Thoughts from the budding Daisies - part 2

Guest blogger, 8 year-old Magic Bunny, tells us about autism from her perspective.

Coping with autism at school

Over the past few years, school has been rather difficult for me with autism, because trying to juggle friendships, schoolwork and autism isn’t easy.

I can explain the past years of school in lightbulb metaphors.

There are two lights in my kitchen, and this is how school has been using the lights:

Reception: School is good, people are nice, etc. 💡💡, until my very nice reception teacher leaves (one light goes out). 💡

Year One: My teacher is horrible, friendships aren’t great 💡, so another light goes out. My teacher then moves away.

Year Two: My teacher doesn’t like Mummy, a ‘friend’ manipulates my feelings (this lightbulb is hanging by a thread right now!), so yeah, not great..... until the TA says that my ‘friend’ can’t control me (Yay! A light goes on).💡

Start of Year 3: The boys are awful, my new teacher doesn’t listen to me , and I think to myself, Why should I even bother going to school? (the light bulb smashes). 💔

But then I moved schools.

Currently: Friendships are great, people understand my autism (yay!), so, I think that we are making good progress, don’t you? 💡💡

Masking:

A common thing for autistic people to do is to mask. Masking is basically hiding your feelings and pretending everything is okay when it’s not. At my old school, I tended to mask a lot without realising, and it made me feel really upset, because it’s hard to pretend to be someone you’re not all the time.

Let’s play a game:

Pretend that something really upsetting has happened or you are worried about something. Ask a friend or an adult to come up to you and ask, “Are you okay?” Say that you are fine, even though something is wrong. This is masking.

Masking is like acting. Say you were invited to join a show after something really upsetting happened. You write back and say yes. You have to pretend to be someone else on a stage, because a character that’s not you has a different personality and different emotions, AND they affect the story differently. So masking really IS like acting.

They don’t understand:

Many times, people have not understood my autism and my specific needs, which has made me sad. I want more people to be aware of autism and how it affects people like me (hence, NeonDaisy!).

In Year Two, Mummy tried to say to my teacher that she needed to help me and not just leave me to get on with school. But my teacher didn’t listen. (Outrageous, I say.) But if she wouldn’t listen, who would?

The SENCO. Yes, she was lovely. She organised for me to have my autism assessment, which led to my diagnosis (Hooray!). She kept making so many amazing things happen. Until she left.

But now people DO understand.

And I want as many people as possible to understand.

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Magic Bunny is an 8 year-old guest blogger for NeonDaisy