Trauma *Trigger Warning*

*Before I go any further this post is going to center around subject matter that could potentially be triggering to anyone who happens to read it, if you are in any way triggered or sensitive to details and writing surrounding sexual molestation, abuse or misconduct and particularly in relation to a child please do not read any further. This post centers around events that have happened to one of our children and thus has affected both him and our family resulting in many of his behaviors that we see today, I feel it is very important to spread awareness of these factors and issues as I believe that many of us as parents are blind to the red flags and dangers that not only surround us but our children on a daily basis, I am in no way saying anyone is to blame for these events or that they only happen to those who do not make themselves aware that these things DO happen to ALL genders on a DAILY basis but I think more needs to be done to ensure that parents and people in general are aware and vigilant and that we ensure that our children are made of the dangers as well.*

This post may jump around, I know I ramble, I know this post will be long and probably a little jumpy but I just have to get this out while I still have the reserve to do so.

In 2013 I was pregnant with my youngest son and sitting at home on the couch with my hubby when my phone rang, it was my sons aftercare, he was 6 at the time and I was told to come down to the centre immediately and so we did.

We arrived at the aftercare and were ushered into an office with the school principal who proceeded to tell me that all of the aftercare children were playing; alone and unattended in a room, a room where there were no cameras which against what we were promised upon enrollment and again I will underline that this group of children ranging from 6 to what I believed was 10 were left alone for an extended period of time.

After a while a teacher went in and when she did she walked in on a 13 year old after care child (female) laying on the floor in what I will call a compromising position with my son; my 6 year old son.

My heart dropped my stomach lurched but then oh but then the owner proceeded to tell me that my son had done something to this girl, I will say it again- 6 year old who had not the foggiest clue about sex or touching etc, but we were told by the principal that is what the girl said and because our son was male who was she to question what she had said. Something did not sit right with us so when we left I immediately got in contact with a trauma center in our area and set up an appointment for the next day.

We attended the appointment which I informed the aftercare principal about, my son didn’t say much but what he did say contradicted what we had been told, I started messaging the aftercare principal to say that we needed to sit down and discuss the situation when she told me that she had sat down with the girl in question and that she had admitted to asking a few of the younger children to do things to her and that she was being abused at home by a family member- my heart broke into a million pieces, how could I as a mother be angry when this young girl was herself a victim, I asked whether it was going to be reported, I was told yes, I asked whether the parents had been called in, I was again told yes and was eventually told that the parents had opted to seek private counselling and the child was removed from the aftercare but that the principal had reported the situation (she did not).

I do not blame the girl (I do know her name but for obvious reasons won't be using it) at all, in hindsight I wish I had reported the situation myself instead of expecting the principal to do what she was supposed to do and said she would do because I eventually removed both of my children from the aftercare in question after the children were being left alone and without proper care on a regular basis, the owner had started a new relationship and was not available and did not come in on a regular basis. I was called one day by my sons shuttle service as the electronic gate which at the time was broken had fallen on my middle son and the teachers who were there had refused point blank to contact me brushing it off as a minor accident and that I didn’t need to know so the shuttle service had taken it upon themselves to do so. I was also called one day by my exes girlfriend who had gone to collect my 2 sons from my previous marriage to say that she had arrived at the aftercare to only one teacher being present and that she wanted to take my youngest with her as she did not feel it was safe to leave him there, several parents had already removed their children and this was the final straw but again in hindsight I was friends with the principal of the aftercare and allowed that friendship to overshadow all of the red flags and concerns that I had; ie leaving a group of young children unattended in a room for an extended period of time with an older child that none of us aftercare parents were aware of should have been enough of a red flag for me to remove our boys but we didn’t.

The girl was gone and we continued therapy on a regular basis until we were told that they did not feel that the events would have lasting or future effects on my son, if only we knew….

Over the next few years my sons behavior escalated in many ways, he was asked to leave an aftercare for asking 2 boys to show him their private areas, he was also asked to leave another aftercare because he ran into the ladies toilets, we continued therapy, we involved a social worker, we went through each and every step and did everything that we were told to do, privacy within our home became top priority doors always had to be closed even between siblings.

Fast forward a few years, my sons behavior settled out quite well and we had no further issues until he started attending a local tutor center, he was fine in the beginning but at one point we started to notice changes in his behavior and attitude once again, we couldn’t understand why at that point but I will get into what we now know was going on later in this post. This school ended up shutting down and my son(s) then attended a cottage school which was co run by myself and someone who I considered a close friend who had 2 daughters of her own, those girls were like daughters within our home, they stayed over several times a week and I adored them as the girls and daughters I never had and my boys treated them like the sisters they never had, in hindsight we should never have allowed them to stay over but they slept separately in their own beds/ own mattresses downstairs and we thought it would be ok, the mom didn’t have much support or help by way of child care or reprieve so we thought we were doing a good thing by helping her catch a break, until my son developed what I would call an infatuation with on the girls, one night he approached her and kissed her on the cheek, the girl was uncomfortable and we ie my husband and I ended up stopping the sleep overs which we believed would cease any further issues until one afternoon I arrived at the school to fetch my boys, I was inside cleaning up the kitchen when I heard the principal aka my friend screaming at one of the kids, I went outside and she was standing over my son screaming and swearing at him, she had her hands on him as well.

Come to find out that she had allowed her girls to get dressed around the corner in the garden, bare in mind that she was fully aware of my son’s issues and what we were dealing with, she then said that my son had run around to that area and tried to peep at the girls. Now my 2 other boys gave conflicting accounts of what happened and the principal and her girlfriend were both outside but otherwise preoccupied with one another when this happened, I am not saying it didn’t happen I think it did but as to why it happened when there were adults standing outside and in my opinion the girls should never have been allowed or encouraged to change outside I cannot say.  All I know is that a week or so later at 3 or 4 in the afternoon I received an email saying that my son was expelled with immediate effect, no hearing no opportunity to discuss anything, I co ran the school and no one had the decency to have a conversation with me or to at least give me some indication of what had happened, the other governing body members were not even told that proper process had not been followed. The governing body was also not aware that same person who was overseeing the care of their children had on previous occasion hit my son (denied it at first), duct taped my child to chair and not told me when he told her that he wanted to end his life; I have never been so angry!!!!

Before this happened and before I knew  I was already looking at removing my boys from the school, in hindsight my intentions were good but I had no idea how to run a school and in the end the children were not being taught properly, the teachers were not getting paid because the fees were not getting paid and more often than not the aftercare children were left alone in the care of a 15 year old boy until their parents arrived to fetch them which I completely disagreed with, every morning I was late for work because I would open the school and stay until at least one teacher had arrived to take over which was often 8 o clock or later given that the teachers traveled via public transport, I did not feel comfortable and had already broached the subject with several of the teachers, some of whom had approached me as well as the children were not being treated equally.

 After we received the letter my exes wife arrived at the school to find the children once again in the care of a 15 year old and she called the police, it went downhill very fast and was an incredibly ugly situation, I tendered my immediate resignation that evening from the board and removed both my sons- when I told them I was removing both my children I was met with a response of dismay and questioning!!!!!

Now I am going to stop right here for all of you who are at this point screaming at me from behind your screens- my son behaviors and actions have NEVER been excused, accepted or brushed aside and that whilst we have of course sought therapeutic aid and help we have never used what happened to my son as an excuse for or to condone his behaviors or actions in ANY way and he has been disciplined/ reprimanded and punished, not once have we EVER swept something under the rug or been anything but upfront and honest with every single person we have work with, every school, our friends and loved ones. Acting out in or playing it forward in a sexual manner whilst normal ie it is statistically proven to happen does not mean it should be brushed off, accepted or ignored.

We did everything that we were supposed to, we followed the advice of all the specialists who assured us that we were doing everything we could and were supposed to, we asked my son many times whether he was being harmed in any way that we weren’t aware of and we even begged the doctors to do hormonal and genetic testing to see if there wasn’t something that we were missing or something else wrong, what happened to him happened when he was so young and we just couldn’t understand why or how it had affected him to this extent regardless of his autistic traits which according to the doctors made him socially awkward and unable to deal with proper socially acceptable behaviors we always felt there was something missing.

Fast forward to this past month which has been a roller coaster ride to say the least, our psychiatrist sat me down and said that our son had spoken to her about something that happened to him at a previous school, when he first mentioned it she had not said anything due to the fact that he had denied anything happening on any account on numerous occasions and due to the fact that my son has a tendency to lie… and he is good at it. At this point I can honestly say that as a mom I wanted to believe him but having been through so much and with everything that was going on I was skeptical.

However he had mentioned it again 2 weeks ago and begged her not to tell us or to say anything he also refused to give details as to what exactly happened and so our doctor scheduled a physical for last week Thursday which we attended, it was supposed to be a short appointment we ended up leaving after 3 hours.

My son underwent a full on internal and external examination, the doctor was instructed to look for evidence of any signs of abuse as well as for signs of puberty as we have been saying for years now already that my son has hit puberty and every time we were brushed off.

My son did have a private discussion with the doctor and after the examination we were both called in for his results…

He told me that whilst there were absolutely no signs of physical abuse whatsoever an internal examination showed scarring that could not be accounted for by something like constipation or any other medical issue, I was told that the age of the scarring coincided with what our son had told him; that something had happened to him last January after school whilst in the care of a teacher who was later fired (the kids did not know this) for not properly watching the children. Internally I was screaming, externally the tears just ran as my son began to shake and breakdown telling us what little he would about what happened, he then got to a point where he refused to speak any further. 

The doctor also told us that my son was in the very late stages of puberty and that he had probably started puberty at around the age of 8/9, just fyi the accepted normal starting point for puberty today is 9 years old which shocked me beyond comprehension but this was something as I said we had brought up before and it at least gave me some sort of minor consolation knowing that we had been right but knowing that something had happened to our son not once but twice completely broke me.

I am not the person who breaks down easily especially in front of others, I tend to keep everything to myself for the most part and would rather cry silently in the shower or scream profanities towards the car roof whilst driving on my own that allow other people to see that hurt but this absolutely broke me and sitting here I can say that I still haven’t properly processed it, I had to go back to work with my son, I had to carry on as if nothing happened because life goes on and doesn’t stand still.

I have trusted too deeply, I have been naïve and I have ignored so many red flags placed before me, when you place your child into the care of another person you trust that your child will be protected and cared for. I no longer allow girls of any age into our home when my son is home, if I visit a friend with a daughter or girl within the home he does not come with, we hardly go anywhere and if we do go into a public space, one of us constantly has my son under supervision, we will not even attempt to enroll our son in a school, general or otherwise because we have gotten to the point where we are not only not willing to risk his behavior but we also do not trust anybody else’s supervision other than our own, we do not even visit family members where there are girls within the home we are that strict and conscious of our situation and will not allow another situation to happen, we have gone to these extreme lengths to ensure nothing happens to anyone else but it makes me so incredibly angry that we were not given the same courtesy and support and are now paying for it and that other children have had to pay for it.  

Statistically we are not the only ones going through this and this is a very real and definitely not an uncommon subject/ series of events facing children and families in South Africa today. When the woman marched for the protection of woman some time ago I cried for a week; as a woman and as someone who has experienced trauma I wanted to fight as a mom of a child who has been through sexual trauma I also wanted to fight… but as a mom to a child who has reciprocated that trauma I felt ashamed and that I did not have the right to stand with those woman.. We have done everything we could and it still happened,these things happen! 

As parents we need to be aware we need to open our eyes these is happening to children of all ages and genders and cultures and it not acceptable, there is not a day that goes by that I do not question how different our lives would have been and how different my sons life would have been if he had not gone through this.

It is a literal nightmare that I live out every single day of our lives…

When your doctors cannot agree

Over the course of our journey we have seen many… MANY different doctors approached from many different avenues from holistic medicine to conventional treatment methods and everything in between.

One would think that when it comes to diagnosing someone it would be text book simple right I mean there are manuals for these kind of things and everyone is trained in the same way although the course of medicine has of course developed and changed over the years as it stands there are general manuals and guidelines that are supposed to be used by all professionals at the given time of making a diagnosis.

However I have seen the course of a complex case and we have had more than our fair share of internal disagreements between us as parents and the professionals and we have even had professionals disagreeing among ourselves and a literal team of professionals meeting up together and not being able to help us or to come to an agreement of exactly what we are dealing with and where we need to go as far as treatments and therapies are concerned, which begs the question of when do you decide to go against the grain of what you are being told and go with your gut instinct or who do you trust and what do you accept if not even the paid professionals have an answer for you or what you are being told does not match up or help your case.

Over the years I have met many moms who have just stopped attending conventional therapies and treatments and who have chosen to go along with their own thing and quite honestly I cannot blame them; we have had so many people tell us so many different things and we have followed each of them believing that we of course are just general folk who know absolutely nothing about anything, other than what Dr google has to offer and who are we not to agree and go with the flow, there is also that bothersome nagging feeling that whispers in your ear- the what if, what if we choose not to follow and do as we have been told and then something happens or goes wrong or gets worse!?

From personal experience I can tell you that you are your child’s or loved ones biggest advocate and that whilst we may not be trained professionals there is so much knowledge to be gained just by traveling the journey and experiencing what your child or loved one experiences or feels! I find it to be a complete red flag and insult when a doctor or professional is dismissive of the feelings and thoughts of the family and those who are actually living with the person or child involved, no one no matter how much they have studied or how long they have been practicing can replace that.

This is one of the reasons why we wanted an admission for so long and so badly because quite frankly I was so tired of not getting anywhere and spinning the same stories to doctors and having them look at me like I was off my rocker because the child they sat with for an hour once or twice a month was not the child I was telling them about from a home and school perspective, for years we have been saying we are missing something, there must be something more, something isn’t right- and here we sit at the end of the day with an entire team of professionals not knowing what to do because one group of doctors says it is all to do with my sons autism and his OCD and the other doctor is saying it is not autism at all it is conduct disorder and psychopathy, here we are in the middle saying the reason you cannot agree because it isn’t as simple as one or the other, he displays symptoms of both sides of the coin why is it so hard to believe that it could be both or is both- well the answer is because they have never had to deal with this kind of case before and they cannot give us the answers or a direction to follow.

I had known for many years that my son is on the spectrum, reading up about it and watching friends raise their spectrum kids was a complete AHA moment for me, but by the time the doctors brought it up I had all but given up and dismissed my feelings thinking I was seeing things that simply weren’t there because I was told over and over again that it was nothing more than ADHD! It was the initial start of our journey all over again when I just knew in my heart that something was amiss and no one wanted to listen to me and everyone dismissed my concerns until we got to school going age and it couldn’t be denied any more.

The problem is that we now sit in a position where we are just so unsure about what to do and what advice to follow; in my heart and from my experience I agree wholeheartedly with the autism diagnosis, I understand the OCD diagnosis as I myself have OCD I understand the drive and that you just cannot help it, even the conduct disorder and psychopathy diagnosis is something I can understand even though there are so many things that go against that there are just as many things that confirm that diagnosis, I honestly believe that all of this coupled together means that my son is a rare and extremely complicated case that very few professionals have ever dealt with or know how to deal with, most professionals are used to dealing with 1 maybe 2 conditions or conditions that are typically co- morbid but when you are faced with a bunch of conditions that aren’t easily found together I think it is just something that is difficult to both accept and treat, often the usual therapeutic interventions for one ie autism are not what one would use to treat the other ie the psychopathy throw in the high IQ and my sons ability to manipulate a situation and sell ice to an eskimo and no one knows what to do, so who do we trust, what do we do and where do we go because we have been told by the one doctor that they will no longer treat my son if we choose to involve another doctor because they disagree with what that other doctor has to say but if we aren’t getting anywhere what are we supposed to do.

My son is 12 every professional has told us we have until the age of 15 to ‘ground’ his issues or he is basically a lost cause, do they even comprehend how it feels to hear that as a parent when you have done absolutely everything you can and are supposed to have done, every single professional has said they would stand beside us in a court room to argue that we have done everything we can but no one can give us an actual answer or direction or agree on the same thing; we are faced with putting our son into an extended behavioral program where we will have to send him away for 2 years or more, as a parent that is heart shattering, so much happens in 2 years how much are we as a family going to miss- even his 13^th birthday and  I am not even sure this is going to work but as we stand it is literally the only option available to us so what else can we do?

Where too now?

This week has been beyond difficult for us, if you followed my previous post you would have read (briefly) about my sons admission into an inpatient clinic program for 10 days, it has been 2 weeks since he was discharged and it has been a long two weeks to say the least.

We have been trying to figure out where to go from here, currently my son is staying with his father and step mother during the week as she is not working and the remainder of our parenting team does, everyone else we know works and we are not financially able to afford a full time facilitator or carer even if we could find someone who was able to cope with my sons care.

My sons official diagnosis list is as follows; ADHD, ODD, OCD, Anxiety, ASD (Aspergers). Early onset of conduct disorder and psychopathy are the latest as diagnosed by the clinic psychiatrist at the clinic (our Red Cross doctors are not on the same page here); looking at the above I am sure you can imagine that finding someone to look after him knowing all of the above and someone who could actually cope is a tall and near impossible order, my sons behavior(s) do not switch off they are constant from the time he wakes up until he goes to bed, this coupled with the mouth of a teenager and his IQ make looking after him is exceptionally difficult so currently his step mom is the only one who is able to do this during the week and he then comes to us every weekend whilst my middle son who is also my ex and my son stays with us permanently and goes to his dad every second weekend.

Nothing prepares you...

As I young mom I have come a long way from that 18 year old with stars in her eyes, along the way I have met so many different kinds of moms; moms that go into pregnancy starry eyed ready to let nature take its course, moms who go in wanting to be prepared reading up on everything they can get their hands on, moms that go in believing that having a baby will be all sunshine and daisies and those who go in expecting the worse or with more realist expectations.

I for one definitely went in with stars in my eyes but I had a realist for a mother who sure as anything shattered that rose tinted image and made sure that I knew exactly what was coming and that despite her love my son was my choice and my responsibility; she had her turn and she sure as hell was not going to do it again.

Looking back it was probably the best thing she could have done for me as a mother other than telling me to get up asap after my c section and get on with it asap in order to avoid unwarranted pain and long term healing issues and the time that she walked in and I was pumping milk tears in my eyes as the milk ran red with blood; my son was a preemie and I was so desperate to feed him for as long as possible- my mother had never breastfed and when she walked in the sheer look of both horror combined with empathy I honestly thought she was going to tell me to stop trying to breastfeed… but she didn’t she looked at me her exhausted disheveled daughter told me she would be back in 5, went and ran me a bath and stuck cabbage leaves in the freezer then came back took my son told me to go relax in the bath and to take a nap once I was done, that act of love pushed me through what were some very difficult early days with my son.

The Nature vs Nurture Debate

There is a whole debate throughout the forensic science, psychology and general science world surrounding the origins of psychopathy and whether it is a case of nature or nurture or a combination of the two.

As we sat with a social worker yesterday discussing my sons case I remarked on the research I have done thus far over the years and how it cannot simply be a case of nurture because Loghan has been given so much love and support over the years I just cannot agree with the side of it being a result of only nurture.

I do agree that Loghan is a child of divorce who has faced ALOT of rejection and trauma of the years including sexual trauma by an older child, surgery to correct a missed birth defect that resulted in a severely traumatizing (for our entire family) hospital stay and aftercare, he severed his finger in a door which resulted in another surgery, he has had his head slammed into a wall by another child with behavioral issues, he has been locked in a bathroom in the dark by a teacher when at 3 he attended a very prominent day-care in our area (which is still running) because he was too much for the teacher, that same teacher also hit him and denied it but after we removed him we found out he was not the only child who had been hit, he has been picked up off the ground by a teacher and sworn out, that same teacher also duct taped him to a chair and hit him (and denied it only to admit it later), this teacher had every right to be angry and I will get into that another day but it doesn’t help the psyche of someone who is already suffering with a mental illness or is on the spectrum and it most certainly doesn’t make it right, we as parents have lost our temper on occasion as he has gotten older, my son is taller and stronger than I am, when he was younger I would put him in a hug type hold and sit on the ground with him until he calmed down during a meltdown, now that he is getting older and more prone to frustration and violence it isn’t possible for me to do that anymore so yes honestly he has received a smack or two.

Having said all of the above there is not a single thing that we haven’t done for him, he has accessed the best schools in every avenue of schooling, every step of the way no matter what has happened he has gone to the best doctors and been given access to the best therapies available, he has been given all the love and support he could possibly be given and we have seen in the past how the amount of attention he has been afforded has affected his younger (middle) bother who has also been the easier of the two and who has never had an issue socially so often he has been given less attention, not on purpose but because our oldest has just demanded and needed so much more at any given time of his life which is a whole other bundle of mom guilt that I still grapple with on a daily basis even now.

Every single specialist that we have dealt with has told us that we have done everything we possibly can so I just cannot believe it is only a fact of nurture. From the nature point of view I don’t think it is completely nature either, our son was the most incredibly loving baby and child and there are so many times when he can show the greatest empathy for those who have less in life than he does- he will give out his lunch to feed another and he will hold the hand of a sick stranger and comfort them, he has often shown kindness to those who have only shown him judgement and hate… I believe that many behaviors have become his nature or his response to those around him because of what he has been through but as a young child he did display some of the behaviors that have stuck with him today and have formed a part of the base of his diagnosis as it stands today, I believe that through some sort of twisted fate of the gene pool our son ended up with a melting pot of mental health issues coupled with his high IQ as well as his Aspergers and then the rejection, trauma and alike we now have a child who a literal mess of mental health and emotional issues coupled with behavioural disorders that have developed out of a need to survive and fight back, it’s not pretty, its complicated and I wish with all my heart as a mother that I could turn back the clock and change some of the choices, paths we have taken and decisions we made but I cant.

The diagnosis that started it all

My son was almost 5 years old when it became incredibly apparent that we needed to seek further help and advice when it came to his behavior, at this time he was already on every single natural supplement I could get my hands on and we had incorporated a strict routine and a host of activities into his day in order to alleviate the constant need to move we were dealing with so that we could navigate the school day without issue.

Our first port of call was an education psychologist, an incredibly lovely and down to earth woman who Loghan took to like a shot (he has always been more comfortable with and around woman than men).  We arranged for a 2 hour long assessment after our initial meeting and when her report was complete she deduced that our son had an incredibly high IQ, at that stage she would not give us the number only a ball park avenue of where he fell within as she said that given parents the exact numbers often leads to issues whereby too much pressure is placed on the child.  The thing is the number was irrelevant to me I had always known he was clever, she did however point out that his EQ- emotional intelligence (a highly controversial topic that not all doctors believe exists) was significantly lower the problem lying in the gap that lay between and the struggle of the individual to cope with that, Loghan has always gravitated towards adult conversation and adult type topics when it comes to conversations however he is so incredibly immature in so many ways.  Most people tend to look at him and listen to him and they will peg him for an older child his immaturity on a social level does become apparent fairly quickly though and he is then pushed over to the younger children, the problem is because his intelligence is so high and he tends to want to communicate or at least attempt to on an adult level he doesn’t fit in with the younger children either and gets pushed away by them as well. The report also included a suggestion of referral to a psychiatrist or other specialist for a possible ADHD diagnosis.

It started with 2 lines

Funny isn’t it? You look at your child and I can guarantee you that the day you found out you were pregnant (if you are a woman) is a day that remains strong within your memory forever, for some it is a day of happiness, others regret, I remember looking down at those lines and thinking oh shit… we had taken precautions and here I sat pregnancy test no 5 all the rest had been negative but I knew….

I remember after the initial shock that I was excited, scared out of my wits but happy I spent the next 8 months dreaming about my son and who he would be, the wonderful memories we would create, I gave up smoking refused to touch even a wiff of alcohol, as a pescatarian I ate omega enriched fish every single day and took supplements so that my little one would be born as healthy as he possibly could.

It took a while but my parents did come around and for the most part everyone eagerly anticipated the birth of our son- their first grandchild, first nephew, I knew it would be difficult but with family support I knew we would be fine.

At 8 months I stood in my college cafeteria paying for my lunch and then suddenly a stream of water ran down my legs-I was so grateful that I was wearing a long skirt, I ran off to the bathroom and called my mom to ask her what it was like when your water broke (I was 19 and completely oblivious, I had miscarried before but I had never gone through a full pregnancy and birth), I think my mother was out the door and on her way before I even finished my sentence, I waddled upstairs as fast as I could and grabbed a good friend of mine who ran me back downstairs to wait for my mother, she arrived in what felt like minutes and drove like a bat out of hell to the hospital, at that point all I could think about was getting there in one piece and how badly I wanted my lunch (preggo brain). That day I gained a sister as it was the only way the hospital would allow my friend in to see us after my sons birth.

We made it to the hospital in one piece my doctor checked and announced that we were indeed ready to go, they strapped me up to a monitor and wham contractions I didn’t even know I was having despite how strong they were (according to the monitor), I was calm everything was calm and wonderful. A short while later after my ex had rushed through from school (he was in matric) I was wheeled into theater and a short while after that I was shown my son for the first time and how I cried- he was beautiful.

He spent 10 days in the NICU but aside from that he was perfection, how could I know lying awake the night we came home watching him sleep just what our future would really hold and be like.

This beautiful piece of perfection who kept me up with colic for months and would only fall asleep in our arms, this baby who became a precocious toddler and who could speak sentences at a year of age… I didn’t know, I couldn’t know but there have been many times I have run through his pregnancy and birth trying to pin point anything that may or may not have happened as it should but the truth is that aside from his premature and unexpected birth I had a wonderful and perfect pregnancy and his birth was everything I had imagined as far as going smoothly was concerned, I had done everything that I should have, I had sought out the best care at a private hospital and up until my son’s birth I was in a stable and loving relationship. For a long time I questioned why when I had done everything right could things have gone so much off the path, it has taken me a long time to come to terms with the fact that whether I had done everything right or not anything can happen and we cannot predict what the future will hold, I was reminded by a loved one that when asked whether we wanted testing done for down syndrome and such whilst I was pregnant we refused, my reasoning being that even if my baby was going to be born with down syndrome or any kind of disability it would not affect my decision to carry, give birth to him and raise him I realized once that was said that my choice would have remained the same even knowing what I know now and even if testing had been down and shown an issue, I do not and will never regret my son or having him, from a honesty stand point is this what I envisioned? No. Is this what I wanted, expected or prepared for? HELL NO. Does it affect my love for my child? Again the answer is NO.

Where do I start... an introduction to this space

This blog centers on my eldest son and our journey through the madness that has become our parenting journey with him.  I realized a long time ago that support and resources for children with special needs, mental illness and a combination of both is almost non-existent in so many ways, the resources and help made available is either incredibly expensive (private sector) or requires long waiting lists and very little by way of finding a doctor/specialist whom you and your child can trust and depend on (government), in the end you are not guaranteed the help you or your child may need and most of the time there is absolutely no support or guidance.

Up until now we have navigated much of our journey alone, we have struggled severely to find the help that we have needed and thus have felt like we must be the only family dealing with these issues, this is not the case, I know this is not the case but where are these voices, where are these people? Where are these families, these children? The truth is that I think more often than not we all feel like we are in it alone, many of us are embarrassed, shunned, led to believe that we have no right to services, resources, help or support and quite frankly I have had enough!

I don’t want to stay quiet anymore, I refuse to allow other families and children to feel the way we do. For a period of time last year I helped run a special needs school and that experience was both the most heart-breaking and enlightening experience of my life, at that point I knew in my heart that I wanted to be a voice for others, that I wanted to do more and create a platform for those who feel alone in a path not so unlike our own, I have seen and supported families who are broken, families with nowhere to turn families who are desperate for answers and although we have finally reached a point in our journey where we have- answers as devastating as they may be, I know in my heart that our journey, our pain and our triumphs are meant for more than just our own insight and awareness.

I have met many incredible people, children and families along our journey and my hope is that I can do them justice in being a voice for those who have been silent in this regard, if I can help even one person navigate their journey or lend them the support that they deserve then I will have served my hearts purpose.

I invite you to follow us as we navigate this journey, I invite to share your experiences or to just seek comfort in the fact that you are not alone, help me be the voice where there is silence.