Desperate mum pleads for special padded room for 'most destructive' five-year-old in Milton Keynes

A young single mum is raising cash for a special padded room to keep her disabled daughter from harming herself.

Taylor Smith spends 24 hours a day trying to keep five-year-old Isla safe from injury in their city home.

The angelic-looking tot has severe autism, is non-verbal and has the mental age of a small baby. However, she has superhuman strength and her sensory issues mean she has an urge to destroy everything from walls and doors to beds and furniture.

Bizarrely, Isla feels no pain. She will bite herself until she bleeds and smash herself against a wall until it crumbles away to bare plaster, said her mum.

"It’s a full time job keeping her safe," mum Taylor says.

"She has destroyed countless walls and carpets. She can drag a double mattress off a bed and destroy it in no time – she’s only little but her strength is amazing.

“The only solution is to provide her with her own space that it like a giant soft play area, with padded walls, floors and a special bed she cannot destroy.”

Taylor, who is 26, has found a supplier for the specialist equipment needed – but it does not come cheap. Her friend has now set up a GoFundMe page to raise £930 to pay for it.

Called ‘Help Isla have the safe space she desperately needs’, the fundraiser can be viewed here.

Taylor receives four hours care a week for Isla but also has a younger daughter Bella to care for.

Bella is also thought to be on the autistic spectrum but at the other age of the scale. At the age of two, she can already count up to 300.

Taylor said: "Bella is nowhere near as bad. I have to watch Isla literally all the time. It’s impossible for me to work. It’s like having a new baby in that you have to feed her, change her and wash her – but the worst bit is that you never know what she will do next.

"She also has pica, which means she will crave and eat non food items. She eats grass, mud, stones… you name it, it goes in her mouth. She even drinks out of muddy puddles if you’re not quick enough to stop her.”

On top of this, Isla has an obsession with bodily fluids and will spit, smear faeces or even make herself vomit so she can spread it on the walls and floor.

"I am constantly cleaning up. While I’m dealing with one mess, she’s destroying something else,” said Taylor.

“She’s gorgeous and I love her to bits but her autism makes her the most destructive little girl….The doctors say she’s a really severe and extreme case.”

Taylor has been on waiting lists for years to get the support and adaptions needed for her home and has made some improvements herself by adding partition walls and a sensory corner.

"But the only thing that will keep my little girl totally safe is a padded room. I’m determined to do everything I can to get one.”