For a child who is as dependant on adults as Dominic is, helping him reclaim an element of control is never a bad thing. How else is he going to develop a sense of his own self-worth if he is never reminded that, even though he is ever so small, he doesn’t have to just
Over the years I’ve had the privilege of meeting many parents with children who are somewhere on the spectrum. And in that time, I have had a fair few conversations with them where I had agreed that, indeed, Elliot appeared to have many traits in common with their child but that was more down to his rather quirky personality rather than the fact that his brain was wired differently. You would have thought, being relatively more informed than the average human being about a vast array of conditions and syndromes that my brain would have been screaming at me to suspect that perhaps it was more than a coincidence. Apparently my conscious brain was out for a long lunch though.
…There was more truth in that silence than any blog post or facebook update could ever have come close to. There was no way of parcelling it up, of telling the story, there was just a nothingness. No problem for me to solve, no battle for me to fight. And still I stayed silent.
What can children like Dominic teach us about life?…. and why should we listen?… especially when we have to let go of our much trusted coping mechanism in order to hear what is being said
By the time you read this post, I will have packed a suitcase, boarded a fast train to London and relocated the few things that Dominic and I can survive with into a room somewhere in the heart of Great Ormond Street hospital. I have been preparing to separate myself from my family and