"I wanted so much for my own children to experience it with me, to feel the joy and magic, the exhilarating exhaustion of it all. My husband retreats into a café with our eldest, while I try to manage P. Seething, on impulse I lift my phone and begin to film. It's a disgraceful attempt to shame my child into behaving the way I want them to behave. The memory of that day makes me queasy, prickling my skin."
"There's something in this brief passage that summons P into my thoughts, something in the way Woolf describes the everyday bombardment of her senses. So much input all at once, with no ability to organise it, no means of sifting through it all, information flowing at her, a sensory stream of consciousness. Woolf doesn't - perhaps can't? - prioritise the vision of the heron over the sound of omnibuses, or Miss Thingummy's tea, or the sna"
A family trip to Disneyland collapses into an intense tantrum from P, leaving the parent drained, embarrassed, and disappointed. The parent films the tantrum in a shameful attempt to force compliance and later feels queasy and guilty about that impulse. Four years later, after P's autism diagnosis, the parent reads a densely sensory passage while studying and recognises parallels between the passage's unfiltered barrage of images and sounds and P's overwhelmed sensory experience. That recognition reframes memory and moves the parent from punitive reaction toward reflective empathy and understanding.
Read at Aeon
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