A Fright

Being such a beautiful day yesterday, I threw the curtains wide and opened the blinds to let in the warm sunlight into the living room. After a short bout of illness, Elizabeth seemed to her old self again, content to play with her toys whilst I updated her PECS folder and downloaded some educational software off the internet. The pace was a nice change to last week. That is, until someone walked past the window giving her an enormous fright. At her destressed cry I raced over and picked her up, her tremblingly little body clinging to me, her wide eyes constantly darting to the window. It had been a long time since she had had such a bad anxiety attack. After a couple of hours she settled back down and starting playing with her toys again as if nothing had happened. I, on the other hand, felt too exhausted to to even contemplate the rest of my to do list.


At 10pm, Elizabeth woke up with that heart breaking cry of hers. I quickly picked her up, but she wriggled out of my arms and started pushing me towards the bed, her eyes once again darting to the window. But once on the bed she just cried more. I tried to take her into her playroom to distract her but her anxiety escalated as the playroom had one huge, bare window to allow the maximum amount of sunlight in during the day. Great, she now had a fear of windows. Taking her downstairs she began to settle, but still wary of the window as if a someone was about to lunge through it and snatch her. My father came over about 11pm to see if he could settle her. It was well after midnight before we finally got her back to sleep. A few hours later, just after 4am, she woke up and jumped out of bed ready to start the day. Feeling like I barely slept a wink I finally dragged myself out of bed and took her downstairs for a warm drink of milk, turning on the cartoons and opening the blinds. She glanced at the window a little warily before getting down to play with her toys. It is now going onto 8am and her fears seem to have been forgotten.