Le confinement, pour tous est un vrai défi. Mais pour les enfants autistes et leurs parents, c'est encore plus difficile. Penny Wincer, en Angleterre, nous livre les difficultés de son fils autiste de dix ans. Et confie ses stratégies pour l'aider à supporter le confinement.
<< My son cannot even really cope very well with a teacher being off sick, so you can imagine that the kind of changes involved in everything being shut down were absolutely immense for him. At the moment I would say that it’s actually not very safe for him, and it’s difficult for me to keep him safe in the house. He can have quite explosive meltdowns and get extremely agitated and upset, and be a danger to himself, me and his sister. I think the most important thing has been to not have too much pressure. I’ve treated it very much like a weekend, which means I’ve allowed him to use his iPad quite a lot which he is not usually allowed to use during the week. That helped give him something to do but also to reduce his anxiety because he likes to watch things repeatedly because they are quite soothing for him. The other most important thing has been getting lots of movement and sensory input. What we have been doing is obstacle courses inside the house - I bought a mini trampoline and we have some other sensory equipment we have been using. Loads of wrestling on the bed, lots of roughhousing and squeezing and allowing him to do pushing and pulling and balancing and things like that. >>
Pour aider les parents à soutenir au mieux leurs enfants autistes, le site autisme-france.fr a aussi mis des ressources en ligne.