Saturday Soiree -- 18th October 2025

Hello @Jynx haven't seen you around much on the forums. How have you been keeping?

Aww hope it settles down for you and your daughter @DownMoreThanUp

@avant-garde , @The-red-centaur @SmilingGecko @MissGremlin , @heartathome , @Judi9877 , @Emelia8 @Mustang67

😁@Jynx

@SmilingGecko I took a month off a bit ago, then changed my hours!! I usually lurk about on weekends hehe. How've you been? I'm chugging along ok 😊

I’m ok @Shaz51 . Made a pizza for lunch and dinner. Been dozing off and on this afternoon. Reading a gardening magazine with one eye on the women’s AFL. Trust you are well. Hi all.

@GezzaP what kind of pizza did you make 🤔

We had pizza last night dinner and lunch today

@Shaz51 @GezzaP @Jynx @SmilingGecko @DownMoreThanUp @REDLINEZ750

plus, everyone else! 🌻

I'm about to go to a local (20 minutes away) trivia night. Should be fun! See you when I get back! Be kind on yourselves! 💛

@Shaz51 I made pepperoni pizza with onion and olives.

Oh have fun @heartathome !

I’m having a lazy day.

Have fun @heartathome , and enjoy 😊

Yumm @GezzaP 😊

@Jynx Yes absolutely. It has to do with when and when not.

Also it seems that a few support workers are trying to compete in how much 'productivity' they can get out of our girl. Yet this is NOT what we are after. Plus our daughter is good at playing games as well.

So it is more about knowing/understanding her behaviours then structuring such times in. Our daughter has to need down time, not just given time to have down times, if you understand what i mean.

So the duration of her down time has to do with her mood, not the activity she has been doing. If her mood is good she is a real goer, and can be really good fun for a support worker to deal with. However if then no processing of such a good time has occurred, then the next worker, will get the consequences of her having an unprocessed good time before.

She can even become obnoxious if she cannot be on her on own, so she can talk such times through in her own head. When she done that she be fine. Such times can take 15 minutes or 4 hours, depending what state of mind she is in, and or how intensive her contact with others/performing for others she had to do.

Letting her do repetitive activities she loves doing. Like folding the washing, or reorganise her clothes cabinet. Activities where she can repeat the same behaviours over and over again, and neatly stack everything up. Like going or through her ex school books, or watch photos of the family on her computer, or albums, or see photos of events she has been on in the past, when she is not too bad yet. As long as she can talk to herself, non stop, without any one watching her. This is how our girl orders things in her mind!😀

We know if she is in a bad state we get what we call the endless folding of washing syndrome. Where she folds, unfolds and folds again - over and over again. And yes she is slightly autistic, as well as Down Syndrome. Amazing how she can order her emotions like this though. For she always comes away from doing such activities so much better than when she started. As if she renews her reality or something so profound such down time can be.

Now we have to try and short out how to best introduce this to the workers, in the short term today, while we want to prepare a staff meeting, where we can discuss this together at more depth. We know this is critical. For it is essential that whatever down time our daughter gets is at the right time, and an activities she loves do but will also be productive.With different people, and different moods we will have different outcomes. So this can be rather complex to figure out for our daughter wont tell what is wrong for she does not understand something is wrong yet act on it.

(For example watching a video, or listening to music, or going out seeing friends, is not good for processing whatsoever, but can blot out her issues for the time being, for she will love doing that. Yet such activities are best not chosen at such times, for then we get sudden break down when she becomes emotionally overloaded. Etc.)