World Autism Awareness Day!

Today, April 2nd 2013, is the sixth annual World Autism Awareness Day. People celebrate this day with fundraising and awareness-raising events all over the world.

Today hits me personally. Both of my lovely children have been diagnosed with Autism. Chloe is 4 now, and Jack is 3. Luckily we were able to get them both diagnosed at young ages, although Jacks diagnosis came later than Chloes.

We have had a lot of obstacles thrown our way over the last 2 years since the diagnosis.  We've had the dodgy looks from other parents when one of the children is having a meltdown somewhere. We've had to stop going to the supermarket as Jack has severe sensory issues with the lights, noises, people etc, which means we've had to so all our shopping online.

We've seen many specialists. M Our Speech Therapist, J our Child Psychologist, Dr J our Pediatrician,  K our Health Visitor, and various other assistants and behavioural therapists. At the minute we're struggling with waiting to hear whether Chloe will be able to continue on into the mainstream school in September, that she currently attends for Nursery. These 2 weeks will be hell waiting for that email. Waiting to hear from the local autism school for a visit for Jack to start there in september.

I remember first finding out. I remember first even thinking about Autism. I had been reading a book by Jodi Picoult called 'House Rules' in which the main character has Aspergers Syndrome. I started noticing little traits between the character and my Chloe were similar. We had concerns about her speech etc, so eventually got through to our Health Visitor who agreed with us, adn it shot off from there. 6/7 months later, she had her diagnosis of ASD. Just as Chloe got her diagnosis, we had been to see the speech therapist about Jack too. And again, another 6/7 months later, he had his diagnosis too.

I remember someone telling me, 'It won't be autism, autistic children don't love, don't show emotion, won't cuddle you etc etc'. How wrong that statement was. Both of my children love nothing more than a lovely big hug, thety are full of  smiles and laughter. I mean of course they have their problems, the tantrums, the violence sometimes, the behavioural issues, but I love them more than life itself.

A lot of people don't understand Autism, not their fault, they aren't ignorant to it, they just don't know about it. But I always encourage people to read up a little, find out what it's about. So come on and read a little something about Autism, ask me questions if you're curious, I'd rather people asked than didn't.

Raise awareness of Autism.

Also I'd like to share a picture of my tattoo which I got for my children. It is a quote about Autism which I think fits my family perfectly.