Last month, I accompanied my husband to an appointment where he was finally diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. He’d had months of assessments to get to this place. What is particularly interesting about my husband’s diagnosis is that he is just weeks away from being 60 years old. He lived his whole life having autism […]
We live in a world where image is everything. We seem to want to SEE much more than we want to read, listen or do. So much so, in fact, that more and more comments on my Facebook page are now animated images in the form of gifs rather than written comments. Pictures say much […]
My son love lifts (elevators, to those of you in the U.S.). He has for many years now. He watches lift doors open and close on YouTube, he knows every shop in our town and beyond that has a lift, and when he has hospital appointments we have to visit every lift in the entire […]
We asked Naomi, the autistic daughter of blogger Miriam Gwynne, to try to write something for our community that would explain why she doesn’t always like to eat, and what causes her to not like certain foods. These are her words: ———————————— Sometimes bedtime is the best time. It is the one time people leave […]
There is a famous quote by C.S. Lewis that says, “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’” As a parent to two children with autism, I often think I am alone, struggling with things that I think nobody else would […]
“Mum, it’s like everyone wants to be autistic like me now!” My 8-year-old daughter announced this as she came out of school on Monday. She was referring to the latest “craze” for the fidget spinner in her school (and it seems every other school in the country). Suddenly it was “cool” to want to fidget, […]
Having a baby is the most wonderful, humbling, exhausting experience I have ever known. I thought it would be a challenge, but that I would also learn and gain so much. Then one day my baby was diagnosed with severe autism. Everything I had ever known about parenting suddenly changed. I went from being the teacher to […]
Some days stay in your memory for a long time: the day you gave birth, your wedding day perhaps, or even the day you graduated from high school or university. Unfortunately for me, one of the days that is stuck in my mind is the day my precious son was diagnosed with autism. I am […]
The latest Christmas tradition has seen elves taking over houses throughout the country. The story goes that Santa leaves one of his elves with a family to watch over the children and make sure they are behaving, with the theory that naughty children will get nothing for Christmas. The twist seems to be that the […]
I could have stopped this title early and just said, “when your child won’t eat.” That is my life, but somehow at Christmas it just seems so much worse. Ask people what they associate with Christmas Day and, after presents, Santa, and perhaps family, many will answer “Christmas dinner.” Advertisers have a field day this […]