrums and meltdowns. Transitions are the thing Maddie struggles with the most. Maddie has very set routines and we have mostly managed to work around this. We have found that sleep time is the one that affects us all, if she is awake several times through the night or wakes up after she has had a few hours and is then awake the rest of the night.
Communication is hard too as she cannot tell us exactly what she wants, and it can become a bit of a guessing game. We have worked on this, and she now comes and gets us by the hand and takes us to what she is after or needs help with.
Trying to find resources that will help Maddie with her understanding of books and how her thought process is different to others has been hard. Although the first books weren’t for right for her, we are still looking at others that are more suitable.
The sensory kit we have just loaned is phenomenal. She loves the fibre optics and the UV toys, using the blue light and making them glow. I personally have just borrowed 2 books for myself to read. One is the “Idiots Guide to Understanding Neurodiversity” and the other is the “EHCP Handbook”. These are to assist my studies in level 3 understanding autism, and also to ensure I’m up to date with current EHCP guidelines as I had to fight to secure one for Maddie last year.
We were given recommendations on relevant materials and advice on the support available. It’s been good to have a deeper understanding and knowledge of all the resources available that we had no idea about previously”.
