“We moved in with Mum and Dad in their four-bedroomed Horotiu house. There were eight of us in all.
We enjoyed it, we found it a bit easier. It was good having them all around. Everyone who stayed here are Te Aurere’s favourite people.
We thought during Lockdown we were going to be with Te Aurere every minute of the day and he was going to miss out on his kaiako and key workers.
We found Lockdown was really a blessing for us as a whānau.
The absence of wider whānau was certainly challenging but thankfully we still had Nana, Koro, uncle, and each other there to help carry the load of looking after Te Aurere.
It was an opportune time for us to teach them and help create a greater understanding of what takiwātanga (in his own time and space) is and how it affected Te Aurere.
We had to help Te Aurere through the change of his routine and try to get him to understand this was our new ‘normal’ for the time being. We had to become creative and innovative in ways we could engage with him and either continue his normal activities or otherwise implement something new in the absence of these activities and routines. It was important that we ensured Te Aurere was stimulated and still had opportunities to learn and grow during Lockdown.
Our support worker Suzanne from McKenzie Centre was amazing, we had weekly Zooms scheduled with her just to touch base and share our progress and receive any advice for challenges we were facing.
His behaviour and his sleep improved immensely; we got him into a pretty good routine. At the start, he had one sleep, but that was half an hour. You literally put him to sleep and he was awake again.
In the third week of Lockdown, he learned how to climb the fence. We came outside and he’d jumped over the fence and was out on the driveway. Luckily, we live rurally and in a small community, but that was him telling us he was sick of being within the gate, so we did more walking, and more bike rides.
Prior to Lockdown, he did have a lot of anxiety going into different environments.
In terms of his development, he came on so much more after Lockdown.
We found that we could engage and interact with him in ways that would benefit him, and his learning, and it ultimately made him comfortable and helped to create a clearer understanding of the world around him.
Some of our greatest achievements especially with his speech were during Lockdown and this was because of the way in which we interacted and subtly intruded in his space.
He struggled a lot with sensory processing coming out of Lockdown. He is sensitive to sound and light. Obviously, that came down to him not being exposed to different environments.
We were a bit hesitant to send him back to kōhanga.
It wasn’t a knock on anyone or the kōhanga, it was more we had done so much good work, were we going to lose it?
We saw such progress as a result of us spending more time with Te Aurere during the day compared to before Lockdown where it was just before or after work. It made us realise that we have the necessary skills, knowledge and experience to help him navigate through this world and support him on his takiwātanga journey.” – 17 September 2020
- This article appeared in Life in a Pandemic, a book about disabled and autistic people in Covid-19 Lockdown, 2020. © Life Unlimited Charitable Trust (now known as Your Way | Kia Roha).
