Tilly is 23 days into being 11. My little girl is growing up. She’s grown so much over the last few months. Her skinny little frame is filling out and my once waif-like child who I could scoop up with one arm is now impossible to lift.
Her understanding has progressed so much more than I thought it would; she has become extremely headstrong and is focused on getting what she wants – you go girl! She uses a couple of signs with confidence every day and, in most situations, has no problem non-verbally communicating her needs and wants (you’d like a bath? Yep, just take your nappy off and throw that and the bottle of bubble bath at Daddy while he’s on a Zoom conference call, that’ll make your needs known!).
Her once limited diet has been replaced by a desire to eat EVERYTHING! And her stretch upwards has meant that she’s now able to reach most shelves, window sills, hiding places for food that I try to sneakily put out of sight. Seriously, how did she know that I hid the block of cheddar cheese on the recipe book shelf to stop her continuously gorging on cheese? Did she watch me hide the sweets in my office? She must have because she just emerged from my little (unused) haven with a half-eaten packet of fruit pastilles! And god help you if you’re eating something that she fancies a bite of – she’ll just dive right in there and take a chunk out of it. Cheese scones appear to be her favourite at the moment. You’ve been warned!
But whilst all of this is amazing, funny, cute and wonderful – it’s also exhausting, scary and heartbreaking all at the same time.
Her understanding has progressed….but nowhere close to the level of an 11-year-old. I’d still be scared to put a number on it but she’s definitely around toddler age. 
Imagine having a toddler who is playing on the beach. You tell them it’s time to leave, which they hear and understand… but they refuse to get up and go because they’re having too much fun. You try to reason with them, then try using an ultimatum if that doesn’t work, “if you don’t get up now, you won’t get an ice-cream”, and as a final resort, you have to physically remove them from the beach. Try doing that with an 11-year-old girl who understands the part about “the beach is finished, it’s time to go” but doesn’t understand the reasoning or ultimatum part. Your only option would be to physically remove them. But they’re just too heavy to lift and carry off the beach now. It is physically impossible and utterly exhausting. Not to mention knowing that lots of eyes are watching you have this battle, whilst judging, whispering or even sympathising. But it’s become so ingrained in you, that you put on that armour and ignore it. It’s not until you eventually get off the beach, and start walking away that you can take a breath, loosen your tight shoulders and take stock of what just happened. Again. Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you cry. But you know it’ll happen again so you have to shake yourself off and get on with it.
Unfortunately, on most trips we take nowadays, we have this battle. She wants to attempt to walk and explore a little. Wonderful! But if she’s not ready to move on, then she won’t! Trying to lift her back into her buggy when she’s resisting is a 2 man job and, even then, it kills my back. But I don’t want to force her to stay in the buggy – it’s great that she wants to use her muscles to walk a little more – but I’m scared of the day that I’m on my own and I simply can’t lift her off the ground and we’re stuck.
She has always had an obsession with water, and uses it for play, sensory input and to help her relax. As she’s had nowhere else to go during lockdown and she doesn’t have any typical play skills, water play is her go-to activity. We’re up to 3 baths a day now (and our bathroom has been wrecked by her constant splashing). In between the baths, she might attempt to fill a tub from the kitchen tap, but doesn’t know the difference between hot and cold and always goes for the piping hot tap, and although she can turn it on, she doesn’t know how to turn it off again. Or she might continually drag me out to the garden and ask me to fill buckets with cold water from the outdoor tap – even in cold, windy or rainy weather. If I don’t fulfill her requests for this water play, the tears and tantrums ensue.
The support during lockdown has been non-existent. Nada. Nothing. Left to our own devices. I had to down tools on my social media business almost entirely as caring for Tilly is a full-time role. My husband Andrew has a full-time job, and he’s the one who pays the mortgage so giving him the time and space to work from home has been essential. He has been able to juggle his diary a little to give me some respite each day, and to allow me to homeschool our 8-year-old son. I have also managed to continue with the at-home version of the fitness classes I did pre-lockdown to keep my mental health in check – sometimes done whilst trying to run to the kitchen for yet more snacks for Tilly!
But now that we are 5 months down the line, I will admit that I’m feeling really quite broken. Even the few hours respite I now get each week from my parents and Tilly’s Personal Assistant aren’t giving me the time I need to take stock of life, my business and our whole family’s needs.
I’m so, so scared about how we, her parents, will cope with her in years to come. Will we get any help? Would we want to enlist the help of strangers if that is an option available to us? What do we do if she becomes too difficult to handle physically? There have been so many questions pop into my head over the years that I used to be able to easily push away because it was “too far ahead to worry about” – but they are now becoming very real and valid concerns.
Over the years I’ve found that writing about our life and how I’m feeling can help to get me out of a dark place. By sharing with others the fears I have about how we’ll cope with an even bigger Tilly; the absolute exhaustion I feel on a day to day basis; the overwhelm and anxiety of constantly being on alert (what if she runs that piping hot tap and I’m not there, or pulls out the sharpest knife from the drawer without me noticing because she wants some cheese cut, or wanders away when I take my eyes off her for a second?) I hope will allow others to understand what life in our little world is like.
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