Woohoo!

Grace by any other nameLeave a comment

My three year old -soon to be four-is a twin. We suspect they both are autistic but she’s more challenging because her feelings are super strong and she has minimal speech. When she wants something, she will take your hand and lead you to it. If she says “Mommy” know that she won’t say it again till a few months pass. If she says “toes,” there’s no guarantee she will say it again. She is truly what I imagine a minimally speaking autistic is like.

But hey, it’s a step from non-speaking. And if she goes back to no verbal speech whatsoever, I hope she will learn to type or use some other form of AAC to communicate with. I know some adults who just have never been able to communicate in any understandable way. I can’t imagine how frustrating that must be!

This past week, she has been saying, “Some mik” or “Zhoos” when she wants a milk or juice. I always ask, “What do you want?” And then after a brief pause, answering for her. (Last thing I want is to ever make her feel pressured to do something she cannot do, or force her to try do something her brain stops her from doing. Thinking of the adults who said they want to talk but the words become stuck as if behind a wall, and the mouth won’t produce what the brain is thinking.)

But today. Just now… She did it. She took my hand, led me to the fridge. I asked her, “What do you want?”

And for the first time ever, she answered verbally! I am teary just typing it! She said, “Ice lolly!”

I’m so so excited and so, happy!

I know it’s very inconsistent. I know it’s rare. But… It’s possible! And today was the day!

Let’s Try That Again!

Grace by any other nameLeave a comment

I had many view for someone who had only just begun their blog, and after looking for my blog and finding some unknown (to me) website bearing the same name, it made sense. So, I’m no longer going to use The Daily Moan.

Where was I?

I’m a mother on the dark continent, right at the bottom. I prefer anonymity because of my relatives. They are unloving, adoption-hating fake christians, so the less they know about me, the better. And specifically, the less they know about my health that they don’t care about, and my children’s struggles, the better.

I have a large number of children, many of home are neurodivergent. I hope I wrote that correctly! This will be my space to vent and to share. To celebrate and to rejoice. Hopefully, any other mom who comes this way and has a child or children with my children’s issues will find hope. What I don’t like is causing pain to mothers whose children’s abilities are extremely limited. I know how painful it is when you know that though your child has that same ‘label,’ they won’t have that same success story. For me, whose autistic children also have global developmental delay, the miracle I will celebrate won’t be the same as the one someone like maybe, Greta Thunberg’s mother will celebrate. I hope I never cause pain. I hope this blog is either found by people who have totally different problems but want to know how others cope, or by those whose children are less limited than mine are.

As for myself? I have a few health problems, and ankylosing spondylitis. In the next few posts, I’ll share how I came to that diagnosis.Things here in A—ca are very different to those in the Western world. Or, to be specific, the supports I’ve seen in Britain aren’t at all even close to what we have here. I feel like we’ve been forsaken.

Anyway, I had a bad night-lots of joint pain- and I’m feeling terribly sleepy so I’ll end this post here before I write something totally unintelligible!