Author Archives: MissingTheMark

Our children are as complex and nuanced as any human being but post diagnosis I felt the stereotypes close in.(we are products of our own environments and cultures) But we all get sent on the same parenting courses with the other parents whose children have a diagnosis and our children get to go to LegoContinue reading “Stereotypes..”

Bad things happen. We all carry our wounds. We all have ‘that terrible thing’ that happened to our children. So we write emails, we make phone calls. I even spoke to our local MP. How can people be so unkind? Why can’t they just say sorry? But what happens? They argue the toss.They read theContinue reading “Sanity..”

I went to meetings, I hoovered, nodded my head, I listened to ‘professionals’, I hoovered, I talked about my child to people I had never met before and would never see again, I hoovered, I sat with other parents in the park and listened to their weekend plans, I made sure I had the rightContinue reading “Perfect Mum..”

What about the ‘Real World’? What does this mean? Whose worlds are the same as anybody else’s? So why is this said about our children all the time? Don’t we create our own lives with kindness and happiness? I don’t mind what our child does as long as she has these..

Those same old questions.. By family or friends who don’t understand. The ‘professionals’ who have immovable markers of ‘success’ for our children.They don’t know what to say.Our journeys with our children can highlight the inflexibility of the systems of support who need to measure and evaluate them. This isn’t helpful. We lose friendships or moveContinue reading “We Change..”

It’s okay, I can fill out another form and write my name, address and date of birth AGAIN. Sure, I’ll tell you everything over the phone for the third time in a month because even though it’s a bad story, I’ve said it so many times now it’s more like a script anyway. Yep, I’llContinue reading “Happy Place..”

When I am sat in a room of ‘professionals’ and my child is not supported and my concerns about this are reported as ‘mums concerned/anxious’ you have not seen me as an equal. You have not listened to me. You have not heard me. So please..

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What do we become?A waffling sentence of abbreviations and fragmented sentences.Most of the time we just keep quiet. We have so much to say but we keep it to ourselves.Other times we just have to get it off our chest, we need to share the maddening systems we are dealing with, that terrible week ofContinue reading “The Bore..”

“Have you tried a visual timetable?”Sometimes you just want to talk about how it really is but it is always about a solution, it is always about fixing.I just wanted to talk about how lonely and worried I felt that holiday but apparently all of life is fixable and it is usually involves a whiteboardContinue reading ““Have you tried a visual timetable?””