Sunday 24th June

Thanks for all your RTs of my “it’s a matter of taste…” blog. I wasn’t going to name names but I think the majority of you who RTd know who these “comedians” are, taking cheap digs at those who can’t answer back.

On with our day:
Haircuts time for T and D. T’s was with the clippers – bish bash bosh, job done – he stood very still and it was over within a few minutes. D’s was try-and-keep-her-head-still-by-watching-the-TV, just literally a couple of inches trim but the wriggling and the head turning and the bending make for a much longer job. Eventually done!

She’s enjoyed (yep, you guessed it) the “manah manah” song again, countless times and I remembered we had an old “Stephanie” from “Lazytown” wig in the dress-up box so she’s been wearing that, singing along to the “do-do-do-do-doo” of the pink cow/monster muppet’s part.

Not too many squabbles between her and T today, when she hasn’t been monopolising my phone she’s been playing with her playmobil figures, she likes to change the hair on them and carry them around. In nursery, before she was diagnosed, they noted that she liked to carry the “little people” around for security.

I was preparing D for back-to-school tomorrow and (hopefully) sports day on Wednesday, I was asking her who her best friend was in class (she’s in a class of 8, with 4 staff) and her answer was “the adults”, which is sad but I guess predictable.

Butterfly watch – day 24 🐛🌸🐛:
Oh *yawn yawn* still tiny little bat-like cocoons. Hopefully there will be some butterfly emergence by the end of the week.

A good day – little incidences aside – hope everyone has had a good day too. Comments/RTs as ever welcomed, thanks for reading Jx 😘

Tonight’s picture comes via @NiciJT4Autism, it’s so droll, absolutely love it!

It’s a matter of taste…..

There has been a spate of comedians mocking disabled children in the last few months. Easy targets or is it something more?

The red-top tabloids seem determined to name and shame benefit cheats, headlines screaming “lotto winners still claiming £xx benefits” and “off work for xx years with a bad back and filmed running a marathon” and then you have the stories of the families with children in double figures, the stories are written in such a way that it implies the parents are proud to receive £xx from the state.
I can understand how these examples can and do annoy people.

But to mock disabled children? What have they done wrong? Being told that your beautiful child has a life-long disability is heart-breaking – literally – and then you pick yourself up and realise if you don’t help your child and “watch their back” there isn’t a great deal of practical help offered, you have to seek it.

Yes, there is a Disability Living Allowance benefit and a Carers Allowance benefit but this does not begin to cover the fact that weighted items (which help regulate sensory issues), SN buggies (which are vital if your child has severe anxiety issues) and other SN items are very very expensive. Employment is scarce anyway so to find a position which would enable you to only work school hours, take time off repeatedly for medical appointments and include emergency time off for illness and anxieties around schooling etc would be miraculous. Many SN children are schooled at home because either the system cannot incorporate them or anxieties are such that they cannot go into school.

I’m digressing and anyone who mocks disabled children is not going to be interested in the day-to-day existence of parenting a SN child, they are looking for a quick and easy laugh.

Then they go home to their families. Do they feel regret for their words as they look in on their sleeping children? Do they consider that the people who have laughed at their “jokes” now have an opinion based on what they have heard? Yes, talk is cheap but words stick.

No matter if there is an apology for any jokes (and there rarely is) the words are already out there.

There is a saying “walk in my shoes” but I’m not offering that to anyone who mocks SN children, they’d only mock further and I don’t want to swap and live their ignorant lives anyway.

An example from a magazine 9/12/2012, it continues…