My YouTube Channel for an Audience of Three

Forget money or fame. I created a channel on YouTube to give my daughter, who has autism, access to the songs we both love and made them our own

- Jill Lim

I have a YouTube channel. At the time of my writing, it has two videos uploaded and zero followers.

Pathetic? Well, yes. But maybe less so if I tell you that my target audience are my three daughters. And when I say daughters, I guess I really mean the one with autism, Kate. (My two neurotypical daughters have Spotify and their own music tastes. They don't need anything from me via YouTube and I don't think they want anything from me via YouTube.)

But what does Kate have to do with me starting a YouTube channel? Well, first, singing and songs have been a part of her daily life since she was a baby.

Because she has always seemed to enjoy music, I have long used her favourite songs as a way to create a cheery environment and also to establish or reinforce daily routines. Yes, I have a song for almost everything to move her along through the day.

When wiping her face in the morning, I am likely to be singing a 1960s song called A Little Bit Of Soap. Before brushing her teeth, I might chant: "This is the way we brush our teeth..."

On the way to school when she was younger, I got her to clap or walk along to the children's song that goes: "I went to school one morning and I walked like this..."

We have songs for rainy days and sunny days, for Mondays and Saturdays. Songs for the beach. Songs for the bus.

I feel that singing something familiar to her also helps to keep her calmer in potentially stressful situations, for example, if she needs to be in the dentist's chair. Her poor dentist has indeed had to put up with the distracting sound of me singing "Barney is a dinosaur" while he was trying to check and clean her teeth.

When Kate is on the verge of a meltdown, humming or singing seems to keep her mood a little bit more managed, though not always.

NOT EVERYTHING CAN BE FOUND ON YOUTUBE