Popz is loving the freedom of experimenting with her makeup. It is so quick for us as parents to ask her to “stop drawing all over your face” or to suggest “what about doing some pretty makeup”. But then we wouldn’t get to see what’s going on behind her ASD mask.
In September 2021, Popz was diagnosed with ASD, Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Even the term sounds wrong, it’s not a DIS-order – it’s a diagnosis.
Popz thinks differently; she has a pure heart and genuinely just wants to please everyone. She has a creative flare, she see’s and hears what is happening and said to her in a literal manner. She doesn’t see a reason why anyone wouldn’t mean what they say – whether that is a positive comment or a negative comment.
Peach and I have to be so mindful with what we say around Popz. The phrase said to a passing friend “see you later” to us as adults is a loose term of getting together sometime over the next week/month or even year. To Popz, she hears it as we’ll be seeing them later today.
So when Popz took herself to her bedroom this afternoon, telling us that she wants to play with her toys, we thought nothing of it. 2 hours later she came down showing us her makeup creation.
“This is what I have boxed up all inside me – things people have said to me and now I feel”.
I’m not going to lie, it broke my heart to see this. Hearing my baby at 11 years old telling me that someone has called her ugly, that she feels lonely and left out. But I listened to her, I heard what she was saying and I showed her love and she showed me how proud she was of herself.
Popz did two sides, one of all the negative things she has boxed up inside her “beaten”, “Ugly”, “lonely”, “left out”, “I hate you”, “dwarf”, “rage”, and one of all the positive…
“Company”, “Involved”, “Love”, “Beautiful”, “Care”
I’m going to be focusing on filling our girls “boxes” and minds with lots more positive words.
Dixon Darlings 