How Alice moved into our new house.

Big greetings to everyone! I’m sorry that you disappeared for so long, but it turned out that moving from an apartment to a private house is troublesome and not at all fast.

Today I will tell you about how Alice’s move went.

I must say right away that we were very worried about how our daughter would get used to her new place of residence. Our concerns are related to the fact that Alice has autism, mild mental retardation, ADHD. The main reason, of course, was autism. After all, it is he who has such things as adherence to rituals and negative reactions in case of their violation as behavioral features. We have lived in our apartment for 4 years, during this time life has been fully adjusted, certain rituals and habits have developed, we have all adapted and got used to our housing. Alice had her own room, however, it was a walk-through and there were still a number of inconveniences from this, but they got used to it. Alice was perfectly oriented in her space, she knew where and what she had, where toys should be put away, where a glass of juice should stand, etc. We had to destroy all this and start building a new way of life in a new place.

Of course, we took Alice to the construction site, almost every day we went and watched our house grow. We tried to make her like it there. Before the New Year, we put the first Christmas tree in the house and dressed it up together with our daughter. At that time, the house had only a frame of internal walls, there was no heating and some kind of interior decoration. On the ground floor there were 7.5 tons of drywall, which were to become walls. In principle, Alice liked to come to the house. She generally likes houses, we noticed this 4 years ago when we were riding for the company of my friend in the process of choosing her house. The daughter got high from large spaces (large compared to the apartment). She enjoyed inspecting the interior of the house, spinning, running, it was clear that she liked it. When we visited friends in a private house, she was also happy, so we were sure that she would like her house as well.

Most of all, I was worried about the moment of moving. Judging by the experience of our travels, Alice always felt great during the day in a new room, but she had to sleep at home or in our car if we were on the road. And she defended this need very fiercely. To spend the night in someone else’s house (especially for the first time) it’s always stressful for her. She cries, rushes home and refuses to stay. The second night passes much more calmly, and the third and subsequent ones are already quite calm.

So I was afraid that she would refuse to sleep in our house, too. The plan was this. First, we built a small house for Alice’s grandmother (my mother) to the state of “you can live comfortably”. And they were finishing our part of the house at an accelerated pace. We had to move out of the apartment, because we needed money to finish building the house and we sold it. Alice was allocated 2 weeks to move. I planned that we would stay in the grandmother’s house during the day, and come to the apartment at night. Gradually we will come to the apartment less and less and gradually she will get used to sleeping in a new place.

Alice liked her grandmother’s house very much, as did her grandmother. On the first day of our stay there, my daughter felt great, she was happy to sort boxes with things. We found her doll stroller, which she used to ride in when she was little. She remembered this case and I did not deny her the pleasure and drove in it again. By the evening, the wheel of the stroller fell off, but this did not stop us. Since Alice did not show concern, did not ask to come to the apartment and even ate in a new place (we took her favorite plates with us), I decided to try to put her here.

There was no limit to my joy, Alice calmly agreed to go to bed and fell asleep without any problems. It was a result I didn’t even hope for! However, she woke up at 5 in the morning and immediately requested an apartment, but I did not refuse here in order to consolidate positive emotions about the house, not negative ones, and we rushed to the city. Grandma, by the way, refused to leave her new home and we went back together.

Three days later we came back to Grandma’s house and Alice stayed forever. She didn’t ask for an apartment at all, she really liked it here.

After 2 weeks, we vacated the apartment, brought Alice to see that the apartment was empty and there was nothing left in it, I took everything on video so that I could show her later. By the way, she really liked the empty apartment. I liked it so much that in the evening she just made a scandal because she demanded to go there. Survived. A firm “no” and after a couple of hours she reconciled to the fact that we were staying in the house. She wasn’t drawn to the apartment anymore. Gradually, one by one, we completed the premises in our house. Now the interior decoration is 90% complete, we have been living in our house for 4 months. Alice has her own room, but she is so used to sleeping in her grandmother’s house that she does not want to move there. In the fall, we plan that Alice will already live in her room. However, now, we do not have a strict time frame and she will get used to it gradually. I hope that everything will go as well as with moving out of the apartment.

I will share our impressions from the first months of life in a private house. It’s a buzz! Lots of space, no one bothers anyone. I am especially glad that Alice can jump calmly and at the same time we do not feel a global sense of guilt in front of the neighbors from below and do not run and shush her to jump on the couch. Alice now has a trampoline on which she can jump at any time and a swimming pool in which, with the onset of heat, she is almost constantly. In general, we realized that we could give her more freedom and reduce custody. The main thing that is now required to completely let go of the fear that she will go somewhere is to make a fence, but its absence does not affect the fact that Alice and I really like living in our house.