Warrior girl with water weapon
RECENTLY I found myself caught up in the wacky Ice Bucket Challenge sweeping Facebook feeds the world over. You might have seen one of these videos, where some poor, charitable soul stands nervously in a suburban backyard, waiting to be drenched with ice-filled water by delighted relatives enjoying their role a little too much.
Yep, that was me a few weeks ago. I was ‘tagged’ by my good friend CM to take up the challenge and once you’re ‘it’ there’s no such thing as ‘keepings off’ or ‘barley’.
So I stumped up and took my freezing cold medicine. For the good of the cause (motor neurone disease) and because I didn’t want to be called a wuss. I know, I’m not about to win a humanitarian of the year award.
But I do know someone who would have taken that ice bucket challenge by the horns and never let go. She would have relished it, and asked for more and more buckets until she’d beaten the Guinness Book of Records benchmark that might apply to a weird new age phenomenon such as this.
Who is it, you ask? Some hard-skinned ranger type who feels no pain and crushes all opponents in their wake? No, I’m talking about my five-year-old daughter Amelia, who is on the autistic spectrum and is wildly PASSIONATE about the sensation of very cold water on her skin.
I first noticed this strange sensory trait when she was about two and a half. One afternoon during the winter time, I saw her outside with a bucket of cold water she’d filled when I wasn’t looking. She proceeded to fill a smaller bowl with the water and pour it repeatedly over her head and quivering body. It was quivering with the cold no doubt, but also with powerful exhilaration.
For a moment I watched at the window, transfixed by the scene. Amelia’s beautiful round face was a study in elation, in euphoria. She appeared totally unbothered by the frigid temperature of the water. Instead, it was a delight to her and she welcomed it without fear or hesitation.
I was torn between wanting to leave her be for a while longer to enjoy being at one with the water, and the mothering instincts which compelled me to gate-crash this spontaneous garden party and throw a big towel over it. And her.
Other times I found her in our backyard with no clothes on, holding a gushing hose in the air so the icy plumes of water would fall straight down onto her head. Amelia treated the water with reverence, as something deeply special to her that only she could understand.
It’s true that my girl had never enjoyed warm water, especially in the shower. My attempts to add just a little more heat to the stream from above were always instantly detected. I couldn’t get past my child’s incredible sensitivity to the temperature and how it felt on her skin.
For quite a long time this need in her worried me a lot. Every time she’d ask for cold shower water as she sat in a shallow (warm) bath below, we’d wrestle with the taps and I’d think ‘I can’t let her sit in freezing cold water, can I?’ Old sayings about catching one’s death hovered close to my ear and increased my anxiety.
But Amelia doesn’t feel cold water the same way most people do. You only need to see her at the beach out of season when the water is still too chilly for mere mortals to enter; there she is – my little Tommy Hafey child – striding out determinedly, into the deep folds of all that delicious cold.
I think for Amelia, the love of cold water is a combination of the intense feelings she gets from the pressure of the spray and the glacial temperature itself. These elements create a sort of rapturous response in the nerve centre of her body – I can see it in the excited flapping of her arms, the full-body shuddering that makes her squeal likes she’s on the joyride of her life.
After years of watching her relationship with cold water unfold, I now understand that it isn’t bad for her the way it might be for a different child who could not tolerate the icy temperature at all. Or an adult forced to endure a freezing bucket of water tipped over their heads for the sake of charity.
Embracing the challenge of cold, cold water
Now most nights, after Amelia has agreed to conduct her clean-up in a ‘nice’ warm bath, I give her five minutes (give or take) under the arctic torrent from the shower overhead. I peak behind the curtain to steal a glimpse or two of her big, round face, held up in exaltation to the pure thrill of it.
Bath times have been harrowing for us for many years. The allowance for icy, cold water when my daughter desires it has made things a lot better. Sometimes it even calms her down, as though the (welcome) shock to her body from the shower helps quieten those other feelings that can send her out of control.
And in relaxing the house ‘rules’ around water I can also see a little glint of thanks in Amelia’s dark eyes. ‘Mum is finally working me out’, it says. She is giving me freedom to be myself. To take a million ice bucket challenges if I want to.
But it’s not a challenge for her at all, it’s simply a way of being, a way of life. Trust a child to be so deliberately fearless.
moderate-severe/profound... quirky 