Over the weekend, Charlie wanted to do a 24 hour challenge. This child is obsessed with gaming and YouTube and ALL his favourite YouTubers do these 24 hour challenges. So, if you don’t know about them (count yourself lucky) but basically its when someone on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok or any other social media platform spends 24 hours doing one activity, like gaming, sleeping in a shopping centre, inside a cinema, in a den that sort of thing. As Charlie is a gamer, naturally he wanted to do gaming.

If you had said to me a year ago, or 2 years ago I would of flipped. That conversation would be cut dead and I would not of even entertain the idea. Charlie is too young, out of routine affects him massively. He isn’t mature enough to deal with the tiredness or the aggression that comes from being awake for long periods of time.

But, we hardly sleep anymore, it’s not unusual for Charlie not to settle until 11pm and quite often he’s up regularly throughout the night. So actually having a lack of sleep isn’t a major problem. And ALL the YouTubers are doing it and he just wants to be part of that world. He quite often feels disengaged from the world and society between autism, no schooling, no social group, no peers and sensory issues so why not?

I first heard the term “Build a bridge” a few months ago, and even though we have been on this journey for several years I had never heard the term before. It’s meaning is to build a bridge into your child’s world and connect with your child, build a positive interaction with them and hopefully your child with join you on that bridge and walk back with you. I’m not an expert, and we’ve never tried it before, I will be honest as I always am I find it hard to connect with Charlie for various reasons and none that are because of him but because situations and environments don’t allow us to.

So this weekend that is what I did! I built that bridge and went over to his world. We stayed up until 3.30am a staggering 21 and a half hours and we had lots of fun. I actually enjoyed it, even though I hate gaming and find his videos boring. And he really benefited from it. Today he has been positively lovely, telling all his online friends about his 24 hour challenge, in fact telling anyone that will listen and has gone to bed tonight on time, no fuss (probably exhausted) and straight to sleep!!! Within minutes, by 10pm an absolute miracle.

So I can actually say I think it worked! Giving Charlie this time, and allowing to do something he only dreamed of made it a reality, I built that bridge, walked over it and held Charlie’s hand on the way back over. Watching him sleep tonight - I always do, helps me refocus back on him when we’ve had a terrible day I felt such a strong connection. I couldn’t leave! Which is why I am writing this so late.

If you see the chance to build a bridge, walk over it!

Georgina x

Below is a link to another blog post on building a bridge.

https://www.nymetroparents.com/article/building-a-connection-with-your-child-with-autism